From December 11 to December 18 the SKG in_flux is taking place at the school of Architecture of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. The workshop is focusing on parametric urbanism, through generative and scripted techniques.
The final review will take place on December 19th, with guest critics Patrik Schumacher and Reiner Zettl.
A link to the blog of the workshop here.

According to wikipedia, sphere packing “concerns arrangements of non-overlapping identical spheres which fill a space”. A classic problem in mathematics and computational geometry, sphere packing can be regular (where the centers of the spheres form a symmetrical lattice) or aperiodic. While regular packing can be of some interest, aperiodic configurations can yield some extremely complex and interesting results, that are worth studying…



You can find a simple sphere packing algorithm implemented in maxscript here. However, in my way to create the algorithm, I made a small mistake; I forgot the obvious: to check that the created sphere was actually inside the volume that I was trying to pack. Which gave some very interesting result, as seen in the second image, that resemble a ‘sphere growth process’. Mistakes in scripting are usually annoying (especially if you can not find them) but sometimes are the best way to discover new directions. This second version of the script is here. The two versions of the code are almost identical; one conditional less for the ‘growth’ option. The last two images show triangles created between the centers of the spheres.

Protocol Infrastructure attempts to approach the design of infrastructure in an alternative, bottom-up fashion, that is not based on master planning but instead on the development of a protocol that would allow infrastructure to ’self-organize’, adapting at the same time to the conditions that it encounters. The characteristics of such an approach are illustrated through the example of a structure, designed for the San Francisco Bay, which aims to the development of a system that would allow for a settlement to face the rising of the water level because of global warming. The model proposed, instead of following a ‘long term’ plan adapts itself to the situation that it encounters (water level, population needs) and grows in height following an algorithm designed for that reason. Machines are used from the system as the agents that would allow self organization to happen and the means to build the structure. More information here

I was playing with MaxScript, trying to see how I can rewrite the .mel ca script and at the end I came up with a much more elaborate version for 3ds max, that implements 18 different sets of rules.
CA are quite critical for what I am researching right now (self-organization that is...). It is really impressive how different classes of rules produce different results, from quickly normalized ones to totally chaotic (rule 30).
The script is available for downloading at the tools section.

This is a project, already quite old, that we presented at the 2005 UIA conference in Istanbul. It looks like it took some time but finally they published a selection from the presentations, including ours, under the title "Folding the Suburbs". I hope that it still makes some sense after five years... It was written and presented in collaboration with Vana Tentokali, Katerina Tryfonidou & Magdalena Pantazi.

I finally found some time to wrap the ca mel scripts with a UI and to upload the at the /tools section of the blog. The following images are some examples where I used the ca in orders to generate geometry; surfaces in these cases.