"Will it Fold?" was the winner of SOM's inaugural Computational Design Challenge, asking teams to explore new design opportunities and alternative methods for computational modeling. This collaboration with Maria Boyle, Grant Mattingly, and Robert Rochel was a multidisciplinary effort asking if SOM's legacy project U.S. Air Force Academy Cadet Chapel could be folded from a flat sheet of paper, and if so, how would it perform?
Initial efforts sought to fold the chapel by hand, only to realize that the form wasn't immediately amenable to a simple folding pattern. This problem was in fact explored in 2019 paper by Yali M. Hameed and Rashed H. Yaseen, where it was determined that an algorithm determined pattern was needed to truly fold the chapel.
Returning to first principles, Grasshopper's Kangaroo is used to simulate folding. Support points (blue) act as roller supports, free to move in the horizontal plane as vertical loads (red) are applied at lifting points. As the form folds, it collapses towards its centroid.
Elevation - Free Body Diagram
Elevation - Folded
In plan, roller support points are first established evenly along boundary lines. A diagrid of interconnecting ridge lines link the boundary conditions. Valley lines create triangles. Finally, ridge intersection points are used as lifting points to initiate folding.
1 - Boundary Curves
2 - Roller Support Points
3 - Ridge Folding Lines
4 - Valley Folding Lines
5 - Ridge Intersection Lifting Points
6 - Folded Version
Three chapel inspired forms were explored as part of the study, dubbed the simple chapel, complex chapel, and barrel vault. Below, the Grasshopper script is applied to simple Rhino linework to simulate folding.
The forms were then analyzed under a simplified lateral wind load in Karamba for Grasshopper, trying to integrate both the centerline and shell geometry of the chapels.
Animation in V-Ray for Grasshopper was the final step, visualizing not just the folding, but also the performance of the paper folded models under wind loading.