Folding Facade, Gulfport-Biloxi Airport
This semester was an exploration of hurricane resistance and digital tools as a new way to design. I choose to design a facade for the Gulfport-Biloxi Airport control tower that was damaged from Hurricane Katrina. It was damaged in a predictable way, where lifted edges an an otherwise flat facade are and at higher heights where winds are stronger.
I was influenced by ideas from Peter Jackson’s “Folding for Designers” that presented origami like folds. I choose to digitally model a folding technique that folds flat. This would be desirable so that the “shutters” could fold away or be stored that way. Also the fold has variability that could represent where there needs to be more wind resistance.