The Arching Lattice was exhibited at Pratt Institute School of Architecture as the culminating installation of the research seminar Form, Force, Matter. The installation is sited within a stairwell landing, offering an intimate social space while engaging passers-by through pattern of light and shadow. The project was designed, developed, fabricated, and assembled over six weeks with the goal of developing resilient tectonic units from simple sheet materials. The structural logic is a Form-Active Compression System which drives the articulation of the 200 unique components. The process of producing the project included analog and digital strategies, including form-found scale models, parametric componentization, one-to-one cut templates, physics-based simulation, and digital fabrication.
Form-Active Systems offer an intuitive means of gainingdirect and tangible knowledge for addressing architectural design problems with degrees of complexity typically beyond our capacity or desire to engage asdesigners. With these systems as a mechanism for research, this seminarestablishes a rich territory in which Form, Force, and Matter are inherentlyimbricated in their conceptual domain while collectively asserting their agency within the design process. Approachingthis conceptual terrain with an understanding that the elements of our systemsof inquiry exist along an active continuum between the real and the virtual andinvestigating it through parallel methods of analog machines and physics-basedsimulation, we may effectively analyze the performative characteristics ofForm-Active Systems, synthesize operative design strategies from this research,and redeploy these strategies through architectural prototypes capable of negotiating intrinsic and extrinsic forcesacross varying scales of application.
2011
