SURFACE TO STRAND GEOMETRIES

Our office is currently exploring geometries that allow us to move beyond both duality of frame-and-skin characterized by discreet systems and the 1990s topological project characterized by homogeneous smoothness and lack of articulation of systems. What we refer to as "surface-to-strand geometry" allows for both surface and strand behavior as well as everything in between. One in-between geometry is a pleat, which is a becoming-strand of a surface. Surface-to-strand geometry is inherently useful in negotiating the realm of surface affect and infrastructural pathways. Its syntax enables radical shifts from beam to membrane, from bending to shell behavior, from capillary to bundled structure. Some of the specific types currently in play are surface-to-pleat, surface-to-armature, relief-to-aperture, bundle-to-bramble, vector-to-shell, beam-to-membrane (“beam-branes”), and double delaminations.

To this end, we established a geometry dump that we call The Menagerie containing hundreds of surface-to-strand species. It is a well for projects. As some species are discarded, others take their place. Often, features of one species are combined with those of another and a third species with novel characteristics emerges. So the language evolves.

The design process in the office often begins with the design of a prototype, what we call a "chunk," rather than thinking about the whole. Chunks consist of a set of features with a particular range of behavior and a specific aesthetic sensibility. They are evaluated simultaneously for their quantitative and qualitative features; neither takes precedence all the time. These prototypes have no fixed scale and their agency is deliberately left vague to allow for flexibility and chance in their incorporation into a building project. Importantly, these prototypes are not "cells" or agents that aggregate into scripted swarms, nor are they processed though a parametric gradient routine, or "blend-shaped" into a visual whole. They are not parts to be repeated or varied in an array – a characteristic of false emergence; rather, they are fragments of a whole that does not yet exist and cannot be predicted.