Discretization of Continuous Surfaces as a Design Concern

Abstract

The increasing trend in architecture to create unconventional forms opened up a new area of investigations in the employment of computational methods in design and construction.  Our investigation is undertaken within a structural engineering firm, Adams Kara Taylor and focuses on finding ways to design structural solutions that respect criteria of efficiency, architectural intentions as well as intrinsic properties of the geometry. In this paper, we present various approaches on discretization where a project is presented as a continuous form, envelope or skin that must be subsequently subdivided in order to yield a framing or cladding solution compatible with different manufacturing, design and engineering considerations. The first part of this paper illustrates such a project where we applied and developed one of our discretization approaches. The second part of the paper focuses on generalization where we present a series of methodologies and corresponding software tools developed for the purpose