Almost Natural Shelter: Non-Linear Material Misbehavior (2016)
article⁄Almost Natural Shelter: Non-Linear Material Misbehavior (2016)
abstract⁄This paper critiques computational design and digital fabrication’s obsession with both precision and images of natural patterns by describing a messy attitude towards digital and material computation that integrates and blurs between linear and nonlinear fabrication, resulting in material formations and spatial affects that are beyond pattern and image and are almost natural. The motivation behind the body of work presented in the paper is to question the production of space and aesthetics in a posthuman frontier as we embark on a new geological era that is emerging out of the unprecedented influence of the human race on the planet’s ecological systems. The paper and the body of work posit that the blurring between the natural and the synthetic in the posthuman frontier can materialize a conception of space that exhibits qualities that are both natural and synthetic. The paper is organized in three parts. It begins by describing the theoretical framework that drives the body of work. Next, it describes early digital and material casting explorations that began to blur between linear and nonlinear fabrication to produce almost natural objects. Finally, it describes the process of designing and making Almost Natural Shelter, a spatial installation that emerges from the integration of messy computational design methodologies and chemically volatile nonlinear fabrication. In specific, High Density Foam is persuaded to chemically selfcompute in an attempt at uncovering a shelter that has almost natural spatial qualities, such as nonlinear textural differentiation and sudden migration between different texture types.
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| Year |
2016 |
| Authors |
Tabbarah, Faysal. |
| Issue |
ACADIA 2016: POSTHUMAN FRONTIERS: Data, Designers, and Cognitive Machines |
| Pages |
414-423 |
| Library link |
N/A |
| Entry filename |
almost-natural-shelter |
