This work by Michael Hansmeyer is the result of software created in Processing. He developed a mathematical algorithm to subdivide and distort the faces of a 3D model of a traditional Doric column into a complex and crystalline forms. The software then slices the 3D model and cuts each plane on a laser cutter. The columns can indeed support weight, and are made without glue. This fabrication design is a unique progression of digital computer-aided methods when creating architectural and sculptural forms.
Hansmeyer's column stands nine feet tall, weighs about 2000 pounds, and is made out of 2700 1mm-thin slices of cardboard stacked on top of wooden cores. It contains somewhere between 8 and 16 million polygonal faces -- too complex for even a 3D printer to handle, according to Hansmeyer. "Every 3D printing facility we spoke to turned us down," he tells Co.Design. "Typically those machines can't process more than 500,000 faces -- the computer memory required to process the data grows nonlinearly, and it also gets tripped up on the self-intersecting faces of the column."
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