Blog 03 – Computational Fabrication – srauch

I’m inspired by the whole body of Micheal Hansmeyer’s work, but a piece of his that perhaps most outwardly displays the algorithmic nature of his architectural practice is Subdivided Columns. As Hansmeyer describes it, he did not design columns, but rather designed a process that produces a column. His algorithm “subdivides” the surface of a cylinder into smaller and smaller surfaces, applying different division ratios to produce unique forms. The final column is generated by breaking up the digital column into 2700 horizontal “slices”, which are laser cut out of greyboard and assembled.

In Subdivided Columns, Hansmeyer plays with the idea of the undrawable vs the unimaginable. Even though we can imagine these forms, or at least the idea of them, most computer software and traditional drawing techniques are incapable of generating them. With a computer’s help, for the first time in human history, we can actually realize them. It makes you think about how our work is the product of our minds and our tools. Hansmeyer’s work embodies the notion that with new computational tools, we can produce something deeply human – the kind of computational thinking we’ve been pondering for centuries – but at the same time, completely new.