Succession

The goal of this project was to study the interaction of digital and physical properties through design and fabrication. We started with photogrammetry to bring a physical object into digital space. When considering the object I wanted to 3D scan, I was interested in finding something that had a unique form and a sense of impermanence. The clearance flowers at the grocery store seemed like an appropriate subject and the erratic pattern of the petals were an interesting challenge. I wanted to capture a flower in a moment in time before it wilted and to make its digital representation into one of permanence and growth—a reversal of the fate of my dead and gone bouquet. I edited the texture map display as concrete objects in a very literal sense. The script I wrote generates a form that grows and adapts as it exists parasitically on another structure. The geometry of a doric column informed the path of the curve; the Romans’ incredibly long-lasting concrete structures suited my concept. Grasshopper and Cocoon provided a unified digital model with flowers and columns combined. I used this model to pursue fabricating these hybridized columns at full scale. Inspired by 3D printing and the layered paper works by Michael Hansmeyer, I sliced my model and fabricated it with sheets of bristol board held together by aluminum rods. The animation I created was part of a study to find stalagmites and stalagtites within the model which provided their own fabrication challenges.