Project Overview
In the late 19th century steel production was not yet sophisticated enough to create monolithic structural steel columns at a scale that would make the construction of tall building possible. The way that engineers worked their way around this issue was by creating composite columns from a the simpler steel shapes that were riveted together.
This project builds upon that strategy of creating something more effective than the sum of its parts. It is a system for generating the plans of increasingly complex column amalgamations, by automatically finding connections between given component parts. The resulting columns are not a practical method of holding something like a building so far up in the air, but a beautiful one.
Process
When I started this project I wasn’t sure how I was going to randomly generate the infinite variable columns with varying levels of complexity I was dreaming of, so I began with something. I created a definition that duplicated and mirrored a simple angle iron shape to recreate one of the column shapes that I was referencing from an old book on the subject. This lacked the expandability and randomization I was after, but it will be important later.
After several false starts trying to create a system in vanilla Grasshopper, I realized that this was going to be a much more challenging problem to solve with this program than I had anticipated. Thankfully, the community had already done the bulk of the work for me. I found a plugin for Grasshopper called Wasp that dealt with the discrete aggregation that I was trying to do. It is a system designed primarily it seems for 3 dimensional aggregation, however I was able to make it work for my 2 dimensional aggregations. Suddenly I had a complex amalgamation of angles and c channel that was infinitely variable.
The aggregation coming from Wasp did not look like a column, but I was able to plug it into the system of duplications and mirrors from my first definition to create a symmetrical and recognizable shape.
After that I isolated the outline curves from the aggregated shape, and fed them into the Xylinus plug in to create Gcode for a modified 3D printer plotter.
Files
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