6. Computational Couture#
Research#
The Computational Couture workshop focused on expanding the horizons of dress making towards an algorithmic approach, and taking design beyond the physical functions of the body (movement, protection, temperature regulation) towards the evolution of cultural expression. During the workshop participants coming from different backgrounds had the possibility to work in a multidisciplinary context to co create this custom fitted clothing that brings together computation, fashion design and digital fabrication.
- One of the most important stylists of recent years that has made people talk about himself is certainly Iris Van Herpen, now an icon for digital fashion.
It’s impossible to not love her project. But I have another great artist.
- About her is enviable the audacity of her creations that are more than futuristic, surreal.
If there is an icon that during that first famous course at fablab that I attended, inspired me to make digital and technological fashion, this is [Neri Oxman] (http://www.materialecology.com/index.html).
During the lesson of Francesco Perego I got to know her and the design, the colors and the projects fascinated me a lot.
Besides her beauty, I like her to name each of her projects and translate it into Arabic, a language that has always fascinated me so much. Part of the name of my brand is a translation from Arabic. I like that She is very inspired by the astronomy, the shape and the nature of the stars. I like combining digital 3D printing technology with biology.
All these things are such a part of me, of my own interests and this makes me particularly appreciate.
- Another emerging designer that i found is Stephanie Bashir, from the world of architecture She made installations of structures with fabric inserts, following with the computational fashion.
Lesson 2#
This week’s assignment is to work with grasshopper, a rhino plug in.
I find it not a simple program especially for the fact that I can not even use rhino.
I followed some basic rhino tutorials previously and I continued looking at the previous fabricademy lessons on grasshopper.
The following Wednesday with Francesco Perego we did another lesson creating a grid and working on points that can be positioned and moved on different dimensions.
After seeing some of the videos on vimeo of grasshopper, I decided to create an isosceles triangle starting from the Aldo’ tutorial of the “GAZE DRESS” dress. According to this it is possible, starting from a line, to create points on it, to map the values of each one and to obtain a second line through which it is possible to develop the volume of the figure we want to create.
The idea was to create a triangle, then reproduce it with a polar arrey with a center in the smallest corner, to obtain an hexagonal shape to be repeated like a grid. Manage the triangles separately working on all three dimensions, as we had done for the points during the lesson of Francesco, and get a sort of flowers more or less open depending on the proximity or not from the attraction point.
I created the line and the points on the line on which to apply what was used in the video above.
My file presented differences immediately with respect to Aldo’s work and later it appeared that the links were not correct.
Thanks to Francesco’s help, starting from my idea, we decided to reverse the starting point to work on and create a pattern that could be lasered and not printed.
Lasercutting#
We started from the hexagonal grid from which we selected the points not only central to the geometry but also the vertices of the geometries using also the triangular grid and both were given the same values of magnitude of the cells on x and y and the same number of cells.
The cells were given a surface from which the curves were extracted through the “Brep Edges” command.
The lines were then created between the grid points and the points of the surface curves (triangle) inside the grid.
Later the lines obtained with the curves of the elements / triangles were merged.
Subsequently the rectangular grid was replaced with a multiplier between the number of cells with the dimensions of the cells and the result divided by the minimum and maximum distance to the two points of attraction.
The result was mapped in a range of values between 0 and 1 of which we initially decided to manage manually to create cuts within the hexagons of a minimum value of 3 mm with a maximum value of 8.
Of the cells we had already created in the previous test the cutting lines through the command “Brep Edges”, but it was added a “Scale” to which we have linked in the “Geometries” the cells of the grid, in the “Centers” the points of the grids and finally connected the remapped values that i talked before.
This is because initially we did not know if I would have also engraved the curves of the hexagons too.
to which the “Trim with region” command was added, connecting the cutting lines of the triangles we had obtained to the “curves” and the GRAFT value obtained from the scale to the “Regions”.
Finally, a “Curve” element was linked to the result obtained from the “Trim with region” in the “Internal curves” section.
Thanks to Francesco I was able to get my PATTERN.
I created a bodice starting from a basic pattern made with Valentina and I imported it on rhino and created a model dxf to work on.
With the help of Francesco I managed to connect two other points of attraction because in my bodice the bigger cuts had to be positioned in the middle and the cuts are shorter near the points of attraction.
The pairs of attraction points are linked by another “minimum” command and then re-mapped all together.
From “Brep Adge” a “Curve” element has been connected, which together with those already present in the sketch are FLATTEN.
The final part that defines which lines should be considered is expressed in the picture above.
In this way the internal lines (triangles) and external lines (hexagons) of the grid are further divided between the inside and outside of the curves associated with the bodice and round neck.
Once the model was created, this was saved with curves on different levels, and once saved on Rhino, exported in DXF for the laser.
3D Printing#
From the pattern created in Grasshopper,again with the help of Francesco, I first isolated the external curves or the hexagonal grid from the internal points through which we had created the cutting lines.
We have eliminated again the internal lines of the hexagon extruding the outline to which we have subtracted the internal geometries extruded also those.
The final step is to decide the extrusion height of the pattern and bake it.
After this test, we worked and isolated only the internal hexagons which were extruded and printed on the tulle with elastic material.
