Affine Shells
Affine Shells is a cluster of three conically-shaped windscreens designed to soften the intense winds outside the main entry of a newly constructed office building in downtown Buffalo. The simple form and arrangement of the screens is born out the client’s desire to avoid constructing a wall that would block the view between the street and the main entry of the building. Three shell structures were cut from a larger conic form, and were designed to be placed on the site where wind intensities were greatest and were widened, shortened, or extended using the principles of affine transformation. More precisely, taller shells that require additional curvature or shorter but narrower shells can be easily output from the master conic form for efficient fabrication, since identically sized panels occur on each shell, albeit in different locations. This design system made it possible to quickly coordinate the dimensional offsets and scalar relationships that determine the subtle variation from shell to-shell, and the series of panel types that are shared between them.
Professors: Nicholas Bruscia
Chris Romano
Research Assistants: Phillip Gusmano
David Heaton
Yibo Jiao
Daniel Vrana
Program: Windscreen
Spring 2016
Role: 3D Modeling, Visualization,Prototyping, Drafting