Hyperboloid House

A surface is doubly ruled if it contains straight ruling lines in two directions--i.e. through any given point there are two distinct lines that lie on the surface. There are only three types of these surfaces: the hyperbolic paraboloid (hypar), the hyperboloid of one sheet, and the plane. The Hyperboloid House deploys all three geometries in the calibrated production of a three-dimensional armature for space making.

Though the investigation of these surfaces was mainly the purview of 19th century differential geometers and mathematicians, doubly ruled surfaces had been in sporadic use in architecture as early as the 15th and 16th centuries. Well-behaved in projection yet complex in three dimensional space, their duplicitous characteristics proved instrumental in solving many challenging formal and linguistic predicaments of the Baroque masters.

The Hyperboloid House exhibits a rare hybrid of the hypar and hyperboloid. The subdivisions of its smooth and continuous surface serve as a 3D template, locking onto the volumetric and linear extruded elements of the interior. By addressing the horizontal and vertical projections as equivalent, it takes the Catalano House to another dimension.

2013

In collaboration with Cameron Wu
Renderings by Ashley Takacs and Michael Peguero