Axis One

05 — M.Arch Skills Module

Axis One

A high-rise written in code

Year
2025
Typology
High-rise residential
Tools
C++ · Alice2
Context
The Bartlett, UCL

A residential tower generated from blended scalar fields, written in C++ with the Alice2 framework.

The form is built step by step - a circular tower and a square field are combined, offset, smoothed and rotated - with every radius, offset and blend exposed as a parameter.

  1. Stage 1

    Circular tower with bottom, mid and top Endpoints() of adjustable radii.

  2. Stage 2

    Boolean union of a square shape with adjustable side dimension.

  3. Stage 3

    Offsetting the bottom and top squares in the x-axis to bring asymmetry, and the middle scalar field in the z-axis to make a dynamic mass.

  4. Stage 4

    A smoothing factor using a curved fillet on the boolean union, a Bézier curve to smooth the mesh interpolation, and a rotation component for the square scalar field.

Form-generation stages