Plaster panel model cast on a flat sheet of fabric.
BRANCHING STRUCTURES
Structures that divide and spread to gather or distribute loads are found everywhere in Nature. Their beauty and efficiency are clear. However, we rarely build according to this regime. Industrialized building culture relies almost universally on single-axis production machinery: sawmills, rolling mills, extrusions, pultrusions, etc. This mode of production, which forms matter along a single axis of action, produces the uniform-section sticks and sheets that make up our pallet of building materials. To build branching or tapering structures with these kinds of materials requires a multitude of complex, angled, joints and a high level of skill. In this building culture the rectangle is king.
The alternatives to sticks and sheets are things produced by castings or by carvings (for example using multi-axis milling machines). The latter are limited in size and by their capital-intensivity, while castings are limited by their molds. When molds are built of sticks and sheets, the limitations of their flat, linear nature (the “genetics” of their single axis origins) is almost invariably felt in the shape of the mold. Hence, we make rectangular boxes to cast wet plastic concrete.
The flexibility of a fabric sheet mold, however, allows us to escape this geometric cul-de-sac. Fabrics under stress will spontaneously produce shapes of curved resistance, and if cunningly restrained, can produce branching geometries as well.
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