The Grasshopper script simulates a random soap bubble cluster starting from 3 soap bubbles of known radii based on Plateau’s Laws. All surfaces in a bubble cluster are spherical, including films dividing two adjacent bubbles.
A list is used to store valid bubbles generated through a Hoopsnake sequence and a number of custom components calculate correct bubble intersection in line with Plateau’s Laws.
In last February, the NY Times wrote an article about a very interesting skyscraper in Caracas, the Torre de David, that seems to carry a good analogy with the current Venezuelan situation since Hugo Chavez has been elected since 1999. In fact this 150 meter tall building is currently hosting about 2500 squatters who find in it, a good way to dwell in this housing crisis time. This skyscraper that was originally supposed to become an architectural symbol and an economically operative building of the Financial power never finished its construction because of the national financial crisis in the late 90′s.
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Obuchi Lab  Is the Studio led by Yusuke Obuchi at Tokyo University‘s Global 3.0 Architecture and Urbanism. Yusuke is a former Intermediate Unit Master at the Architectural Association with Alan Dempsey and Eugene Han as well as director at the AA DRL Masters. He won the Archiprix for the Wave Garden project (below) in which a large membrane made of Piezzo-Electric components generated electricity from the waves movement.
 Above: The Wave Garden by Yusuke Obuchi
Below is a short description of the course and couple images and videos taken from the Critical Mass blog. Critical Mass is also the title of a book written by Philip Ball. Â “The course is dedicated to the research on the emergence of global network society and its effect on architecture, urbanism and design culture. It is an interdisciplinary experimental design research connecting architecture, engineering and computations to theorize and to develop design proposals for the contemporary environments.”
Above: Stick Team’s Project on Self-Organizing components
Above: Images from a workshop at Obuchi Lab
Above: Minimal Surface Pavilion
This image is from the flooding in Pakistan where millions of spiders climbed in to the trees to escape the flood waters. Because of the scale of the flooding and the fact that the water has taken so long to recede, many trees have become cocooned in spiders webs. People in this part of Sindh are reporting that there are now far fewer mosquitoes than they would have expected, given the amount of stagnant, standing water that is around. It is thought that the mosquitos are getting caught in the spiders webs and therefore reducing the risk of malaria.
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