Lazer-Cut Columns Push The Limits Of Architectural Design

Michael Hansmeyer’s work may not have reinvented the wheel, but we could spin his sculptures around our heads for days and still not fully grasp them. His work serves to further ancient architectural principles to an extreme, pushing them to a frontier where there are no boundaries separating the disciplines of architecture, art, and science.

Having graduated with a double major in architecture and information programming, Hansmeyer makes use of the algorithm in generating architectural shapes. As he writes on his website, “a computational approach to architecture enables the generation of the previously unseen. Forms that can no longer be conceived of through traditional methods become possible. New realms open up.”

His last project, Subdivision, consists of a series of 2.5 meter reinforced paper columns with infinitely precise motifs, designed with a subdivision algorithm and cut with a laser technique. These lone imposing statues, unburdened with the responsibilities of upholding temples, are constructed using a code that’s repeated ad infinitum, as is done with fractals in the natural world.

Hansmeyer’s Platonic Solids project from 2008 applies similar algorithms to its production, operating by dividing a form’s face into multiple smaller faces.

Through these impressive artistic gestures, we’re reminded that architecture, although an aesthetic discipline, fundamentally rests on the strict laws of math and physics.
So it’s fitting that, when our meager human imagination and creativity should fail us, we could continue to push the limits of architectural possibility via complex computations.

All photos courtesy of Michael Hansmeyer.