Folding is a formal operation used to connect disparate elements of a site or building in a continuous multiple mixtures. This tactic is not just a theoretical skill. On a practical level, folding can be applied to various design problems in which disparate elements need to be related in such a way that they appear seamless. It provides a new way resolving junctions and compositions.
Folding can be considered a formal new style in architecture, it is based on new graphics. The aesthetic deconstructionist provides fresh formal outcomes, because it combines ordinary graphic operations in non-orthogonal compositions. Alternatively, folding departs from the operation cut, rotate, divide and when use with form generating software, is able to produce something entirely different. This new graphics has led to new kinds of forms, and these new forms means something.
Folding as a philosophical framework makes explicit architecture’s nature as neither entirely deterministic nor entirely random. This is an obvious but important observation. Just as chaos is different from true randomness, folding architecture is different from truly random forms. The condition of architecture is that form is neither truly random nor essentially meaningful, so architecture can formally be conceived of as pseudo random.
Apply my concept into Villa Savoye, which is a special monument for modern architecture and try to test in different methods to find out what will be appeared after cut, divide or rotate the original plans. After that, use the simple skeleton reconstruct those broken shapes into 3 dimensional objects, and try to find out the connections between those skeletons. Compose them with the hidden relations in random. These skeletons will show other possibilities of new folding forms, which come from the original site spirit.
It’s a kind of experiment to transfer graphics from 2D to 3D objects without system thoughts. I expect that it will produce a functional space within the folding form. Hopefully it can show my definition of folding architecture.
As Simone Brott said: “Folding is the obvious design methodology for form generation.”
