A new perspective to look at ice-ray grammar

Abstract

Chinese lattice designs are a rich source of interesting geometric forms and shape grammar has been used to analyze and generate Chinese lattice designs. Following the origin design intention, researchers have already defined simple and intuitively compelling shape grammar rules to generate them. However, for some self-similar ice-rays, it is difficult to clarify the design intention of them, which is why researchers still cannot define shape grammar rules for them. In this paper, we utilize the culture hints to select the lowest-level constituent for shape calculation and clarify the design intention embedded in the ice-rays. We develop our new shape grammar rules based on the design intention and validate the rules by generating an existing ice-ray window. ©2011, Association for Computer-Aided Architectural Design Research in Asia (CAADRIA).