Michael Hansmeyer: Building unimaginable shapes

Inspired by cell division, Michael Hansmeyer writes algorithms that design outrageously fascinating shapes and forms with millions of facets. No person could draft them by hand, but they're buildable -- and they could revolutionize the way we think of architectural form.
Michael Hansmeyer is an architect and programmer who explores the use of algorithms and computation to generate architectural form. Full bio: www.ted.com/speakers/michael_h...
TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes (or less). TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, and TEDTalks cover these topics as well as science, business, global issues, the arts and more. Find closed captions and translated subtitles in a variety of languages at www.ted.com/translate.
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[@himarit1484]

As a student just started learning architect and digital modeling, what he shows really fascinate me for the possibility of using algorism. Technology can push ourselves beyond our creativity. The column he made is purely the product on algorism it is cool. On the other hand, I feel taste of culture, sth that people can resonate, provoke is an essential element in building our environment. I really wonder and curious about what we will have for the future architecture.

[@MarkLucasProductions]

TED is almost ALWAYS brilliant but this one was incredibly inspiring to me. Breathtaking.

[@EclecticSceptic]

Exquisite! This is a trend becoming more prevalent as time goes on, acknowledging the limit of a human direct designer and instead emphasising designing the process.

[@OliverYossif]

Wow, that was incredible. I was pretty impressed when he finally said that he'd managed to get them built.

[@TroyOi]

Wow, you put in words something that I only had a vague sense of, and could never have expressed myself. Thanks!

[@Omni315]

Very cool, still wouldn't mind knowing how you "fold" a cube

[@mim073]

3d softwares allow u to do this.... I'm learning but can't tell u the exact process yet sorry for replying so late btw

[@blenderguy3250]

@@mim073 lol.. you are useless (after 9 years ahahahah)

[@mim073]

@@blenderguy3250 lmao...I guess so but it can happen is all I meant to say

[@bhushanmuluk9408]

@@mim073 WHICH SOFTWARE DO YOU USING FOR THIS

[@mim073]

@@bhushanmuluk9408 any software, try using blender. It's free

[@ghostbuddy]

These agorithms + 3d printers = amazing table top art

[@Hadewychable]

wow ! amazing algorithm technology by TED . Great job ;)

[@sixpackspy]

accurate and beautifully said!

[@TheGerogero]

Wishing the technology to physically manufacture these forms with much greater ease will come soon. Fascinating stuff.

[@PZenki]

Unreal and beautiful.

[@nikicool23]

tht was superb...i don't know how gaudi did it during his time....the designs reminded me of his forms...

[@Ieathal]

That looks amazing.

[@RafaelMirandaMolina]

Amazing, i've been teaching a generative arte course for 15 year old kids, and so many of what i've learned is embeded in what you say in this talk, so i wonder Could this be some kind of generative architecture?

[@happyandauthentic]

That is incredibly amazing! Imagine PRINTING your own house!

[@mcozpda3392]

good explanation .... I like .... Within the imagination it is to take all the elements for development ........

[@benbennit]

A pure reflection of the underlying replication code of the universe. The universe is hardwired for this structuring and replication. From simplicity comes complexity. Just amazing.

[@CariagaXIII]

the cylinder input looks badass

[@arejays6701]

good forms but i think the symmetry makes them static, almost as if to say theyve hit the uncanny valley of forms, parametric-ism however gives a more natural (nature like) appeal to forms .

[@IndieWide]

im not an Indonesian guy, but in Indonesia, these sculptures can be hand-made carved in stones each and every small details of it. I've been once in Bali and i was just amazed by their detail stones walls and carvings. and they don't use 3d noise plugin. :D

[@diegofnu]

Your own questions have the potencial of answering themselves. Increased strenght with a tiny fraction of the material, Improved absortion, light absortion and conduction, embedded air cooling, extraction, etc... There is still a long way to go in development. Function following form is a very common thing in sience history.

[@WhitentonMike]

I love the whole idea. ABS seems like the only practical material at the moment for 3D printing. At least that way it can be cleaned easily. Dusting the paper ones would be next to impossible.

[@rj-dc9jq]

First of all i want to say your voice is god level soothing for me

[@stevenschwarz7134]

i have a very interesting drawing based on the symetrry of the square making a strange fractal shape

[@ImaginationBubble]

when i see vid's like this i remember that the slogan of ted is " spread the idea " :D

[@j4y88]

Beautiful..

[@Zoza15]

This man has a great imagination of architecture.. Wish him all the luck with his project :)

[@jacobeason1363]

oooooh yeah. Love this stuff!

[@dododouglas7980]

Beautiful really

[@finderfinder100]

This is the wonderful successor to Gaudi, HR. Giger, Dali, Escher,and Buckminster Fuller (and many other artists). This is their wildest dreams mixed with organic growth & algorithmic science made real.

[@NthGold]

Reminds me of the work of Gaudi. Perhaps these methods could even be used to help finish his works.

[@stillpointx2623]

Where can I download the algorithms?

[@Waranoa]

I don't know how original these ideas are, but it's a very illustrative example of the power of simple rules producing complex systems.

[@s..1087]

Hi guys, which software is used to do these miracles?

[@ElSWVisitor]

I love you TED :-)

[@qedqubit]

this can be done easily in Blender 3D software : add a bevel modifyer on the cube, then a wireframe; make it fatter, add a wireframe modifyer again, a subsurf , and a displacement. Tadaah ! you can make wild symmetric geometry in a few seconds !

[@JasonChanH]

indeed. but i wouldn't be surprised if the texture is partially generated. as hansmeyer mentioned, there is still a lot of tweeking required to create cool visuals as opposed to the 99% noise. terrains, for example, are mostly generated in the digital world now (like Avatar's landscape, which is made with Vue)

[@MonkeyRecords]

beautiful

[@visamap]

Thank u all very much

[@goGREED]

woowee! can't wait to clean them columns

[@anikyt7570]

Yes fractal concepts are there... But experimenting and bringing that into reality is an amazing progression...with 3D printing, flying robots innumerable possibilities...

[@GigaBoost]

Wait, uh, fractals are something new? Also, where can I get this software? I want to make some fractals.

[@freesk8]

It makes sense that these shapes look organic. Organisms create themselves from their DNA using simple, repeated processes, just like the computer creates these shapes.

[@TheFounderUtopia]

Very clever idea. I tip my hat to you sir.

[@jacobeason1363]

I really want to be a parametric architect! I wonder what comes after parametric architecture? How long will I have to wait to find out?

[@kittenmittenkitten]

The best art is unsettling.

[@chillshaily1]

brilliant

[@srgwarcock]

Think about the Locus hives from gears of war 2, thats what the columns reminded me of

[@srgwarcock]

These structures are beautiful, like something you could only conceive in a dream. Id love to live in a world surrounded by architecture that would make our modern cities look like stone age technology

[@Klarpimier]

Is there a way to do this in Blender? Can anyone tell me?

[@jagteshwardhillon3278]

What software did he use to create those forms?

[@MadDeuceJuice]

processing

[@omidb67]

AutoCAD

[@stinkleaf]

Or better yet. download Mandelbulb 3D fractal software and you can achieve the same type of forms.

[@premed2]

It's so baroque baby! Reminds me of the image of a fly as visualized by an electron microscope. This is the stuff from which nightmares unfold.

[@RolandAshcroft]

Why abs for huge columns ? I'd use a finer quality large scale printer that can extrude some kind of mix of cement and gypsum .

[@luticia]

Good answer ;-)

[@sverr0r]

How do you dust them?

[@sworupbisural1602]

now we can use VR to virtually jump inside this world

[@buddhabrot]

Technology check, Entertainment nope, Design check. 2/3. Which is better than 90% of TED. Nice work :)

[@vinayseth1114]

They look perfect for the Chronicles of Ridick universe!

[@BIitzkrieg]

i want these columns so bad ;_;

[@Spicystachegamer]

This.... this is creativity

[@marcosmenescal2962]

Impressive

[@andresbenito9735]

Unlike almost every TED speaker, I liked his voice trough the whole presentation. He would make a nice job working at movies. Peace

[@lotanerve]

At work we get plans from upstairs that fit perfect (on computer) .On the shop floor, not so much..

[@WhitentonMike]

Cylindrical video screens should make it possible to have the shapes rendered in real time. Then the columns could be changed between simple and complex as well as intricate color patterns or monochromatic etc. Interesting.

[@paulinanowicka7230]

Beautiful shapes inspired by nature... here is the big issue with this effort to bring it to life - with the modern design's focus on bio-mimicry and on reducing waste in manufacturing processes, my question would be: How sustainable is this type of architecture? and is printing an entire model out of polymer plastic sustainable and responsible? How do 3D printers fit into the cradle to cradle design? Just curious if anyone has answers....

[@yoelsanchez2590]

Paulina Nowicka well the US Navy is attempting to build an entire 3D printed ship so....

[@tafssjr9986]

Art has a cost my friend, maybe time, money etc

[@cybercephalopod3913]

WELL, if you're trying to make organic shapes, you COULD just 'grow' these structures rather than build them. Of course, this would require some level of nanotechnology, but it's worth considering.

[@guitargeek16]

this is so sick! :-D

[@zxp8272]

the thought is great! but i have a new idea, i think the most important thing is to create a method to construct these shapes(not using 3D printing but a method which is also compatible with your physical laws)

[@GregCalleja]

Robotics

[@ASkippingRock]

Inspired by cell division. Awesome. If only we could find ways to grow buildings.

[@olekolok2739]

Whats really interesting to me is the possibility of scaling this. At First, i thought this would be an amazing scifi City scape😱

[@Noone-of-your-Business]

The process described is *not* inspired "by nature", but by *mathematics* . Maths is generally agreed *not* to be a natural science, but rather a human-created philosophical system of describing phenomenon, very few of which are directly transferrable to evolutionary shaped forms that can be observed in nature. One way or another, folding a cube is as highly an artificial a process as it gets. I have to agree with my pre-posters: This has little practical value, it is art of art's sake. Which is fine by me if I see it in a spiffy SciFi movie, but certainly not in the building I work in. And that's not even addressing sustainability.

[@luxxeon3d]

I agree perhaps about the sustainability and safety of certain structures created this way, but nature is mathematical. All living things and even the outer reaches of the galaxy are influenced by mathematical properties. The Fibonacci Sequence is clear and visible in nature from the golden spiral of a Nautilus shell to the logarithmic spiraling motion of the galaxies, nature and mathematics are very much in line with each other.

[@vinayseth1114]

You can find perfect cubes and spheres in nature under extreme conditions though.

[@luticia]

I have difficulties to understand the meaning of this talk.

[@danilip8496]

COOL!

[@ExclusiveManual]

imagine the number of polygons on a single column. most people would lag out.

[@hasatum]

I see the form, but where's the function?

[@atlasinvestmentresearch5397]

how about organism living structure. process to generate

[@devdesai411]

Anyone knows how to code this on grasshopper ?

[@TroyOi]

I recall when fractals were the big thing. They're very similar: fascinating, repetitive shapes with intricacies at all scales, all generated from relatively simple algorithms, and with proven examples in nature. What I don't recall were people running out and saying, "Hey, we gotta build stuff from this". OK, I've got an open mind... What's the big difference here?

[@maggru91]

Interesting, not sure if I'd want to live with that sort of design. I prefer the minimalistic, these structures are just far to intricate for me to fully enjoy.

[@livingsocks]

The shapes remind me of viral capsules more than living forms.

[@Hardryv0]

Awe-inspiring

[@CeruleanFilms]

So these are basically fractal patterns?

[@JZGreenline]

Dam I love fractals! Fractal art in real world?... *dies from awesome* This is the niche of 3D printers. Creating objects of such detail that they would take a lifetime to produce in the physical world, but a computer could produce thousands... beautiful.

[@okhstorm]

Trippy

[@dragonskulls1331]

Wow

[@andrewc2768]

Who would want to live with those complex structures in their house? It would feel like being inside an alien spaceship

[@SiddharthKulkarniN]

He reminds me of Howard Roark.

[@Kamikrazey]

Am I the only one thinking about the amazing power the computer must of had?

[@billbillard7690]

Streatched in my capacity to imagine new forms. A beautiful glimpse in God's design.

[@cheetah219]

early application for ANYTHING is always a grey area until years later when we look back and say "i dont know how i would live without that". do you really think when electricity was first being developed the average person thought a lightening bolt travelling down a kite would be what it is today? this is why noble prizes are typically given to discoveries that were made years ago--because the significance is not solidified until later.

[@Kamikrazey]

16 million facets it quite high, yes with decent cpu/gpu it is very possible, but it is much higher than an average computer, my schools graphics computers tend to crash at about 4 million facets

[@ppr0n]

Why? These are simple slices which can be processed by any computer with a decent CPU. The secred behind it to render one slice at a time. The problem is only that there is no printer in the world that could possibly create the final form in one process, because its way too complex for it to keep up.

[@hawaiidispenser]

Kind of reminds me of that Alien artist... H R Geiger (I think)?

[@wilikoki69]

I think Gaudi would have loved this program.

[@srgwarcock]

But imagine a capitol city with sky scrapers and complexes that looked like these forms, it would be stunning, certainly it would make our cities look like they were from the stone age

[@IanAtkinson555]

Creationists would refute that this is possible because they would call it, 'increasing information' without intelligently designing it.

[@MadDeuceJuice]

Neo Baroque. I don't like the way it looks but I want to learn the technique.

[@muhammadamir8419]

Is it possible to construct these shapes ????

[@IndustrialBonecraft]

Regardless, he has a point: as the guy said - this is incredibly labour intensive and impractical. I'd love to see this type of thing become a reality - a new architectural era, but how are you supposed to make one that would be truly useful? Those columns are holding up how much weight? I can't see them bearing too much of a load.

[@kittenmittenkitten]

It's called art. You may have heard of it. We make sound for sounds sake, and call it Music. We arrange words into literature not for functionality, but for what it says to us. Why can't we have architecture for architectures sake?

[@nguyen3545]

Doctor Strange: Write that down! Write that down!