Shape Computation Lab

Kindergarten Courts

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01. Correlation of existing courthouse envelopes and their underlying skeletons of courtrooms and their three networks (1-4)

02. Correlation of existing courthouse envelopes and their underlying skeletons of courtrooms and their three networks (5-8)

03. Correlation of existing courthouse envelopes and their underlying skeletons of courtrooms and their three networks (9-11)

04. Correlation of existing courthouse envelopes and their underlying skeletons of courtrooms and their three networks (12-14)

05. Correlation of existing courthouse envelopes and their underlying skeletons of courtrooms and their three networks (15-18)

06. The kindergarten courthouse grammar

07. Productions of existing courtroom assemblies and their three networks in terms of the three-dimensional courthouse grammar(1-4).

08. Productions of existing courtroom assemblies and their three networks in terms of the three-dimensional courthouse grammar(5-8).

09. Productions of existing courtroom assemblies and their three networks in terms of the three-dimensional courthouse grammar(9-12).

10. Productions of existing courtroom assemblies and their three networks in terms of the three-dimensional courthouse grammar(13-16).

11. Possible designs in the courthouse language.

Cole Loomis and Athanassios Economou

2012

 

Keywords: Typological descriptions; Formal analysis; Shape grammars; Courthouses; Courtrooms

The underlying morphology of contemporary courthouses depends heavily on the spatial relations between the three independent networks, namely the public, the restricted and the secure networks, and the ways they all connect to each one of the courtrooms in the building. The rising complexity is addressed here through the design of three-dimensional formal game consisting of three-dimensional blocks in the shape of rooms and corridors. The specific dimensioning of these shapes recalls the proportions of the Froebel blocks and specifically those of the oblong for the courtrooms and the pillar for the corridors to suggest a fundamental basis for the design strategy. The ways that the pillars and the oblongs relate one to another produce sectional inverted T-arrangements of courtrooms to suggest the possibility of a truly three-dimensional weaving of the networks one to another. The proposed grammar is able to capture the simple built forms of several of the courthouses in the corpus and its extension to sectional stacked corridors within the same height of the enclosed courtrooms allows for a variety of novel forms too.

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