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The artist, the craftsman and the coder

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Elio Garis < Co-de-iT > Bruno De Masi

Vigone + S. Maurizio Canavese (TO) – 45°13′5.33″N, 7°37′54.27″E

2010

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When it comes to the use and implementation of digital strategies and tools one of the most common temptations is digital exhaustion: the project starts and becomes perfect in the digital realm. According to this obsession the digital outcome takes command and dictates the rules to which all material aspects should be subjected. Emergence material effects and any kind of post-machine work is seen as a flaw in a search for a fully file-to-factory process. Another common temptation which usually pairs the one we just described is the pursue of digital perfection: since digital tools allow accuracy and precision extreme specificity is often seen (and not without reasons) as a goal or an improvement. These are the case that serve optimization for iterative production, but we think that this shouldn’t be a universal rule.

Digital strategies and tools in our mind are not a substitute of all existing tools and techniques, rather they have their own specificity; they integrate and expand the existing set, adding new extended potential and novel possibilities to it. Substitution happens when the new tool is not only performing the same tasks than the old one but also adds new or improved qualities (performance in speed, accuracy, variation, added features, etc.).

This is an exploration of the territory that lies in-between the digital and the physical realm, usign the digital as a resource to amplify the expressive palette of an artist (Elio Garis) working in tight connection with a craftsman (Bruno De Masi, we already worked with him for the Bosco project) for the design and realization of Mensa, an altar which should enrich the restoration of the Antica Chiesa Plebana, a XV century church in S. Maurizio Canavese (To). The design was conceived by Elio Garis, then developed by Bruno De Masi under his guidance, while Co-de-iT operated as a mediator between the digital realm of the information model and the physical sculptural expressive potential, translating the initial design into a coarse fabricated model in plywood. The model was purposely kept coarse to allow a final physical interaction by the artist in order to let him orchestrate material properties and effects according to his sculptural sensibility and experience.

Sculptural sensibility is not a pure hylomorphic process. There is an intensive logic underneath, something that is even more evident in pottery making, where the potter should constantly interact with material properties in order to tease a shape out of clay: temperature, finger pressure, rotational speed of the plate, humidity are all intensively interacting at the same time and directed by the artist’s sculptural sensibility. To that extent, this project explores vagueness as a quality that could be implemented through digital tools: sculptors often take inspiration from pieces of material, guided by vibrant sensibilities they feel resonance and envision a potential to be disclosed.

Our contribution with the digital tools is to explore through generative strategies a wide range of rule-based vague forms that can be coupled (according to material and fabrication logics) to several material palettes and let the final part of their morphogenetic process to be directed by the artist’s material sensibility.

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Interior decoration panels

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Alessio Erioli, Andrea Graziano + Corrado Tibaldi

unspecified location (hopefully many interior projects!)

2009

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Nature has a mathematical and algorithmic bottom. Or, better, math and algorithms provide a key to describe and reproduce natural processes of morphogenesis. Mathematic is a linking principle that weaves together artists, physicians and mathematicians of course.

More to that extent, beauty also has a mathematic bottom: throughout history many great artists realized that math was the key to unlock higher levels of complexity in their expression and technique, from ancient Greeks to our present day, rigorous exploration coupled with a personal universe of sensibilities. It seems that we are witnessing an interest for math in bridging disciplines belonging in origin to science and/or art: such intensity has a precedent only in the Baroque, when tremendous progresses of science and philosophy triggered a fruitful exploration of complexity and continuity both in space and expression: the use of complex curves, ellipses, platonic solids and derived rules. Looking at the ceiling of Borromini’s S. Carlo alle Quattro Fontane in Rome what we see is parametric tessellation in action, self-similar components forming a continuous surface. The same process was explored several centuries later also by M.C. Escher, challenging Borromini’s spatial complexity on a pure perceptive level, still with the same underlying strong basis in mathematic principles that drive geometry.

Designing panels is something that deals with the issue of tessellation, the discretization of the continue through components. These panels are an exploration of mathematical algorithms applied, through parametric design in Rhinoscript and Grasshopper, to a new 3-dimensional production technique for DuPont Corian®. Even though each panel gravitates around one dominating principle, they surely embed more than one: each of them is a narration of a particular generative process, but reversing the direction that goes from a process to its generated form, it is true that forms can be descriptive of many processes. For example the Penrose tiling, the Fibonacci sequence and the golden ratio are intricately related and they should be considered as different aspects of the same phenomenon.

One of the more interesting aspects in our design exploration is the application of algorithms through parametric strategies to generate modulations, oscillations between stable states, (rather than an unvaried repetition) and balance them with issues of seamless tiling within a square-angled framed component, material logic and production techniques.

Additional info:

. Corian® 3D Math Serie is made of 6 different panels, each inspired from a mathematic principle or the mathematician who gave his name to the principle. Those panels are shown here in alphabetical order: Fibonacci, Fourier, Gauss, Moiré, Phyllotaxis, Voronoi.

. Corian® 3D Math Serie official website.

Featured on:

:: 2009: . Corian® 3D Math Serie won the Batiproduits Gold prize and honorable mention in Design Trophies at Batimat 2009

:: 2009: . websites: Rhinoceros 3D Blog, Archiportale, Edilportale,  les Idées de Clofée

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Flowerstore

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Alessio Erioli + Antonio Vacca (alfa301) as A.V.A.E.

unspecified location

2008

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Flowers are considered mainly as symbols of grace, beauty, fragility and transiency of things. They were the very first form of human body decoration (such as jewels), used to enhance seductive qualities. Besides their semiologic value, flowers are exceptional organs in which performance and economy of form are highly evolved: space, structure and material are tightly connected to environmental behavior.

Flowering plants, thanks to sexuated reproduction, are one of the most adaptive specie; flowers are their sexual organs. Entomophilous flowers rely on insects as hosts to perform sexuated reproduction (through pollination), so they base their reproductive potential on attraction. Differently from anemophilous flowers (which rely on wind and are mostly white and inodor), entomophilous show a wider range of forms, spatial organizations, color patterns and odors. Beauty then performs an essential function, triggering different strategies which are actuated through morphological conditions.

Starting from the analysis of the properties of the Cyclamen Graecum, we investigated the particular conditions of its petals: they are the main tool through which the flower signals its presence to insects. In the Cyclamen the weight of the head bends the stem downward, thus easing insect approaching from below, while petals elongate and bend upward signaling the flower position, creating a very interesting topological condition around the corolla. Their plication creates a continuous passage from outer to inner space, just like some typical topological surfaces, such as the Klein Bottle, which are continuously spatially connected. The differentiation of inner spaces out of continuous surfaces is a typical topological condition in living organisms and it is a phenomenon which starts in the embryo, when the initial cell aggregation (blastula) starts bending inward and creates the first spatial differentiation between outside and inside; it is called gastrulation. Another concept related to the Klein Bottle, this time  from the side of mathematics, is involution, a mathematical function which applied twice brings back to the starting point.

The petals condition (along with the concepts of involution, gastrulation and with the translucency and color properties of the petals) was then explored under TopMod®, a topological mesh modeler, testing different strategies within an open process that led to the final shape through generative process driven by the program and a selection criteria based on consistency with the conceptual basis, avoiding a mere biomorphic translation.
The pavilion is a continuous surface that differentiates environment into 3 different spaces: an exterior outside the pavilion in which the envelope surface defines the overall shape and two different interior spaces, a ring that embraces a court and creates different gradients of use within it. Different gradients of transparency/translucency, established according to a map of activities based on performative qualities of morphology, are implemented through the use of holes in the surface and not only relying on material properties (pigmentation).

Additional info:

[attr]-action is a project developed together with Antonio Vacca from alfa301 during “flower obsession” studio, held by SPAN
(Matias Del Campo + sandra Manninger) in the Biodigital Architecture Master at ESARQ, Universitat Internacional de Catalunya,
2008. Thanks to Matias & Sandra for their inspirational studio & teaching.

Featured on:

:: 2008: . Beijing Architecture Biennale, selected among others to represent ESARQ
:: 2009: . AAST/// exhibition Settimo Torinese 17.04>17.05 2009
. AAST/// exhibition Torino 23.06.2009
. SuckerPunchDaily.

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Scultura

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Alessio Erioli, Andrea Graziano + Bruno Demasi

Volvera (To) – 44°56′29.04″N, 7°30′46.34″E

2009

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“Bosco” è il primo risultato della collaborazione tra Co-de-iT e il ceramista Bruno Demasi. La serie di vasi è stata generata in Grasshopper, prima definendone la superficie esterna e successivamente lavorando sulle proprietà della superficie attraverso i suoi parametri costitutivi; in questo modo si esplicita una forma di ornamento di tipo indicistico e non convenzionale, in quanto le informazioni necessarie a definire le forme ottenute erano già contenute parametricamente nella superficie di partenza, erano sue proprietà virtuali. Le morfologie ottenute sono il risultato dell’applicazione di questo processo ad un sistema materiale (ceramica, polistirene, legno multistrato), alle sue proprietà endogene (struttura chimico-fisica, lavorabilità, caratteristiche visivo-tattili) e al suo comportamento rispetto alle forze esogene (temperatura, gravità, umidità,
pressione, etc.).

Intendiamo come ornamento la condizione attraverso cui le morfologie in natura creano articolazione e differenziazione, partendo dalla definizione che ne diede Sir John Summerson come “surface modulation”. Il tipo di rapporto generativo indagato è lo stesso che sta alla base della morfogenesi in natura, dove le informazioni sulle leggi di sviluppo che sono contenute nel codice genetico sono applicate a sistemi materiali
organici, andando così a determinare una forma che, ad ogni iterazione del processo, non si ripete mai identicamente. L’identità è nel processo, non nel suo esito.

Come Co-de-iT, il nostro interesse in questa esplorazione è duplice:

. identità di processo e non di prodotto: il vero progetto è nella definizione parametrica dell’oggetto, non nell’oggetto in sè; questo permette la generazione di famiglie di oggetti unici e specifici, pur discendenti dallo stesso processo (minime variazioni dei parametri possono dare sostanziali differenze morfologiche);

. rapporto tra processi virtuali e sistemi materiali: l’applicazione dello stesso processo a sistemi materiali differenti produce effetti emergenti sul risultato, integrando la simulazione virtuale con le qualità del sistema materiale adottato;

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Multiperformative membrane

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Alessio Erioli

unspecified location

2009

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In quanto risultato della ricerca di configurazioni morfologiche di autostabilità con minimo dispendio di energia, le superfici minime (minimal surfaces) sono un tema molto interessante. Come possono distribuirsi su un sistema più grande e complesso e com’è possibile testarne il potenziale in termini di performance?

Il test è stato condotto come parte di una ricerca su membrane strutturali multi-performanti. Un componente base a sella, modellato tramite lo Scherk-Collins Sculpture Generator, è stato utilizzato con i Paneling Tools di Rhinoceros© per popolare una superficie a doppia curvatura. La proliferazione del componente ha rivelato alcune proprietà emergenti:

. la più evidente è la continuità che si riscontra a livello del sistema, tanto da far sembrare la membrana seamless;
. si nota la comparsa di uno spazio interstiziale continuo e poroso ai due lati della membrana stessa;
. sono evidenti delle scanalature che corrono lungo una delle due direzioni delle isocurve.

I pannelli e la superficie sono poi stati sottoposti a verifiche di assorbimento di energia luminosa per irraggiamento tramite simulazioni in Ecotect© 5.50.

I dati sull’irraggiamento entreranno come parametro di controllo della morfologia nella fase successiva del processo iterativo di design, andando a modificare la morfologia (dimensioni dell’apertura, profondità della membrana, rigonfiamento – bulge – del panello, etc.)

Additional info:

Il progetto Scherk Panel è parte della ricerca condotta da Alessio Erioli presso l’Università di Bologna.

Featured on:

. Paneling Tools Gallery
. e.cloud
. Flickr

©

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Workshop

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Alessio Erioli + Ludovica Tramontin (tutors), Alessandro Uras (co-tutor), Lars Moth-Poulsen (Bentley tutor)

Settimo Torinese – 45° 8′34.55″N, 7°46′36.90″E

july 2009

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SEN.S.-E.I. _ SEN.sible S.helter – E.nvironment I.nteraction
Design with Generative Components® & Bentley® Architecture – AAST Workshop

L’insorgenza di una nuova sensibilità climatica allarga ed estende i concetti tradizionali di edificio, mentre le tecnologie nomadi e il modello del network ci permettono di estendere i nostri sensi ed esplorare una gamma ampia di rapporti corpo-ambiente attraverso l’interazione spaziale, ridefinendo così radicalmente la relazione spazio-corpo-funzione. Le attuali soglie fisiche rigidamente pressate nella solidità delle pareti si stemperano in intensificazioni e rarefazioni ambientali modulate, gradienti di variabili che pervadono uno spazio non più “indifferente” ma attivo e sensibile, intensificazioni che possono essere espresse tramite campi attrattori che influenzano (ed interagiscono con) la formazione del progetto. La possibilità di gestire la complessità attraverso design parametrico ci consente di simulare e gestire risposte modulate e sensibili all’ambiente.

Il tema a cui applicare queste strategie di interazione è quello dello “shelter”, padiglione multipurpose in cui morfologia, pattern di modulazione e potenzialità d’uso vengono mutuamente definiti in un processo iterativo a partire dagli attrattori ambientali e dalle leggi di interazione con il progetto.

Concetti esplorati:

. attrattori e influenze: leggi di variazione
. superfici di proliferazione reagenti e non-reagenti
. adattività ambiente ospite e componente reagente