the ILLUMINATED VEIL
Thesis Research Study
Studio_TRD2
Date_winter2016.
Media_illustrator. rhino 5. grasshopper.
The Illuminated Veil is an experimental structure that I created early in my thesis investigation. It was intended to capture the interaction of light information with architectural information, producing an aesthetic language that recombined the information from these two sources. Because the context was assumed to be similar to the urban fabric of Gangxia Urban Village (a study of which I had completed earlier), the only source of light is presumed to exist at the building’s roof.
Panel 1
In the first set of diagrams, a ribbon-like mirror apparatus is designed using the reflecting of averaged solar positions over the course of the year. This initial, idealistic optic device was then translated into smaller, individual optic devices that was arrayed along the building facade.
Panel 2
These building sections show the ribbon-device within the context of a residential tower.
Panel 3
In order to combine the architectural and light information, a 3-dimensional grid spreading Grasshopper definition was used to deform a homogeneous receiving architecture around the reflective device. All of the affected vertical lines are extracted from the field and lofted into two groups of three concentric veil forms.
Panel 4
At this point of the process, the veils are single-surface shapes with zero thickness. The translation of these surfaces into an architectural volume involved a curvature analysis of about 800 sample points, from which a secondary offset group of curves was generated and used to create a volume that was thick where the curvature was low and thin where the curvature was high, a condition that was inspired by the depositing of sediment along a river bed. At this point, the housing of the ribbon-like mirror by the veils was abandoned, and the veil simply rendered in a translucent porcelain material such that it would function as a glowing surface.
Panel 5
Upon the formal completion of the veils, I attempted to design residences that would each be lit by a portion of the veil that traveled upward through the built form. Places where the veil was larger would act like atria, housing communal spaces for the residents. This part of the exercise was ultimately unsuccessful, with the formal, orthogonal nature of the architecture clashing with the supple form of the veil itself. The failed, incomplete reconciliation of the light and architectural information became evident at this point in the investigation, and a need to abandon the Gangxia Urban Village context became obvious.
Panels 6 and 7
Sections of the design provide the most compelling view of the project, while renderings show the result of the translation of the ribbon-like mirror to many arrayed facade elements. While the elements do provide an element of privacy, were the buildings to exist in the urban village environment, they do not transfer light to the adjacent living space.