Swissbau-Pavilion

summary

To show the potential of the "digital chain", a continuously digital process from Computer Aided Design (CAD) to Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAM), the chair for CAAD developed a small pavilion for the SWISSBAU trade fair in Basel. The pavilion has the form of a sphere with two metres radius and reaches a height of three metres. It is assembled from over 300 quadrilateral wooden frames, very much like a coffered dome. Every frame consists of four wooden boards standing perpendicular on the surface of the sphere, so the geometry is basically defined by a quadrilateral mesh spanned over the sphere and adapting to the floor level and the positions of the openings. This geometry was generated by an artificial-life simulation of a "growing mesh2 programmed in Java. The results of this generative design process were exported as XML-Data and then imported to the CAD package VectorWorks^? by a scripted Plugin. This generated the actual geometry of every wooden board as well as the G-Code necessary to control a numerical controlled five axis mill, which was then used to produce the over 1200 parts of the pavilion.

contact

• Fabian Scheurer (scheurer@arch.ethz.ch), Java programming
• Christoph Schindler (schindler@arch.ethz.ch) design, organisation
• Markus Braach(braach@arch.ethz.ch), VectorScript and G-Code programming

partners

• Bach Heiden AG
• Contec AG
• Fensterfabrik Albisrieden

documentation / publications

• 2005 - Turning the Design Process Downside-up - Self-Organization in Real-World Architecture
  In Computer Aided Architectural Design Futures 2005, ed. Bob Martens and André Brown, 269-278. Vienna: Springer, Dordrecht, 2005.