SIGGRAPH: Inspired by the Smallest Things... Company: SIGGRAPH Product: Generative Fabrication Designers and architects can create beauty, but they usually draw on aspects of existing things to inspire their designs. Sometimes this inspiration is subtle, while other times, it is impossible to ignore. The Generative Fabrication exhibits at SIGGRAPH 2009 show what happens when designers and architects turn their focus to the organic and even the microscopic building blocks of life itself, cells. For some of these, architecture students were actually paired with biology majors, investigating the patterns and relationships in cell structure development. The idea was not to create a larger version of the exact shapes found at a microscopic scale, but rather to analyze the patterns of development and growth (fabrication) and to determine the natural grouping, arrangement and flow created by these natural structures and apply these to architecture and design on the normal scale. (All Images below are courtesy of ACM SIGGRAPH 2009 Media Images CD; Artist unknown.) Studies that involved the mathematical spacing of structures such as "Rules of Six" and "Ground Substance" lead to the creation of structures that looked much like crystals and coral, respectively. Other exhibits, such as "Complex Forms in Timber" changed everything about the way we perceive wood as a building material. By ignoring the rigidity of wood and finding ways to make pliable more "organic" shapes with lumber, it was possible to make large-scale organic structures with complex curves. I think, however, that my personal favorites are the lamps that were on display. Each one has the organic shapes that give them an otherworldly, almost alien form, and yet they are, because of these very shapes, more organic and, therefore, "natural" than the light fixtures of standard decor. However, above and beyond the organic nature of these forms, the addition of light (and, hence, warmth) makes these alien forms warm, inviting and somehow familiar. -Geck0, GameVortex Communications AKA Robert Perkins Related Links: Generative Fabrication