Kalyx

January 27, 2009 at 1:56 pm · Filed under Architecture General, Scripting, Visual Arts, Visualization and tagged: Architecture, canopy, coral, Formal, kalyx, Scripting, Visualization

Engaging the right side of the brain is a liberating exercise, except most times it isn’t something we consciously do. Right-brained thinking is interesting in the sense that it is so unlike its counterpart, aka left-brained thinking, in that there isn’t necessarily work involved in getting from point A to point B. There isn’t an “I get it” or “I don’t get it”, but simply a range/depth of appreciation.

I think we would all be surprised at just how attune to visual phenomena we really are, and how much we can process simply by looking at an object, a space, a face, or an image.

I say that relevant to this project, only because I started with trying to indulge a right-brained urge, and ended up getting there in a pretty linear fashion.

Working on a project in Dubai, our project team found out that a good portion of the masonry in the city is actually cut and hewn coral deposits. Its combination of mass and porosity, as well as availability, had obvious benefits given the climate and region. Though the project pursued another direction, I kept finding new things relative to color, growth patterns, etc.

A project emerged simply by trying to follow the underlying geometric logic of a species of coral whose septa (walls) fuse together from polyp to polyp.  Simplicity follows two tracks; a simple thing + complex technique, or a simple technique to get a complex thing.

This employs the latter.

I’ll probably post a more detailed description on my website shortly.

MS

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