WIP COMAPPS: Project 1, Church of Seed

The Church of Seed was designed by O Architects, a Chinese firm and was built in the Loufu Mountain District, atop a hill overlooking the surrounding landscape. The church is notable for its unique construction employing bamboo formworks. This caused the concrete, cast in-situ, to exhibit bamboo textures. In addition, the sweeping organic form of the building is inspired from the form of a seed, an important Christian metaphor for the Word of God.

This 3D model was done using Rhinoceros 5, and employed many functions including but not limited to: Polyline, ExtrudeCrv, Offset, ProjectToCPlane, Project, BooleanDifference, BooleanSplit, ExtrudeSrf, MakeHole, Scale1D and Rotate3D,. The model took around 3 hours to build, and used drawings given by the architect as a reference. While building, the programme Bandicam was turned on and recorded the entirety of the building process. This was turned into a timelapse, which can be seen then be seen here:

As the drawings given by the architect were extremely limited, some assumptions had to be made. Thus, many references to photographs of the actual constructed church were made to ensure accuracy.

Step by step:

Although not mentioned, situational commands such as Project to C Plane and others were used.

I started by importing the plans into Rhino using the PictureFrame command, and then placing it in a layer and locking it. This allows me to trace the curves using ControlPointCurves.

After tracing, the closed curves were then extruded using the ExtrudeCrv command. The heights of the extrusions are deliberately too high; they'll be cut later.

Using the Polyline command I drew a line at the angle of which the extrusions were to be cut. Then I used the ExtrudeCrv command to create a plane. This plane intersected the extrusions. With the BooleanSplit command the extrusions were split and then trimmed to obtain the angles required.

Using Offset, I obtained a smaller closed curve. I Joined the curves together, and then using the MakeHole command made a depression for the roofs.

With the extrusions done, I moved onto the floor. Here I traced the steps unto a plane. As this is a chapel, only one room, the main sanctuary, was modeled. Other subsidiary rooms like the storeroom and toilets were not modeled.

MakeHole was used to create depressions on the ground plane repeatedly to obtain steps.

With the steps done, I used ChamferEdge to smoothen out the steps.

Moving unto the unique roof, I first traced the profile from the section and then used ExtrudeCrv. The extrusions were then Copied to the necessary places. These extrusions bisected the wall extrusions from earlier, and thus BooleanDifference was used to delete the excess pieces.

This unique balcony was first Extruded and then trimmed into the correct form using BooleanSplit.

Adding staircases was a simple affair. Boxes were made to the correct length and height, and then Copied and placed atop each other.

After placing it at the starting location, the excess was trimmed off using the BoolenDifference command.

Here I've started making the windows. Using a combination of Rectangle and Offset, the outlines of the windows were easily made. These closed curves were then extruded using ExtrudeCrv.

Each window element was then Grouped to form individual chunks to be manipulated later. The same process was used for doors.

Using the Rotate command, the doors and window panes were opened to create a small sense of dynamism to the model.

The clerestory windows were done in the same way. Scale1D was used to repair any holes that may have surfaced by extending window panes. This allowed me to quickly model repetitive elements.

Finishing touches. Half of the Cross was drawn and then Mirrored to ensure it is entirely symmetrical. It was then Rotated. MakeHole was then used to create the opening in the wall.

With the model finished, multiple Layers were then created, and Materials were assigned. All the building elements were then organized into such.