Thursday, September 8, 2011

Patternism



YSOA, Patternism: Computation and Contemporary Continuity
Brennan Buck, Fall 2011

Over the last two decades, digital form has energized Modernism’s neutral field to produce undulating surfaces tense with potential energy. Topological surfaces, deployed at an architectural scale, define spaces of constantly shifting size, proportion, and orientation. These surfaces are enabled by calculus rather than geometry and are characterized by vectors and flows more than stable points and planes. This seminar proposes that a formalism combining the continuity of topological surfaces and the articulation of tectonics, enabled by the precise modulation of computation, might catalyze a more diverse mode of formal continuity: pattern. After briefly establishing a theoretical foundation, the seminar focuses on exploiting the full potential of Grasshopper software. First through the lens of material flow (structural loads) and then through spatial experience, poles of repetition/ redundancy/continuity on one hand and stocasticity/variation on the other hand are explored. By modulating the relationships between objects and spaces, the seminar investigates multilevel structural and spatial hierarchies—hierarchies of position, scale, and connection—while maintaining what Gregory Bateson called the great aesthetic unity that patterns produce. Limited enrollment.