Commendation SOM Foundation UK Award iGuzzini Travelling Award
A music pavilion is proposed whose form was generated by software I wrote, the ‘3-D Digital Harmonograph’. This is based on a mechanical device said to visualise musical harmony by drawing apparently spatial graphs. I developed actual 3-D single-looping line graphs by adding a dimension, employed Fibonacci number ratios and harmonics thereof, and translated them into proportionate continuous surface-meshes.
Each form exhibits intrinsic mathematical properties whose articulation into discrete architectural elements retains the graph’s aesthetic sensibility in spatial form. I considered various forms in response to the brief and advanced one from its abstract roots into a realistic proposal.
Our syllabus considers research-based design. It’s an exercise, ostensibly designing the Serpentine Gallery pavilion. Beginning with speculative ideas of pavilion, students invent a generative tool to develop their compositional geometry.
This student investigated harmonic proportion in amorphic form. Building on a found device, the harmonograph, the student scripted in ‘Visual Basic,’ a parametric tool that develops 3D forms with an embedded mathematical rigor.
An accomplished pavilion proposal, this work is the first disciplined study of harmonic proportions in three dimensional ‘free form’ known to the author. A highly original piece of work with further potential beyond this specific brief.