veiled house
surry hills. nsw. australia

the veiled house in surry hills is in the final weeks of construction certificate. the project proposes a conversion of a 2 bedroom, two storey terrace to three bedrooms by adding an additional level + ground floor rear extension. an 8m high x 2.5m metre wide black anodised laser cut screen is proposed to veil the entire infill section (entry) of the house which we conceived to be of a highly decorative but light articulation.

stage: under construction


pattern detail


street view with infill section

while we were searching for a (pre-made) lace algorithm on the internet, amongst the plethora of doily’s, lingerie catalogues and czech handmade wall hangings, we found a really inspiring project by friends of droog. although it’s an amazingly beautiful approach in tackling ‘the standardized’, it’s bespoke fabrication technique couldn’t help in a search for automated lace generation… so we had to crack on and write our own code for a delicate complexity.

The inspiration of lace by algorithmic generation gave us the opportunity to experiment with a number of VB parametric scripts (in grasshopper) to articulate the membrane.

the objective of the script was to:
1. pack shapes within boundary (via hacking steven janssen’s circle packing rhinoscript);
2.bloom lace (through nesting and recursive functions);
3. vary the material thickness to gradate opacity of the screen.

grasshopper - parametric definition

we are continuing to expand the code with controlled differentiation of the packing shape scale and fenestration detailing. a sample of a scripting bloom can be seen in the top (entry) image.

construction of the project is expected to commence early january.