Concept – Raised Voxelization
The idea for this Extinction Museum is to offer a journey through nature, elevated and disconnected from the ground. The elevated and voxelated structure represents the digitalization of our current world, increasingly divorced from nature.
The journey is framed to bring attention to this phenomenon by populating indoor spaces with digital panels showing virtual realities, while the elevated walkway between exhibits will center the occupants within the natural surroundings.
Early Exploration
The concept of using three points of contact to create forms elevated form the landscape drove early exploration. Kangaroo2 within Grasshopper3D was crucial to understand limitations of structure of this nature. Eventually, this idea was translated to a single point of contact – or service core – and an exploded mesh.
Exploration of voxelization also drove early findings. There were advantages to using smaller voxel grids for structural reasons, as well as following the original Kangaroo form. However, single-storey voxels offered the benefit of inherent indoor spaces for programming.
Computational Design Methodology
Shown above is the digital pseudocode used to create forms and paths for final voxelization. Beginning with an initial path that avoids as many trees as possible, a bridge path is created with 3 node points located at context-driven locations informed by landscape and existing circulation. With buildings defined by wind loads applied to meshes via Kangaroo, volumes are then divided into voxels to create the overall structure. After creation, specific boxes within the Voxel structure are removed in order to create programmable spaces within.
Node Form Finding
After developing the computation method, a series of form-finding took place. First around the nodes, things like polygon shape, mesh edge stiffness, and wind loads applied were altered to produce various forms
Bridge Form Finding
In addition to the nodes, the elevated bridge path underwent a form finding exploration as well. More specifically, Wallacei X was used to optimize the path of the footbridge in order to minimize collisions with existing trees.
Iterations
Plan & Section
Renders
