“I believe in the near future we will 3D print our buildings and houses.”
-Neri Oxman, founder of Mediated Matter Lab, MIT
This thesis’ ambition is to examine a new design method in the field of architecture and its implementation in the real world. The research reviews a matter of coding information in digital space. Voxel space has many features which appear to be important for architecture domain. Apart from resolution, material information, gradation of different properties voxels can be conscious about their surroundings, which John Frazer’s in his book An Evolutionary Architecture describes.
The analysis of popular mesh modeling tools will highlight their advantages, disadvantages and limitations which every user should be aware of. Many scientific domains necessary for creating architectural objects are dispersed among different types of software. Common language, file type or unit doesn’t exist. The question is whether is it possible to create so precise and quickly updating modeling program so that coworkers will not have to translate the digital information to other occupations’ programs and the presence on the building area will not be needed? Voxel space although it requires more amount of storage than mesh model, it is used in medical industry and computer games. What kind of program then would be useful for architects?
The subject of this thesis is to design a concept store dedicated to sport using voxel space. The interior of the store is an outcome of the motion of clients that is scanned and diagnosed. Further this data is used for sport equipment customization and production. Voxel corresponds to different types of fabrication machinery, in this thesis it encodes objects in a range of scales, from product to building.
The results indicate this way of performing the design process enables more discussions on high-level design issues, supports more effective design operations and creates new field for architectural expression. This suggests designers can benefit from the use of objects in voxel- based design environments.
