This Is Just To Say
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
by
William Carlos Williams

This work links form finding through sound encoded emphasis with techniques of rapid prototyping. The used text is Hans Magnus Enzensberger’s German translation of William Carlos William’s Poem “breakfast”. The selection of the poem by the author was solely due to a certain emotionality in the text.

Waffling is a technique for prototy-ping small architectural models for the purpose of assessment. However, it is also used for the design of structural support in buildings.

To create the characters in a first step, the average audio volume of pronunciation of each individual letter was determined in Grasshopper. A three dimensional letter-Brep was then created, which is intersected by a grid of curves. After calculating the overlapping parts of the curve, the intersecting points were translated by the aforementioned mean value of sound volume. The deformed curves were then extruded, scaffolded with support struts, and placed on a cutting plan for further proces-sing in a laser cutter or plotter.