Fabricating Sustainable Concrete Elements: A Physical Instantiation of the Marching Cubes Algorithm

This paper explores how an algorithm designed to represent form can be made physical, and how this physical instantiation can be made to respond to a set of design imperatives. Specifically, the paper demonstrates how Marching Cubes (Lorensen and Cline 1987), an algorithm that extracts a polygonal mesh from a scalar field, can be used to initiate the design for a system of modular concrete armature elements that permit a large degree of variability using a small number of discrete parts. The design of these elements was developed in response to a close examination of Frank Lloyd Wright's Usonian Automatic system, an architecturally pertinent historical precedent. The fabricated results positively satisfy contemporary design criteria, including maximal formal freedom, optimal environmental performance, and minimal life-cycle costs.