In this course we’ll take a look at the Serpentine Pavilion from BIG. We’ll use a variety of software like Rhino, Grasshopper, FLUX and Excel to deconstruct this project.

Form finding using Grasshopper
Using the Relative Item component to get the extrusion length information
Creating the checkerboard pattern
Rationalizing the brick lengths to a fixed set of lengths

In our first few lessons we’ll start with creating the form of the pavilion and figuring out the workings of the pattern and the stacking of the bricks. We’ll go over some methods to get the extrusion lengths for our bricks according to the curvature of the pavilion and we’ll figure out how we go from 1600 different types of bricks to only 8 standardized lengths. We’ll end the course by visualizing our pavilion with colors representing the different types of elements and we’ll use FLUX to export our data from Grasshopper to Excel for documentation and collaboration purposes.

Organizing the connection information for exporting
Visualizing the different types of bricks, their distribution and quantity
Exporting the data to Excel using FLUX
Exporting the data to Excel using FLUX

Throughout the course we’ll be keeping a close eye on the organisation and order of the bricks. The focus will lie on rationalizing and documenting the different geometrical elements and always keeping constructability in the back of our heads. We’ll use Grasshopper not just for visualization purposes, but we’ll go one step further and focus on the step towards building a project and the workflow and questions accompanying this.

This course will be available in the coming weeks

The post Deconstructing the Serpentine Pavilion (2016) from BIG appeared first on Designplaygrounds.