Date: 2021
Size: 2100 square feet (195 square meters)
Collection: One House Per Day, Day 485
Overview
The house is composed of 7 modular tiled walls that having varying degrees of rotational symmetry. One tile (A) doesn’t rotate. Two tiles (B & C) can rotate 0° or 90°. Four tiles (D, E, F, & G) can rotate 0°, 90, 180°, and 270°. The tiles are rotated randomly. This drawing is seed no. 485. It is one of 49 houses generated using this computational sketch.
The tiled walls are made from CMU blocks. The roof is cast concrete and supports a meadow. The façade is glass and can open a maximum of 50%. The floor is composed of 7 ceramic tiles that have the same tiling properties as the walls.
The tiling pattern used in the house is based off of the Truchet tile described by Sebastien Truchet in 1704. Artists and craftspeople such as Anni Albers have used the system to create infinite variation from a small subset of parts. Architects like Aldo van Eyck used a similar tile system in his 1968 Sculpture Pavilion in Sonsbeek Park. More recently, these systems have been used to procedurally generate maps and dungeons in video games. A recent innovation in tiling has been the Wave Function Collapse algorithm. While the Truchet tile requires all tiles to match, the WFC algorithm uses a series of rules that identify which tiles can match and then procedurally generates the pattern based on a given input. One of the best examples so far with implications for the architectural profession is the video game Townscaper by Oskar Stålberg. Using these systems, design is a process of playing a game with constraints that are based on the tile rules which could be informed by various factors such as structure, fabrication, circulation, view, or any other performance criteria. The architect is a partner with the algorithm in exploring the design space.
This drawing was a partnership between designer and algorithm. The logic for the drawing and the selection of this specific iteration of the drawing was determined by the designer. The algorithm generated both the digital and the analog drawings based on these choices. The final drawing was made with an Axidraw SE/A3, Micron 08 & 005 pens, and a Papermate 0.7mm mechanical pencil.