Volumetric Weave
Designing parametric tools for hand-woven structures.
Volumetric Weave :: Parametric Tools for Hand-Woven Structures
Harvard GSD Research Seminar :: Computational Design :: Fall 2018
Project Team :: Aticha Bam Siriphand, Matthew Pugh, Yang Fei
Instructor :: Sawako Kaijima
This short study tested different ways of designing and fabricating fiber pavilions by hand. While fiber pavilions such as those designed by ETH usually need to be constructed with six-axis robots, we developed a “pegboard” system for quickly and easily weaving such a structure by hand. This project looked at the different types of fiber pavilions one could make without the limitations of a six-axis robot, designed some custom grasshopper and C# tools for iterating through many different design options, and created a special type of construction document to help guide someone through the process of making such a structure by hand.
Hand-Woven Structures
I. Weave Patterns:
We designed a set of custom computational tools to design these structures. These tools took advantage of the way one could, by hand, more easily weave into and through existing layers than with six-axis robotic fabrication. We also designed a custom type of construction document, that computationally output “weave instructions” that would allow one to fabricate this without drawings.
Parametric system for designing our hand-woven structures, as well as a sample of "weave instructions" for the fabricator. Click to enlarge.
II. Physical Testing
We gave our weave instruction documents to an outside weaver, and tested how easily one could fabricate the structure. This allowed us to test what was physically possible for the weaver to assemble, and also helped us test how long different weave patterns would take to complete. We took this information, and used it to computationally simulate how long our different design options would take to weave. At the end of weaving, the structure is solidified with resin.
Studies in physical manufacturing of a three-dimensional woven structure using our parametric toolkit. Click to enlarge.
III. Volumetric Weave
Our final design optimized the amount of weave time and string material one would need to create a woven structure with three-dimensionally layered fibers while still creating a dense, layered, and volumetric effect.
Samples of a woven structure built with this system.
Click for Full-Sized Gallery:
