From Costuming and Dancing Sculptures to Architecture The Corporeal and Computational in Design and Fabrication of Lightweight Mobile Structures

This paper describes a new approach to designing and fabricating costuming and dancing sculptures and the potential application of this system at the architectural scale. I present a novel design system based on the movement, form, and spatial relation of characters and dancing sculptures in the Trinidad Carnival. I also present a system that produces lightweight mobile structures from 3D printed connections, lightweight rods, and textile. Through a detailed case study, a new dancing sculpture is designed, and a full-scale lightweight mobile structure at the architectural scale is fabricated. Fabrication of the lightweight structure is achieved using Digital Crafting and Crafting Fabrication approaches to wire-bending, which includes the early development of a digital fabrication program for rod elements. This work has potential implications for costuming and dancing sculptures; architecture; computational design; and craft practices.