The year was 2001. I boarded a plane for my first trip to NYC. I was headed out there to visit my life-long friend, help with his thesis presentation at Columbia University.
I landed, cabbed it to his apartment, literally dropped my bag in the entry and we were off to SoHo for modeling supplies.
After a 2-day burner to get the physical model and drawings completed for presentation – a LOT of coffee we grabbed the model and the drawings and headed for campus.
Exhausted. Carrying a 4’x4′ block of foam CNC carved model base – we headed for the small lecture room for presentation.
So exhausted in fact, that I had no idea that we were walking thru the scene setup for the ‘new’ Spiderman movie. I was actually on set with Kirsten Dunst, Toby Maguire, Willem DaFoe, and James Franco. It was the school field trip shot as the Osborne limo pulled up the sidewalk to drop Franco off. We walked up and stood off to the side on camera right to watch a couple of takes – but I can assume that holding a giant square of foam over my head immediately excluded us from making it to print.
As we were a little early, and the room wasn’t open yet – I got to sit in on a few thesis presentations. I was taking it all in. I could look around rooms and pick out the authors of all the architecture books that still line my shelves. I can still recall some of the discussions and explorations of ideas and concepts.
The design studio that my friend was in, was being lead by Greg Lynn & Jeff Kipnis. The specific design exploration? The Bleb.
A bleb is a geometrical paradox. A self intersecting loop that sometimes occurs when you offset a spline or curved surface. It was along the lines of the topological exploration that leads to statements like the “coffee cup is a donut” and single-sided surfaces and loops similar to the mobius strip and klein bottle.
Coffee Cup is a Torus (Wikipedia)
At the time – I was working at a design-build firm using tech to hand-color elevations (anyone recall Autodesk’s marker based app & the AutoCAD sketch line plugin?) Discussions of gestural interactions with objects, fluidity of surface and complex forms was a revolutionary path of exploration, and one that’s always been compelling to me.
I was an unlicensed CAD monkey. I was in a hotly-contested discussion with the president of the company over whether or not a PDF file of colored elevations was a preferred deliver method to a physical foam core presentation board that was shipped to them for review.
I was also getting railed that my scratch built 3D models and 3DS renderings didn’t look realistic enough. I was primed for a paradigm shift in how I thought about design.
On the return trip with a sketchbook in my lap and gazing out the window at the passing landscapes with images of stereo lithography, CNC milled waves swimmimg in my mind and the beat of NYC still resonating with me… forms began to present themselves.
If you manipulate the scale, an open pit mine is just a CNC cut path on a massive scale, right? A simple, inverted version of the images swimming in my mind.
Forms and explorations began connecting in an effort to answer the question “How do you build something like that?”
I was a 3D modeler & maker after all. An architecture school grad – fully versed in the additive and subtractive principles, extrusions, water jet cutting, CNC machining, woodworking, metal work, welding, etc.
I began with emulating the hybrid forms that I’d seen in my friend’s apartment and at the school. Admittedly, it lacked the smoothness of being pre-planned and was just hacked together in the moment, but the framework was there. Free form structure.
In the same carving session, I started into another idea for creating a mimic of the forms seen out the window at 30,000 ft.
With an abundance of puck lights laying around – I found something interesting when you added light and over-stretched the foam over a test framework. With refinements to the light mounting and the base – I created a hybrid sconce that casts splines of light on the ceiling and walls, and mood lights the room.
It wasn’t the target that I was aiming at, but I’ve been building some form of those lamps ever since refining each version. The next iteration will bring a more sculptural framework, a formal ‘shade’ material and LED tape lighting. Sadly, the original prototype exists in photos only, as was destroyed in an apartment fire.
Next came the tech. I created a series of splines to be lofted together in whatever version of 3D Studio that I had access to at the time, and created something. Except – as expected, it fell short of expectations. Everything that I was familiar with at the time – was an arc or a segment.
Proof of concept, sure – but there were miles to go for that clean line depiction of a calculated lofted structure. After finding the learning curve a little too large a climb for an immediate return, I went to the art store and grabbed a block of modeling clay to form up what was in my mind… I know, dramatic shift in mediums, but I wanted to get some iteration of this form, into something that I could hold to think it through.
After much tweaking, learning, jumping between CAD and Viz to clean up geometry… I finally wrestled out an image representative of a blobject… which was 100% not actually a nurbs model – but it was proof of concept. (I understand fully that this all flies in the face of the original intent, but I didn’t have access to the ‘good tools’ or the more refined elements. I had Splines, Add, Subtract, Extrude & Join.
All the way thru the process of playing with new forms – the pragmatic half of my brain wrestled with how this was a saleable commodity. How something like this would bridge from the theoretical aspirations and explorations of technology – into the popular culture and the built environment.
I was (and always really have been) constrained by the pragmatism of firmness and commodity over delight. It wasn’t until I contacted Greg himself that I began to understand the heart of the matter. I asked, from the perspective of ‘capital A’ Architecture with ethereal aspirations – just where the profundity lied in this approach?
The answer I received was, that essentially the ability to create forms like this, and the explorations of surface and the technology to support it was the profund act.
I reconciled all of this in my own thinking, as the jump between Cubism & Decon into Abstract Expression. Thru the use of technology, we’ve transitioned between breaking and rearranging the box – to peeling the surface off and molding it to whatever shape pleases us.
It was the architectural difference between Picasso & Jackson Pollock
With the form established, the digital means hobbled together, the question still loomed – how do you build the thing?
More reconciliation of thought was required.
I engaged in further discussions about how to actually make something like this and when ‘just water-jet cut the plywood’ came up in the discussion – that was a bad sign. At BEST I’d have a collection of jigsaws and a pile of plywood, and a way to fabricate any custom plates…
Understanding that the structure was derived from ships & airplane construction (skin over a designed frame) – I now wanted to figure out a way to build it. Pragmatically.
Splines & Frame:
If you laminated (2) layers of 3/4″ plywood, you’d get 1-1/2″ of frame. Depth of that frame TBD, and wasn’t going to be dictated by lumber mills.
Make the splines:
4’x8′ sheets, meant lap splicing or needing plates at the material joints to continue the curve of the form.
Connections:
Custom Formwork or CMU foundation + (2) 3/4″ sill plates, lap spliced, expansion anchored + Simpson clips.
Lap splice at minor fill joints & sill plates
Plate splices at major joints, apex points at curves under greater load (corners).
I had the site. I had the basic design. I had an idea flushed out for the practical way to frame the object. I had a custom ‘shingle’ way to skin it.
What I didn’t have was funding for materials. The volume of plywood that it was going to take to make something like this happen was going to be ridiculous. The cut list alone would take a very long time to create.
Without a CNC machine, ready access for a way to translate model to production – there was going to be an opening for artistic license in framing and construction and joints would have to be modified.
The best option that I could come up with at the time for translating form to material was going to be a massive amount of full scale printed templates to direct-transfer shapes to plywood.
That’s essentially where the project ended.
The explorations of form and practical modeling of the idea was forever planted in my lexicon as a maker.
I was just going to have to wait.
While at MSR Design (Previously MS&R Ltd) in 2007, I was presented with an opportunity to create a campus master plan for Life University in Marietta Georgia. The first phase of which was to create media for a capital campaign for fund raising – so the media would need to contain several noteworthy and iconic building forms.
When hired on to DLR Group in 2014, I was presented with another opportunity to ‘play’ with the nurbs forms. This time it was something that would become real. As I had the modeling experience in complex geometric forms – I was the only one in the company that could develop the Revit / Rhino model and create the detailing necessary to translate this sketch into a constructible element.
Ironically – it was one of the only things to survive VE, after being simplified 3-4 times.
There were a series of section sketches, a mock-up starting model, and a Revit elevation consisting of a filled region to start with. Existing structure and storefront framing needed to be ‘missed’ with this new element that would become the feature element to the new food court.
In the final installed version of the element – I had cleaned up the profile radius & the path that the form takes. This lowering the cost of fabric as the complexity was reduced.
Model elements were exported, the entire volume was sent to the fabricator, and shop drawings were returned directly from the model.
19 years after the initial exploration of form and profundity of the idea – it’s now become more common, and the production of drawings and buildings leaning toward automation. This serves as an interesting case study as we approach modular construction and modeling replacing drawings as the primary way that architect’s communicate ideas to the field.
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