Skyscraper Envelope
Before a new skyscraper is conceive there are teams behind the idea exploring form, areas, details, structure, cladding, panel, curvature, functionality and many more. For this particular project there was a lot of work to be develop for the skin of the project.
There’s is a considerable number of pieces to put together when developing a double curvature shape, where assembly process becomes essential to reduce cost and improve performance and fabrication of each piece. When we talk about computational Design, we can say that geometry is translate into information, this is incredible valuable to use when building a project because we can start manipulating the information as well as filtering the information to have more detail and precision for the project itself.
Any kind of project will have multiple details that have to be evaluated in order to understand the complexity of the project, but when using tools for visual programming and mathematics to understand the organic shapes and curvatures it’s definitely easier and faster to come up with solutions for the project with the capacity to see a unique detail in the project.
Projects must be seen as a hold building but the importance of looking with precision every single detail is becoming more and more important for the industry of AEC, for the automation and fabrication which allows better results to the teams and clients involve. Precision can only be obtained trough a system which allows the user to work with data, once the data is solve I can be translate back to geometry to have a final result for the project.
When developing this envelope, it was fundamental to know how to split geometry and create subdivisions of data, having a solid foundation of databases where they could be use between codes, this allows to attack a specific problem inside the project, without mixing information and helping to keep consistency between all the information.
Programming is a part of our daily life, so it makes sense to bring architecture, engineering and construction to operate with similar workflow which will drastically change our development.