SURFACE TO SKELETON

The Grasshopper algorithmic design software has a feature called ‘surface to skeleton.’  Once you have a form established, this feature allows a generation of what they call a skeleton of the structure.  While I’m not sure that skeleton is the correct term for this result, the concept is clear.

So I thought, this is interesting.  What if this were done as a Transparent Drawing study.  What happens when we knowledge a form from surface to skeleton?  I found a photo of an Oteiza sculpture that I took in Barcelona.  I then drew the three surface to skeleton iterations, just like the software draughter, and I wanted these to overlap.

It had never occurred to me to knowledge forms by this, what might be called erosion, of the form.  This reverse mode does produce tangible knowledge about the form that you are generated or are studying.  The geometry of a structural system is produced automatically.  And it works when you do it analogue.

Some current sources would call this generative design. Many algorithmic computer design programs use the term form finding. And that’s fine, if you want to basically sit there and watch TV. But if you don’t want to sit, for the most part, passively and make incremental and non analogue hand movements while watching the big glowing screen, then this is for you. Just draw any form that interests you, in three iterations, from surface to skeleton.

Are the form finding transparent drawings that you generate manipulable from any angle? No. But as a designer, do you really need that level of manipulation to knowledge your form, your solution? Because your drawing is transparent, no, you don’t.  Just because you can do it does that mean that you need it?.

Hell, we might even establish this as another TD mode of knowledge. Just stop sitting around watching TV.