Medium Resolution

Extrude, saw, turn, repeat. During the industrial revolution, machines and techniques were invented and advanced for forming materials into standardized shapes. This would lead to the development of the industrially mass-produced standardized building materials used today and transformed archite...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Sunshine, Gil
Other Authors: Kilian, Axel
Format: Thesis
Published: Massachusetts Institute of Technology 2022
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/143322
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author Sunshine, Gil
author2 Kilian, Axel
author_facet Kilian, Axel
Sunshine, Gil
author_sort Sunshine, Gil
collection MIT
description Extrude, saw, turn, repeat. During the industrial revolution, machines and techniques were invented and advanced for forming materials into standardized shapes. This would lead to the development of the industrially mass-produced standardized building materials used today and transformed architecture into a practice of blind trust in superficially dimensioned materials specified from afar. Extrude, trim, revolve, array. The 3D modeling software used by the architect contains analogs to the machine processes and abundances of industrial production. However, as we increasingly face the effects of the excesses of the Anthropocene and related disruptions to the building material supply chain, architecture must overcome the cognitive grasp of standardization to accommodate the found, the unwanted, the offcut and the wasted. This produces a new relevance for an architecture of underprocessed and irregular materials. In order to adapt to material irregularities architects have adopted various 3D scanning techniques to produce digital representations of materials. By the nature of their discrete sampling, however, these representations vary in their precision. What the architect encounters in the 3D modeling software is not the material itself in its infinite specificities, with its weight, moisture content and smell, but rather a surface representation composed of a large but finite set of points. This surface might be called medium resolution. This thesis operates within the medium resolution surface condition, accepting it as a geometric paradigm necessary to respond to emerging material realities. If there exists an entanglement between 3D modeling software used by the architect and processes of industrial mass production, then in order to realize medium resolution architecture, the 3D modeling software itself must be reconsidered. Inventory, a physics-based 3D modeling software, replaces analogs to the generic surface precision of the standardized material palette ubiquitous in CAD software today with the specificity of pieces of material and precision of actions made possible by the medium resolution paradigm.
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spelling mit-1721.1/1433222022-06-16T03:19:01Z Medium Resolution Sunshine, Gil Kilian, Axel Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Architecture Extrude, saw, turn, repeat. During the industrial revolution, machines and techniques were invented and advanced for forming materials into standardized shapes. This would lead to the development of the industrially mass-produced standardized building materials used today and transformed architecture into a practice of blind trust in superficially dimensioned materials specified from afar. Extrude, trim, revolve, array. The 3D modeling software used by the architect contains analogs to the machine processes and abundances of industrial production. However, as we increasingly face the effects of the excesses of the Anthropocene and related disruptions to the building material supply chain, architecture must overcome the cognitive grasp of standardization to accommodate the found, the unwanted, the offcut and the wasted. This produces a new relevance for an architecture of underprocessed and irregular materials. In order to adapt to material irregularities architects have adopted various 3D scanning techniques to produce digital representations of materials. By the nature of their discrete sampling, however, these representations vary in their precision. What the architect encounters in the 3D modeling software is not the material itself in its infinite specificities, with its weight, moisture content and smell, but rather a surface representation composed of a large but finite set of points. This surface might be called medium resolution. This thesis operates within the medium resolution surface condition, accepting it as a geometric paradigm necessary to respond to emerging material realities. If there exists an entanglement between 3D modeling software used by the architect and processes of industrial mass production, then in order to realize medium resolution architecture, the 3D modeling software itself must be reconsidered. Inventory, a physics-based 3D modeling software, replaces analogs to the generic surface precision of the standardized material palette ubiquitous in CAD software today with the specificity of pieces of material and precision of actions made possible by the medium resolution paradigm. M.Arch. 2022-06-15T13:12:26Z 2022-06-15T13:12:26Z 2022-02 2022-03-09T14:40:28.113Z Thesis https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/143322 In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted Copyright retained by author(s) https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC-EDU/1.0/ application/pdf Massachusetts Institute of Technology
spellingShingle Sunshine, Gil
Medium Resolution
title Medium Resolution
title_full Medium Resolution
title_fullStr Medium Resolution
title_full_unstemmed Medium Resolution
title_short Medium Resolution
title_sort medium resolution
url https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/143322
work_keys_str_mv AT sunshinegil mediumresolution