Album Published

Kinematics Dress 7 (10 new items)

The seventh version of our Kinematics Dress was created in October 2015 for Dutch Design Week. It was exhibited in the window at De Bijenkorf Eindhoven by Shapeways and later appeared in WIRED UK. It is a size 2 gown composed of 2324 interlocking panels that were 3D-printed as a single piece.

Album Published

cellular solitaire engagement ring

This white gold and moissanite engagement ring was created for a customer. The 8mm stone is held by an organic cage setting that emerges seamlessly from the ring structure. Our client Marc started by sketching out the ring band in our Cell Cycle app. Then we modified his design to accomodate the stone.

Album Published

Florescence Engagement Ring - 6 stone

This palladium and diamond engagement ring is a new take on our Florescence Engagement Ring. We sketched out versions for our client that featured as many as 14 stones! Ultimately, we decided on a design with 6 small diamonds set into an undulating form generated with our Floraform software. The ring was 3D-printed in wax and then cast in palladium.

Album Published

Reaction system + videos (2 new items)

We wrote a computer program to generate 3D forms using a mathematical simulation of Reaction-diffusion, and used this software to grow the designs of the reaction collection. Parameters of the simulation can be varied for differing effects, creating different types or directions of pattern. These parameters are controlled and change through space to express design intent. The process begins on an imported underlying surface, and a 3-dimensional object is formed by embossing or removing material from that surface based on the chemical concentration present at each point in space. Multiple scales of pattern and simulation are used to create more detailed forms.

Inspiration

Reaction-diffusion (RD) is a canonical example of complex behavior that emerges from a simple set of rules. RD models a set of substances that are diffusing, or spreading; these substances also react with one another to create new substances. This simple idea has been suggested as a model for a diverse set of biological phenomena. All kinds of animals from fish to zebras display interesting color patterns on their skin and shells which play important roles in their behavior. However, the underlying cause of these patterns is still not understood. In 1952, Alan Turing suggested the RD system as an answer to not only this question but also the more general one of why cells differentiate. How do individual cells locate themselves in the larger scale structure and pattern of an organism? The patterns seen on the animals occur over a scale much larger than a cell, yet they display remarkable self-similarity on every part of the animal’s body.

Turing studied the behavior of a complex system in which two substances interact with each other and diffuse at different rates. He proved mathematically that such a system can form stable periodic patterns even from uniform starting conditions. One of the most interesting things about RD is that you can have a homogeneous system where every cell is doing exactly the same action (for instance just producing a certain amount of some chemicals); but from this one process a large scale structure emerges.

SIMULATING REACTION-DIFFUSION

One of the intriguing aspects of reaction-diffusion is how a simple chemical system can produce a variety of patterns through small changes. Nervous System’s reaction diffusion experiments use the Gray-Scott model. This describes a system of two chemicals, often referred to as U and V, where U and V combine in a reaction to form more of V. Additionally, chemical U is produced at a certain rate, while chemical V naturally decays at a fixed rate. Changing just these rates of production and decay results in patterns of dots, lines, holes, or spirals. By working with multiple scales, varying parameters, and using anisotropic diffusion (in which chemicals flow more easily in one direction than another), it is possible to sculpt reaction-diffusion patterns.

algorithm processing reaction

Album Published

nested engagement ring set

We created this nesting ring set in palladium for a client. The engagement ring features a large onyx stone surrounded by an asymmetric arrangement of four small white sapphires. The wedding band nestles perfectly against one side of the ring.

Album Published

Floraform inspiration (2 new items)

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.

floraform inspiration photography