Formalizing shape-change: Three-dimensional printed shapes and hygroscopic material transformations
Elena Vazquez, Benay Gürsoy, Jose Duarte
Shape-changing materials have become increasingly popular among architects in designing responsive systems. One of the greatest challenges of designing with these materials is their dynamic nature, which requires architects to design with the fourth dimension, time. This article presents a study that formalizes the shape-changing behavior of three-dimensional printed wood-based composite materials and the rules that serve to compute their shapechange in response to variations in relative humidity. In this research, we first developed custom three-dimensional printing protocols and analyzed the effects of three-dimensional printing parameters on shape-change. We thereafter three-dimensional printed kirigami geometries to amplify hygroscopic material transformation of woodbased composites.
This research was partially supported by the SCDC Interdisciplinary Research Grant 2018-2019, from the Stuckeman Center for Design Computing, and by the H. Campbell and Eleanor R. Stuckeman Fund for Collaborative Design Research, from the Stuckeman School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture.
