Orthographic Orbit_DRAFT

Orthographic orbit from subtect on Vimeo.

Best viewed in 1080p HD.  Link for "Couch Mode": 

vimeo.com/couchmode/user10180689/videos/sort:date/37153607


This animation shows an orbit around the stone canopy in parallel projection, effectively showing the form's surfaces as seen by incoming sunlight.  One of the architectural challenges presented by the project's premises (as explained on the "Production Concept" page)  strips architecture down to two of its most basic elements:  light and stone.  The challenge is: what possibilities are open to us now in terms of sculpting a stone form that channels and distributes light, perforates the mass, opens it to incoming light, a porous form, a light sponge, carved from solid stone.

The central chamber is a sphere subtracted from the starting rock mass. This sphere is then grazed around its perimeter by cylindrical/conical light chimneys subtracted from the remaining rock mass, such that the center of the chamber is never hit by direct sunlight, but is diffusely lit by direct sunlight striking the surfaces of these light chimneys around the perimeter of the chamber, regardless of what time during the day. What remains of the inner wall of that initial subtracted sphere is colored red, to help clarify.  As these light chimneys increase in number, they begin intersecting with each other, generating a geometric complexity that easily gets out of hand.  The current geometry of the stone canopy, which will be the final for the purposes of this project, is the result of manually tuning the variables governing the geometry of each light chimney to compose their intersections with both the central sphere of the chamber, and each other.  There is a final stage of minor sculpting after the form is baked from Grasshopper. The design process would not have been possible without a parametric software like Grasshopper3D/Rhino -- makes possible testing the result of a 0.5% adjustment to a variable in a form that has ~20 downstream difference booleans.  Soon I'll have diagrams to further explain how this form was derived.