Archinect
Craig Schabel

Craig Schabel

Beverly Hills, CA, US

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Termite Mound

In this scripting studio, I looked at how biology self organizes and complexity pervades biology.  I turned this into architecture through a program called Processing.  I looked into how termites create their massive mounds of soil and broke it into small elements: termites, soil and air.  The termite moves the soil into colder places to let the hot air from the bottom rise up.  This logic then was turned into "agents" in Processing.  I created a static agent, which was placed in a grid and did not move, but could be moved by other agents, this represented soil.  Then I created an "air agent," which rose from the base and moved upward through the static agents, heating them as it passed.  Finally, I created a mass agent, which wanders around looking for hot matter (hot static agents) and moved them to the colder areas within a certain radius.  This created vertical tunnels which then created vertical space throughout the soil.  I transformed this 2D form into a 3D space by isosurfasing the static agents (soil) it in Rhino.  In the end the static agents (soil) is whats left and forms the building in a logical way to ventilate heat and create space.  These were then rendered in Maya and smoothed in Geo magics. 

 
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Status: School Project
Location: Shenzhen, CN