Back to results

Cornell University

Interactive Fabrication & Design of Bioinspired Surface Geometry

Abstract

dc:description.abstract

With an enormous number of outstanding design works emerging, bio-inspired design strategies have arguably been one of the most popular design subjects in the past decades. These works are often praised for their higher resilience, adaptability, and efficiency. However, in the meantime, bio-inspired design strategies have also led to higher complexity in the morphology of design objects, which makes the design materialization process (fabrication) being particularly challenging. With the continuous development of computational design and digital fabrication technology in the recent past, many innovative tools developments can assist complex form manufacturing. Nevertheless, the transition from design to make is yet situated in a unidirectional execution process. In this conventional process, design and make are two independent steps. Namely, designers use various tools to design and produce design drawings in practice. Then manufacturers take over the drawings and use multiple digital processing tools to materialize the design object. In any miscommunication that occurs between designers and makers, the final product will likely be less ideal. This thesis addresses the above issue by conducting a case study on designing and fabricating a morphologically complex surface geometry developed with bio-inspired design strategies. The thesis describes the method and process of designing such bio-inspired surface geometry and the means of materializing such geometry by proposing an interactive fabrication-informed design strategy. Furthermore, the thesis discusses how we can merge design and fabrication on an architectural scale to facilitate final product quality through the case study.

Degree

thesis:*
Name thesis:degree_name
M.S., Architecture
Level thesis:degree_level
Master of Science
Discipline thesis:degree_discipline
Architecture
Grantor
Cornell University
Year dc:date.issued
2021

Author and committee

dc:creator, dc:contributor.*
Author dc:creator
  • Teng, Teng
Committee member dc:contributor.committeemember
  • Guimbretiere, Francois V.

Subjects

dc:subject × 5

Rights

Language dc:language.iso
en

Identifiers

dc:identifier.*
Dc Identifier Other
ProQuest Submission ID: 11330
ProQuest Publication ID: 28714068
OAI identifier oai:identifier
oai:ecommons.cornell.edu:1813/110467

Chain of custody

source
Harvested from
Cornell University
Base URL
ecommons.cornell.edu/server/oai/request
Last updated
2026-07-24
Source record
OAI-PMH GetRecord
citation

Teng, Teng. Interactive Fabrication & Design of Bioinspired Surface Geometry. Master of Science thesis, Cornell University, 2021. https://hdl.handle.net/1813/110467