Group 9 | 3_Ant Form Project

The general idea comes from a shelter that a throng of caterpillars created for their protection and existence. The form consists of two elements: branches of a bush (victim) and a membrane that is weaved around them. The elastic web finds a perfect setup for the given structural conditions of the bush branches.The way the web is created is really perfectly optimized as well as the form itself. It is a minimal surface defined by points of every little stick. Shape optimization gives the basis for our design tool as well. First, lets think how to optimize several lines drawn in 2D, lets think about a crossroad, for example. You don’t need to employ advanced mathematical methods to be able to predict the optimizations that occur spontaneously when forces such a flow of people are introduced into a newly built project. New shortcuts emerge and a space that was originally designed changes due to its inhabitants in a living organism.Our tool 3_ant Form works on a set of lines, drawn in space by a designer. Then it creates a point cloud and optimizes it. This gives the basic idea about general shape that comes from both designer input and site abstracted into the lines. The optimization is carried in steps and it was calculated using our own script that Viktor wrote in Excel.Group 09 | project phase 2 As we were really limited by the time of the workshop, we didn’t finish but a very simple program that should demonstrate at least the general idea. Later, we are going to focus on the subsequent design phases and to develop a proper shape for our construction. In this sense, a couple of form finding studies will be necessary. With the assistance of Blanka Řezníčková, we were able to show at least a little bit of the future construction strategy.The project is in its very beginning; all we have is just a point cloud. The question is now how to construct that.