Mega-façade Space-truss
Project Team / Joseph Wei + Storm Butti + Mirza Taspinar
Grasshoppper script / Joseph Wei
Fabirc design / Joseph Wei, Storm Butti
Manufacture / Joseph Wei, Storm Butti, BYBORRE textile
Assembling / Storm Butti, Mirza Taspinar
Drawings / Joseph Wei
2023 fall
The façade is held up by a super-structure behind, patterned with the oblique of a structural language, or a language system generating structure. The pattern is full of void. The void is full of punctuations.
A modular space-truss system is developed with interlocking pyramids, constructed by extracting and displacing a center point and re-connects. A connection point holds 16 members together in maximum, mediating among tips and planes of a pyramid.
A fabric façade wraps and drapes down from the top, the pattern of which is another obliqued, one-layer planar space truss. A collection of space-truss cluster forming capital letter A to Z is generated by a font input. The letter will then be sorted by an input sentence, with blank-space also defined as an element. A pattern of truss is formed through typing. The act of constructing words and meaning is in this way reflected on a visual formation. A compact letter will occupy its surface fully, while a loose letter leaves small clearings. A blank-space between word is a complete void. Merging voids forms a larger voided area across a sentence confined within textbox. The blank is now recognized, as ground, winding through figures. The oblique projection of this single layered truss makes the façade superficially structural. Yet there is structural structure, like a calibrated projection, or the object of the shadow behind.
Structure is translated into words. Words then are translated into structure. Lines are drawn upon multiplicity, a grasshopper list control that visualize a translation into space-void coordinates. The production of ball-connections relies on random occupying of a vacant 3d-printer plate. The color is spontaneous, and a batch come and go. A piece of fabric is a superimposition of layers of patterns, hatch upon hatch, to bumps. Lines make face bulge. Different hatches are shadows in relation. Punctuations are openings or rings to a hanger. The module does not match, so the definition varies in local relation.
A mega façade drapes down the mega structure. The structure is present on both side, different projection, and functionality. How big it can be, is as long as there is face, facing as elevation. The medium is scale, scaling the medium.
