A series of solids and structures that come together by assembling modular units based on slotted joints.
Some of this is inspired by George Hart’s voluminous work on slide-together units, and some has come from my own previous explorations of slotted constructions in card and mountboard.
For the first trial, I printed two kinds of square units - with and without an internal structure.
This allowed me to try various square configurations, virtual cubes, hexagonal voids, planes structures, etc.
Then I tried replicating George Hart’s slide together constructions, but instead of slits in paper, I used slots in a 3D printed frame. These were assembled in various configurations, defining icosahedral and tetrahedral shapes.
Yet another modular assembly was this attempt at a toroid / doughnut. I wanted to replicate the cardpaper version I had created in 2014 for an exhibition, but now with this frame-and-structure look I had worked out for the other slotted constructions.
While the pieces came together well enough with some effort, I realized that
- it needs more internal structure to stop the pieces being squished around
- I had printed very few pieces for the trial run and the total number needed would result in a full day of printing
- I did not have the patience to sit and assemble that many pieces for the toroid, having the memory of already doing it once earlier
- the trial run pieces came together to look like this otherworldly structure made of orbiting arcs that was quite neat on it’s own.
So all in all, I stopped there and the quar-toroid is where it’s at.