Project 2 Video

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Project 2

01 Introduction

To expand on the typology of the first project, this second step involves developing an adaptive shading system to augment the original surface. The model suggests a kinetic device for directional shading at all hours of the day. The proposed system would involve mechanized actuators and a flexible mesh scree. This system could extrude toward this suns position while opening or closing the aperture accordingly. The project also uses a genetic algorithm to optimize its final form.

02 Modelling Process

The model is based from the diagrid typology. The surface diamonds (which would be the mullions on the original surface) are extruded to create the shading pockets. These extrusions must then be mapped to the location of the sun, which requires the creation of a sun arc.

03 The Sundial

While there are other programs such as DIVA that have sun angle generators, these programs run slowly and heavily. To take less energy, I created an arc using angles for sunrise, noon, and sunset of the latitude of the project for a given day of the year. The sundial also evaluates a point along this arc that will be our sun position.

04 Face Vectors

A diagrid is applied to a surface at the center of the sun arc. This will be used as the base of the system. To connect the extrusion to the angle of the sun, vectors can be made from the centroid of each diamond to the sun position point.

05 Scaling

The diamonds can then be scaled as a function of their proximity to the sun.

06 Lofting

After this the scaled diamonds are moved along the sun vector. The distance of each diamond’s move is determined by the cell’s distance to the central cell. The moved surface can then be lofted with the original un-scaled diamond to create the geometry of the shaders.

The shaders adjust their orientation and scale factor based on the angle of the sun throughout the day.

07 Fine Tuning

The amount of difference between the extrusions’ length can be massaged by adjusting the first distance component’s difference function. This effectively increases or decreases the difference between all extrusions. At a certain point the curvature gives a smoother curve that is the desired look of the shaders. To find this optimal point of curvature could take a lot of manual adjustments to find, so I implemented the Galapagos evolutionary solver to analyze the difference of list items for the extrusions. It aims to reduce the difference between successive items, thus giving the optimal soft curve for the overall geometry.

08 Application

Finally this system can be affixed to the original geometry from the first project.