Porous Skin

The premise of Porous Skin is an experiment in the conception of generative processes as a viable means towards producing responsive and adaptive physical systems. It is concerned with performative variability and its relevance to architectural form. The project questions the isostatic nature of the architectural facade and explores a system that can vary based on a given set of architectural criteria such as program and environmental concerns.

The system of Porous Skin proposes a unit-based aggregation in which the part-to-whole relationship is given by the unit's ability to possess unique variation while remaining cohesive within the larger collection. It questions the thinness of the architectural facade through the use of layered systems in which the threshold of the membrane is increased to a condition of interstitial depth rather than graphic two-dimensionality. The layered system introduces the possibility of the facade to engender compound effects enabling a more complex response to the given architectural criteria.

The method of Porous Skin is conceived as a flexible system that can quickly and easily be modified for experimentation. Written in Maya Embedded Language, all major properties of the system are modifiable through a graphical user interface which allows for a robust workflow in which each experiment can be refined through iterative versioning. The system is created exclusively through MEL with a process that can be divided primarily in two parts: the initial creation of geometry and the transformation of that geometry.

This project is a collaboration with Michael Harris.