Marrow: A Dreamer’s Minimal Surface Experiment
URBAN WATER RESEARCH LAB
This design involved three steps: Testing, Controlling, and Implementing a scaleless geometry system to Burnside Bridge, along Portland, Oregon’s riverfront
The collaboration, with fellow University of Oregon students Betty Lou Poston (PhD) and Ryan Maruyama (MArch), sought to reimagine Portland as an ecocity—coexisting with the waterfront. Through carefully established rules and controls in the Grasshopper script system, we created a multi-use structure for urban research.
Our goals were to establish the framework for a structure that could increase water access, create research nodes, restore ecology, purify water, harness energy, and use a minimal surface form to provide the least ground level disturbance.
My personal roles in this project involved developing the initial testing diagrams, designing the Prototype, co-designing the final structure, creating all the final orthographic drawings, interior rendering, and programming diagrams, as well as co-developing the final exterior renderings.
Testing.
MINIMAL SURFACE INTERACTIONS WITH SOAP BUBBLES & NYLON.
Using string dipped into soap, we created two interfacing planes. We then popped the connecting bubble to create a void.
Experiments in rotation created different patters of plane & void interaction.
Popping the connecting bubble to create a void in a still-seamless minimal surface.
Nylon Experiments
Experimenting with the scale of a minimal surface controlled by a rectilinear shell.
Controlling.
USING BOUNDARY EDGES TO CONTROL A SCALELESS PROTOTYPE.
Implementing.
ESTABLISHING NODES OF RESEARCH CENTERED ON WATER, ATMOSPHERE, AND RECREATION.
Exterior.
Interior.
