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“Bending the rules” in building an architectural design exhibit.
signshop.com
May 2014 // Sign Builder Illustrated
43
ALL PHOTOS: PRATT INSTITUTE GAUD.
G
raduate students were “Bending the Rules” in a recent exhibit at the Pratt Institute’s School of Architecture in Brooklyn, New York, with full-scale architectural design pieces fabricated with Dibond® aluminum composite material (ACM) by 3A Composites USA (www.GraphicDisplay.com). The “Bending the Rules” exhibit—displayed January 30 through February 14 in the Hazel and Robert H. Siegel Gallery in Higgins Hall—was the culmination of students’ work in the Fall 2013 “Scripting and Form” seminar of the Pratt Institute’s Graduate Architecture and Urban Design (GAUD) program. Students worked in teams of three to create four large-scale sculptural pavilions, each measuring approximately 30 feet wide-by-20 feet tall and titled: “Gen-Z: Faceted + Furious,” “Bi-Lamina: Peeling Back the Curtain,” “Alluminatis: Hexadeca,” and “Display Facets: Folding Lights.” The seminar—taught by Robert Cervellione, visiting professor and coordinator of digital instructors, Pratt Institute GAUD—focused on the use of computer-based parametric design tools to model and simulate material behavior, specifically adaptive foldable structures. The design and conception of each project blended computational design tools, as well as traditional techniques of paper folding. “By utilizing advanced computational design tools, it allowed for complex fold and cut patterns to be generated and simulated at large scales in order to predict real-world behaviors,” said Cervellione, who has taught this seminar for the past three years utilizing Bentley GenerativeComponents™ software. “The ability to streamline the whole building material fabrication process is a very hot topic by both architectural academic researchers and real-world engineering firms. “We’re moving to a 100 percent digital design process.” While Pratt architectural students expect to incorporate Alucobond® ACM in their future professional building designs, this heavy-duty building product was not a practical choice for construction of these architectural sculptures. (Note: Alucobond