Subdivision Processes

Subdivision is the recursive process of dividing a shape into siblings and then dividing those sibling shapes further and so on. Micheal Hansmeyer uses this procedure to create exquisite 2d and 3d crystalline visualisations using Processing. The monochrome fractal lattices of the ‘Two-dimension Quads’ show up to 10 overlapping iterations of the process. By the time we get to the ‘Three-Dimensional Hybrid Subdivisions’ we find that ‘the shapes of the quads are determined not only by their parents, but also their parents neighbours’ and more specifically that ‘the extent to which parent’s neighbours influence the offspring is controlled through a series of weights’. These 3d forms appear less geometric and more abstracted than their 2d counterparts with tendon-like forms pulling on the surface to form creased skins – the final visualisation reveals Michaels intention for this set of sketches as a way for interior architectural conjecture.

Micheal Hansmeyer’s work has been featured on a previous post regarding algorithmic architecture here.