Form-Finding with Experimentation on Natural Periodic Forces: The Sound Motion Streaks Project

Abstract

Today, many computational techniques of form-finding use the term “design” with the term “research”. So that, architectural studios become more and more like laboratories for design experiments. This paper proposes The Sound Motion Streaks Project -done by the author, Ines Gavelli and Wei Weiwei during the research course in Bartlett MArch GAD in 2012- where the sound can be used as a generative computational data and applied to digital form finding experimentations. This process relies on an idea that sound as an external force can produce or deform shapes according to its influence. The first phase of the process is to make physical experiments on the sound and see its influences on granular and fluid materials. We can say that, in these physical experimentations, there is a knowledge transmission from physical to digital medium that we can use as design parameters on a software. In digital software, sound can be a force field and manipulate digital matters such as particles, curves and meshes. This form-finding method is constituted by all physical and digital experiments, and applied in an urban area in order to discuss its architectural potentials. For instance, all material events in the area depend on duration and movement of digital tools, thus the notion of form and/or space become kinetic. This kinetic reactions bring out a new understanding of space and form which consists of motionless boundary, translatability, rhythmicity, differentiated densities and heterogeneity. Also this generative approach gives architects many potential solutions for architectural forms.