More Geodesic Shells

Mårten Nettelbladt kindly adviced me of the Korkeasaari Lookout Tower, an example of a geodesic structure build of wood.

The Japan Pavillion at the expo 2000 by Shigeru Ban and Frei Otto is an example of an geodesic shell build of paper tubes.

Geodesic Shell

The structure of this shell is woven from isocurves and geodesic curves on a surface. Geodesic curves are also called plank lines, they can be build from straigth, but twisted planks. Mårten Nettelbladt studied them on his blog. Geodesic shells build in wood have been studied at the laboratory for timber construction of the EPFL.

Planks generated from lines on a surface with this script: TwistedBeams.zip


The (straight) bamboo strips of this chinese hat are following geodesic lines. Photo by drs2biz.

Surface Turtle

This is an implementation of a turtle walking around on a NURBS surface. If the turtle is going straight in small steps, the resulting path is close to a geodesic.

SurfaceTurtle.zip

In general relativity, the straight path in curved spacetime is a geodesic

Local Curvature

In this example, the turtle is connected with a graph, defining the local curvature of the resulting curve

CurvatureTurtle.zip

The relation between local curvature and the curve shape,

taken from S. Wolframs book, p. 418

Turtle Graphics

This VB.Net module calculates a turtle path

Read an introduction to Turtle Geometry here

Turtle.zip

An analog turtle build by Grey Walter in the fifties

Beams on Surface

Beams around lines, aligned normal to surface
Height and width are adjustable

Compare Shigeru Ban's pavillon for the Rice Gallery

BeamsOnSurface.zip

Reciprocal grid, example from Cecil Balmond's book, p. 143

Map Lines

Maps straight curves from the xy plane on a surface
The mapped lines change length, but remain straight

MapLines.zip