Study of natural shapes

Any suggestions for good references on the study of natural shapes ?
I have a great book called "Patterns in Nature" by Peter S. Stevens, but I'd like to go more in-depth ; specially on the subject of shells and skeletons.

Cheers !

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by carlos lara on May 27, 2009 at 1:15am

Hi Olivier,

Maybe this and this can help. Just looked at them in amazon tough.

And of course D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson On Growth and Form. If it doesn't help at least you can check amazons suggestions.

Hope it helps.

Permalink Reply by Marc Hoppermann on May 29, 2009 at 3:58am

it's not about shells and skeletons but I though I might post it here anyways.

http://algorithmicbotany.org/papers/abop/abop.pdf
which is a great reesource for L-systems, plant growth, etc

Permalink Reply by Dirk Anderson on May 29, 2009 at 9:04pm

Quite an amazing publication by Stephen Wolfram on science through mathematics, algorithm and evolution - although not exclusive to patterns in nature, it covers a lot on algorithms that are persistent in nature. The book can be viewed online free from here:

http://www.wolframscience.com/nksonline/toc.html

Permalink Reply by Adam Holloway on June 11, 2009 at 3:50pm

Shapes by Philip Ball is supposedly picking up where D'Arcy Thompson left off. I'm reading it at the moment and its quite interesting, a bit technical with chemistry stuff, but still fascinating. Ian Stewart books are also quite good, like this one, mathematics of the living world.

Permalink Reply by Luis Fraguada on June 13, 2009 at 3:21am

Ernst Haeckel

Permalink Reply by SamuElf on June 17, 2009 at 5:33am

Olivier,
I think I saw you on other forum and I think it was in the discussion for SQUISH tool. You were mentionning you were doing textile architecture. Is that true, is that you?
Et je crois qu avec le nom que tu as, tu es surement francophone et meme francais! (je suis Quebecois mais j habite presentement en Allemagne) In case that you are not french I will keep on in english!

Concerning Natural shapes, I always think we should continue in the direction of the reseach done by Frei Otto and his Team. It is not just about the form but the self generation of these shapes and their structural means. All these natural forms are ruled by physical principles. A good and simple book is Finding Form from Frei Otto and Bodo Rasch. It synthetises well.

A great plugin is available now which allowed you to formfind real minimal surface (tensile or pneu) as well as tensigrity etc. Eventually, it will also be possible to formfind with selfweight for shells.
You build the optimum shape surface. Then you can generate the skeleton based on where the highest stress are (I am talking in structural engineering but this is pertinent for design field)

We have to be careful in what we define as Natural form or Organic.. Often, it is just styling or Look-like. We have to understand on which principles these form on generated.

Some of the IL publications have interesting discussion about this topic.

Lets keep this discussion...
Cheers
Samuel

Permalink Reply by Vittorio Menna on July 16, 2009 at 11:08am

hi samuel,
which is the plugin that allows to design real minimal surface (tensile or pneu) as well as tensegrity?
thanx
vittorio

Permalink Reply by SamuElf on August 11, 2009 at 5:26am

Vittorio, sorry to answer sooo late...
The actual plugin is called Rhinomembrane. It uses a FEA approach to formfind. It gives true minimal surfaces or also called equalstressed surfaces.

Permalink Reply by Vittorio Menna on August 11, 2009 at 10:59am

thanx samuelf!

Permalink Reply by Clonenature on July 17, 2009 at 12:40am

Hi all,
Thanks for all information given in this "discussion". I'm also interested in natural patterns, specially in fractal geometries. But I'll take a look in those books, because I'm sure they will help me a lot.
I used other methods different from GH to create my natural forms, but they are not Splines, so the surface finishing is not very nice, although the geometry itself is really spectacular.
I 'm starting with GH to generate my algorithms and geometries. At the moment, I have arrived to generate a nive snailshell.
I will continue investigating this issue...

Attachments:

snailshell_GH.jpg, 53 KB
snailshell2_GH.jpg, 53 KB

Permalink Reply by Olivier Suire on July 17, 2009 at 3:12am

Bonjour Samuel,

Indeed, I work in the field of tensile structures, and I am amazed by the work of Frei Otto, and his systematic exploration of minimal and inflated surfaces. When you think this guy was able to make scale models with bubbles, and used them as a basis for fabrication at a time when form-finding software did not exist...
Today I am interested in shells and skeletons , which are two "opposite" yet valid structural concepts.
I like to favor the structural efficiency approach because it generally produces beautiful shapes naturally.
Many studies that I see around here are quite interesting formally, but would certainly be a nightmare to engineer in reality, and consume far more material than necessary.
Has anyone heard of a thorough study of, say, a crab shell ?
I'd like to see section cuts, X-rays, analysis of shell thicknesses, reinforcing ribs, cinematics of legs and pincers, etc...

Permalink Reply by SamuElf on August 11, 2009 at 5:25am

Olivier, where are you from and where do you practice?
Talking about Frei Otto.. I passed one year at the IL in Stuttgart. I got the chance to meet with Dr.Otto few times. We actually fix that soapfilm machine after years of inactivity! The machine was actually made to take pictures of the soap film model and to use it as a reference to build a bigger model, using fabric this time. The fabrication measurements, for instance, patterning, as done from that bigger model. The soapfilm was mainly for primary formfinding and form study.
Shells and skeletons are really interesting too. But why do you say opposite?
Olivier, lets keep on discussing, I think we can share knowledge.

CHeers
Sam