Hi 

I thought I'd share some computational work I've been doing lately.  Lately I've been experimenting with field-directed, planarized cellular decompositions of surfaces, and their possible application in architecture.  I recently had some interest from a UK architecture firm, and if everything works out (fingers crossed), we'll be building a pavilion based on the technique.  That project came about from a single comment I made in an architecture blog, so that has inspired me to flog my wares in places like this ;-)

A surface with negative curvature, segmented, then planarized via a nonlinear optimization.

(The point of planarizing, of course, is to make it easy to fabricate and assemble.)

Simpler case, where the shape is convex.

A nice feature that's not shown in the videos is that the decomposition can be field-directed; that is, driven by scalar and tangent fields embedded in the surface.

Incidentally, in case it's no obvious, IANAA; I'm a coder, recently finished a stint at Weta Digital (Avatar, Tintin, couple others), where I worked on modelling and animation tools.  Since I left NZ a few months ago I've been exploring the aesthetic possibilities of some of the techniques I learned there, and this is one of the things I came up with.

Anyway, any and all thoughts appreciated!

Cheers,

Kevin Atkinson