CORPOREAL ARCHITECTURES

Biophilic, computationally designed headpieces, masks, and cowls.

Year: 2018 - 2022

Project Team: Ahmed ElHusseiny | Edson Pinto

An exploration leveraging parametric, computationally driven architectural design processes and techniques to generate organic forms and structures at human scale.

The project spans numerous technologies and disciplines and is expressed and displayed across a variety of physical and visual media.

A most intimate of wearable objects, the mask is an architectural prosthetic that literally and figuratively frames our view of the world beyond. It is both shield and signal, protection and expression.

The masks begin as rough sketches; shapes and volumes which are then translated into fully parametric 3D forms. These forms are then articulated and detailed via a secondary parametric/generative process that defines their complex surface characteristics and optimizes for a variety of external factors and desired outcomes. Structural members may densify and grow more massive where structural strength is required and then de-densify and become more ephemeral in areas where the wearer needs to see or to breathe.

Once the 3D models are ready, they are 3D printed. Each mask is split into a number of separate prints that are then assembled, attached and finished by hand.