Containing Air: Exploring Structure

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I explore architecturally based geometric patterns.

My overall interest is to investigate methods which can develop forms that are in one sense predictable, but have the element to generate the unexpected; the unexpected in a predictable way.

In this series I try to explore a container; a non-traditional container that holds nothing but air. Given this, the form and surface can be reformulated and deviate from traditional meanings. The overall form can also express containing a more interconnected volume, since it holds nothing. The surface can be articulated in a number of ways, a simple mesh in this series. This series also explores 3D printing techniques in unique materials that can structurally be very delicate; pushing the technology to its limits of defining enclosures and still be structurally viable.

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Forms and their structural enclosures can be explored in a number of ways, in a number of scales. Extrusions, assemblages, or incorporating traditional structural systems; or ones according to mathematically defined elements. What forms emerge when a 2D curve is used as a 3D path for some section defined by a simple shape, such as a circle, an ellipse, a square, a rectangle, or a triangle? This series investigates a simple form based on approximately one-half of a Lemniscate of Bernoulli curve, developed about 1694. It is very similar to a common eight curve, except the loops are more elliptical. For the enclosure a diagonal grid was incorporated.

These are also computationally generated, custom developed software; a method which can express a consistency of a developing concept and enable a variety that focuses on the idea and its variations.

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“My God is Machinery; and the art of the future will be the expression of the individual artist through powers of the machine – the machine doing all those things that the individual workman cannot do. The creative artist is the man who controls all this and understands it” – Frank Lloyd Wright, circa 1901

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I am a lifelong resident of the Chicago area, now living in St. Charles. My family immigrated for Poland shortly after World War II, my father worked as a metal spinner, an incredible craftsman. I was the first college graduate in my family, graduating from the University of Illinois Chicago, College of Architecture. In the 1970’s I pioneered digital graphic applications in the architectural office of Murphy/Jahn in Chicago for eight years under design partners Gene Summers and Helmut Jahn. After leaving Murphy/Jahn I started a computer consulting firm and began teaching digital design applications.

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Over the last twenty years, I have been able to apply my education and work experience to my artwork. My research into digital methods in the disciplines of science, mathematics, architecture, art, and technology is published and presented internationally in the form of prints, web pieces, sculptural, and architectural studies presented in a body of work spanning over one hundred exhibitions and thirty-seven conference papers. This work also resulted in being selected as one of the founding Associate Editors of the Journal of Mathematics and Art.

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Highlights of my digital artwork include SIGGRAPH 2001 Art Gallery and its International Traveling Art Show, the SIGGRAPH 2003 Art Gallery, the 2004 Rockford Midwestern Exhibition, the Chicago ArtFutura Exhibition of American Art 2005 and 2006, and the Chicago Sculpture International’s 2006, 2008,and 2010 Biennials; the Chicago Art Loop Open 2010. The Rockford and ArtFutura exhibits were curated by James Rondeau of the Art Institute of Chicago.

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Currently, I am a Professor in the College of Architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago focusing on digital craftsmanship. During my thirty-three years at IIT, I have developed and taught a series of computer- aided design and digital design courses covering 2D and 3D CAD, image composition, animation, and form generation methods; undergraduate to PhD students.

In 2009, Princeton Architectural Press published a textbook based on my form generation course as "The Codewriting Workbook: Creating Computational Architecture in AutoLISP"; and ACADIA, the Association of Computer-Aided Design in Architecture, awarded me the 2010 ACADIA Award for Teaching Excellence.