Rapid Craft

Rapid Craft

By Neri Oxman
2005-2006
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Much of natural morphology may be simulated by tubular forms that do not simply expand or elongate but, rather, bifurcate, trifurcate and so on. Plants often grow in fashion to maximize the surface area of their branching geometries while maintaining structural support. The project examines theoretical morphospaces that use branching growth systems so as to explore certain structural principles in natural systems and implement them in a generative design environment. Illustrated below is an L-system, developed as a Cellular Automaton algorithm in an associative modeling environment, to allow for multiple affects to occur simultaneously within the 'growth' process of the system. The logic follows an algorithm which takes as input variables describing the initial rules for 'growth' and 'decay' and a set of local 'attractor' points which affect the system locally. Selected growth patterns are assigned different global variables for the location of 'attractor' points, simulating light source and structural constrains.

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