Floraform inspiration

How does an organism go from a single cell to a complex differentiated structure? If a single cell were to divide and grow uniformly, it would result in a wrinkled blob. However, through carefully coordinated subdivision and differentiation, biological systems produce structures with specific, reproducible forms and functions. Growth isn’t uniform but instead differential.

To put it simply, some areas grow more than others, and this leads to the formation of macroscopic shape. These shapes result from the interplay between the underlying cellular growth processes and the mechanics of the materials themselves.

Plant tropisms are an example of this process that you can observe directly. Tropisms are directional responses to directional stimuli. A plant can bend towards light by elongating cells on its stem that are in shadow (phototropism). Or vines can strangle another plant by responding to touch and wrapping around them (thigmotropism).

We started developing Floraform after coming across two papers by L. Mahadevan: “The shape of the long leaf” (2010) and “Growth, geometry and mechanics of the blooming lily” (2011). Looking at the shapes of rippled leaves and blooming flowers, Mahadevan proposed that their ruffled forms could be described by a surface growing differentially from its edge. We found this interesting because complex ruffles develop from a very simple procedure: grow more at the edge. This is in contrast to other differential growth models where curvature is specified locally, by growing on one side more than another, like the bending stem example we gave above.

At the same time, we became enamored with a flower called Cockscomb, a mutant cultivar of Celosia that produces dense, convoluted blooms instead of its normal branching, tree-like blossoms. It exhibits this amazing ruffled shape that is unlike any flower we’d ever seen (people often refer to it as brain flower).

We hypothesized that you could simulate the growth of Cockscomb with this type of preferential growth toward the edge. The Celosia flower suggested that there was a space of form between the normal and the mutant, between branching and ruffling. We wanted to explore that space.

With our minds now contemplating this growth model, we began to see rippled forms in diverse ecosystems and kingdoms of life: Sparassis fungi, lettuce sea slugs, lace bryozoans, kale and lettuce leaves, plumose anemone, iris flowers, jellyfish arms. So we started to build a digital environment where we could investigate these ideas.