Technische Universiteit Eindhoven student Ricardo Ploemen has designed a conceptual chapel with wavy brick walls, using an AutoCad script to determine the structure of each facade.
Called Brick Tectonics, the project involved generating different structural patterns according to changing parametres, creating curved or pleated walls.
Ploemen combined the resulting forms to design a space where a building with a pitched roof and pleated walls would enclose two curved surfaces for visitors to pass between.
See also: Pike Loop by Gramazio & Kohler (September 2009)
The following is from Ricardo Ploemen:
BRICK TECTONICS
With the aid of a self-written script in AutoCad 2008 research has been done on the tectonics of brick facades.
Following actions are taken when running the developed script: generating a line with predetermined length and shape; generating intersecting lines with previous; determining intersection points as centre point of the different bricks; generating bricks at the intersection points; and repeating previous steps for the different layers.
The script generates simultaneously a mutual shift of the different bricks and layers on the basis of several, by the user determined, parameters.
The specific shift of the different layers determines the structure of the brick façade and can be regulated by the designer.
The different actions that are taken when running the script and the process of this research are visualized on this page. The research process varies from curved to folded brick facades with each a specific tectonic.
At the end, the completed script was used to design a chapel in which the extremes of the obtained tectonic are exposed.
The rough structure of the chapel’s side facades is a metaphor for the hectic of today’s daily life. This specific structure, created by folding the facades, is amplified by using bricks with three different lengths.
When entering the building the visitor walks through a corridor into the main room, formed by two curved walls. Form and structure of these walls establish an inner peace in the chapel and thereby a confrontation with the facades.
It must be interactive movable!!! Some kind of reaction when you comes nearer! =)))
There is only one word to say: STUNNING!!!!
grate work!! it’s a good contribution to the reaserch that latinamerican architescts like Eladio Dieste or Solano Benitez had been developing throught the years.. to work the bricks not only by the compression but also by the traction..
Check Them Out!!!
Eladio Dieste (Uruguay):
http://images.google.com.ar/images?hl=es&q=eladio+dieste&oq=&gs_rfai=&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=PR6iS8jJKsuXtgfkxJD5CQ&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&ct=title&resnum=1&ved=0CBUQsAQwAA
Solano Benitez (Paraguay):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTOHQWgqkkM
http://images.google.com.ar/images?um=1&hl=es&tbs=isch%3A1&sa=1&q=solano+benitez&aq=f&aqi=g1&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=&start=0
Eladio Dieste did this by hand back in the 50′s… http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_J1YwF2upTFI/SOi3yOqW-0I/AAAAAAAAACw/bY-ZhiSVgWY/s400/sanjuan2.jpg
http://www.mtop.gub.uy/salasaez/dieste/atlantida2.jpg
His self-supporting brick vaults allowed for really impressive cantilevered structures with just two pillars:
http://www.mtop.gub.uy/salasaez/dieste/terminal_salto.jpg
http://www.mtop.gub.uy/salasaez/dieste/terminal_salto2.jpg
http://www.mtop.gub.uy/salasaez/dieste/shopping.jpg
I would give him a hi-5
The parametric brick pyrotechnics are a neat trick but nothing new. More disturbing is why we have a symmetrical, vaginal shaped chapel with no floor, no site, no function and a gingerbread-house end wall. It’s heinously ugly and the metaphor is glib: “The rough structure of the chapel’s side facades is a metaphor for the hectic (sic) of today’s daily life”
With hands like these, what use tools?
Office dA all over again…
@Oscar – :D
But I give some credit for the effort….
totally agree with oscar here: if you build upon the work of others (the guys from eth zürich/gramazio kohler haven´t been mentioned yet, also there´s already lots of student-brick-work like this done in grasshopper/rhino) you should add to it, and not simply apply already developped techniques for a poor design….anyway – what´s the point in applying non-standard design startegies for a symmetrical buildinbg like this?
Duintjer (http://www.bma.amsterdam.nl/contents/pages/77564/100kolenkitopstandingskerk450.jpg)
meets
Saarinen (http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_TGAsUKrVY4o/SbWnXTvT8OI/AAAAAAAAAII/f4n1WzeE_1c/s400/15d+-+saarinen.jpg)
Oscar has a point, though I see nothing wrong with vaginal shaped chapels. Better than all the phallic shaped buildings which get build throughout the world.
I am confident that it won’t stand up (I work as a structural engineer).
What is the point of it looking pretty if it won’t stand up?
Eladio Dieste certainly knew his (engineering) stuff, and interesting chose such forms as they were cheap for both material cost (fewer materials than conventional construction) and construction (relatively simple, if somewhat labour intensive). And so, for me, there is a big difference between the likes of Dieste’s work and what is shown above.
Nevertheless what is shown above is good fun, and I wish I designed more in masonry and especially to affects like this.
~R
Credit for the effort indeed, but it just looks like playing around with a technique. I had the chance to visit Eladio Dieste’s church in Atlandia, Uruguay, a great design which lifted this technique to another level. Dieste managed to achieve all this without Autocad scripts, which makes it even more impressive!
http://brickmasonry.blogspot.com/2008/12/eladio-dieste-church-in-atlantida.html
zumthor!!
NOTHING NEW!!!
DIGITAL FABRICATION LAB AT ETHZ:
http://www.dfab.arch.ethz.ch/web/d/lehre/86.html
Agrees w/ Oscar
“The rough structure of the chapel’s side facades is a metaphor for the hectic (sic) of today’s daily life”
Throws up- again.
Seriously. I think a better concept would have been: I did it because I wanted to… so suck it!
Seriously. Who wouldn’t agree?
For the record, I have nothing against vaginal buildings. Fair point R.
it still amazes me what bricks can do.
“conceptual chapel” ?
yes and gaudi was doing it a million years ago upside down with nothing but bone weights and caribou hide strips, so effing what?!
ITS ALL BEEN DONE BEFORE PEOPLE
has noone grasped the meaning of postmodernism
why the suprise and outrage?
why the incessant link posting?
amazing technique, some of the experiments are particularly effective, but the end result suffers from a bad case of f’ugly.