Simon K. Chiu


GOAL: I am trying to model an outer skin of a double facade skin facade system constructed by ETFE pillow forms, like the Beijing Water Cube. The goal is to find the optimization of pillow/bubble density on a given facade geometry. I gave the XYZ of the outline geometry a slider so the plane can be in anticlastic form.

FITNESS: The fitness will be multi-objectives: for one the bubble size (opening) will be limited by the maximum width of available ETFE foil (assuming 2200mm), therefore we want minimum in size. On the other hand, the skin will be lighted by LEDs installed around each bubble, so the smaller the bubbles are, the more LEDs will be required, hence increase the costs. Therefor we want to keep the total length of the bubble perimeter to minimum, which will drive the opening to be larger.

GENES: Density of the bubbles on the given facade, i.e.: the number of the opening which driven by a slider. in addition the random points which generated by two sliders determine the voronoi pattern on the surface.


Here is the video clip:

The solver is built on the Voronoi_Map by Nathan 0331a.png

Inspiration Projects

heading level 2

Beijing Water Cube's ETFE bubble facades. 0807edit_10.jpg
Beijing Water Cube's ETFE bubble facades. 0807edit_4.jpg
Media-TIC Building in Barcelona by Cloud 9 architect from Australia. (Image by Luis Ros/Australian Design Review) mediatic_cloud9_sda2.jpg
Inflatable facade with fritted ETFE pillows for solar shading. (Image by mdnx via mtic%20by%20mdnx%20via%20flickr%2002x.jpg

< Review Grasshopper >

divide and pipe…(digital toolbox tutorial) divide_and_pipe.png
Material Fabrication: Waffle Geometry (digital toolbox tutorial) Waffle_Geo_Ghpr.png
Highest Point on a Surface (digital toolbox tutorial) Highest_point.jpg
Distance Logic gets complicated with Galapagos! galapagos%20110327%200155pm.jpg
Distance Logic gets complicated with Galapagos! (simplified version) Capture%20123.PNG
Video of my "Waffle a Rhino Geometry" This is just tryout on the CamStudio to capture the actions. There are 20+ seconds at the beginning is not relevant but i don't know how to edit it out… The example is from digital tooldbox. Screen%20shot%202011-03-28%20at%203.37.45%20AM.png