Self Help | When the Whole is Greater than the Sum of Its Parts

“The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”

― Aristotle

Aristotele's observation ---often used to indicate a synergetic, positive, outcome--- is unfortunately true also for the idiocy and frustrations of life. I spent almost all the past week dealing with individually small things whose sum turned into a whole huge frustration. Besides my personal situation  ---abandonment from spouse--- I had to deal with professionally related nuisances, mainly dueto 3D printing. It was so frustrating experiencing the failure of my desktop printer which has had a very poor performance, terminated with total failure, since from its purchase of less than two month ago —especially after reading the recent article in The New Yorker, narrating the marvel of 3D printing applications in medicine. Researchers in material science collaborate with medical practitioner to 3D print in bio-compatible materials not only prosthetics and exoskeleton but also parts of internal organs.

Shapeways, the 3D printing service I often rely on for finer resolution design also failed, in the missed delivery of several design I was planning to present during my visit to Milan. Of course my personal frustrations are marginal, considering what is going on at a collective level with all the cases of racial discrimination, but when combined with my personal/professional rumination left me with little energy 

Walking provided healing as usual: my 14 km walk in the relentless was cathartic, clearing the tension and frustration.

To conclude with popular wisdom, adopted by Nietzsche: "That which does not kill us makes us stronger".

learning from nature | Of Spirals, Shells and... 3D prints

I am always fascinated by the spiral, shape of growth and expansion -but also contraction.  Often shells are shaped as spirals, due to their growth rules, as explained in detail by D'Arcy Thompson in "On Growth and Form". The nautilus shell follows the geometry of the logarithmic spiral. I am particularly intrigued by this shape also for the septa (thin walls) partitioning the internal camerae (chambers) of the shell: the septa are interesting per se as concave-convex surfaces, proposing the spatially ambiguity of surfaces turning inside-out. I have designed and 3D printed several models of shells and nautilus but perhaps this one is my favorite:

Nature is always a great teacher, if we listen to her..

PS More of my shell design can be seen in the Shapeways shop

Parameters, Nature, Human Body and Movement: from Numbers To Objects

While delving into a PhD program in a university the other side of the planet —studying the effect of human movement on mental processes— I spent a week of my academic leave as a "designer in residence" at the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD). The residency is part of the "Out of Hands" exhibition, which is devoted to man-made objects fabricated using digital technology and is introduced in the MAD website as "the first museum show to consider the impact of these new, revolutionary methods of computer-assisted manufacture on fine art, design, and architecture".
The work done as "designer in residency" represented an effort to reconnect the disconnect between academic research work and actual making. The agenda  was the creation of 3D digital models and 3D printings of bioforms. The geometric definition of forms were related to proportion, symmetry and other mathematical principle. The workflow included:

1. Selection of a "simple" form from the world of nature;
2. Mathematical definition of the geometric law behind the form;
3. Implementation of a C# script to develop the form in Bentley GenerativeComponents, a parametric associative software;
4. Definition of parameters to generate a 3D digital model of the selected form according to the printer specification
5. 3D printing of the form.

Parametric associative scripting and a starfish model

3D printed examples of bioforms

An helix shaped seashell

A starfish: pentagonal symmetry, loft surfaces and spline curves

A nautilus shell from the logarithmic spiral

A polyhedral flower

I mainly focused on shapes from the sea world, starfish and seashells. The starfish can be generated from radial symmetry of loft surfaces from spline curves (nurbs).  The nautilus shell geometry evolves from loft surfaces and extrusions of paths generated from logarithmic spirals.
I also started to explore "molecular" assemblies of tetrahedral tessellations.

Tetrahedral molecules

A truncated icosahedron (fullerene)

3D scanning selfies: multiples of the self