Printing Architecture - Digital Grotesque

By Namita Nathani

Photography: Michael Hansmeyer & Benjamin Dillenburger; courtesy the architects

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What would architecture be if we could free ourselves from preconceptions? How would unseen forms materialize? Would the answer be surprising? Intriguing and delighting?

Analysing morphogenesis (process cell division) in architecture and using the art of additive manufacturing, Zurich-based architect and programmer, Michael Hansmeyer explores the use of customised algorithms and computation (without any manual intervention) to generate a mind-boggling variety of forms, assimilated into a life-size architectural installation.

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Michael uses origami to create 3-dimensional structures integrating technology in the process of doing so, as it empowers the possibility of folding everything and anything at a much faster pace with a result of hundred thousand variations, creating something that is completely state-of-the art – a “Digital Grotesque”.

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Developing an algorithm that iteratively divides and transforms the initial geometry of a simple cube, despite simple rules, into a complex world of forms at multiple scales: between ornament and structure, between order and chaos, foreign and yet familiar.

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The grotto has information at many scales, the closer one gets, the more new features one discovers. Some surface details are almost at the threshold of human visibility. Employing computational architecture, information such as planarity, radiality and curvatures, which is already present in the structure, is brought to the fore.

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The architect becomes the orchestrator of processes like permutations, generations, crossing and breeding to create a design that identifies the property of the surface and how that surface is folded; as the forms that are created are un-drawable by the human hand. An architect, who would draw the form with pen and paper would probably take months or even a year to draw all the sections - the elevations.

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Using the room-sized grotto with subdivision and mesh grammars, as an introduction of Mannerist style, Michael explores a new capability of digital design that employs a reduced, minimalist approach that nonetheless transcends rationality.