
Commissioned by Artwise Curators, UVA have created Linnaeus, consisting of two murals for the Capability Brown restaurant in Syon Park, London. (Photography by James Medcraft)
Using subtly lit relief panels, Linnaeus uses the park’s design as a framework for setting evolutionary conditions, to be evaluated by a generative algorithm. The actual topography is used to divide the panel’s surface area into sections that have corresponding ecosystems. As a result, an abstracted genetic tree of botanics runs left to right across the walls.
The second level contains the vegetation that make their genetics visible. They branch off the abstract first level branches and generate a more organic visual complexity.
In the end, all this is represented as two giant 10 metre long fossil excavations. The actual park topography and height data is translated to rock texture, with superimposed fossilised vegetation. (Text: UVA)

Linnaeus is the project I have been primarily occupied with when I was doing my internship at United Visual Artists last summer. I found Linnaeus to be quite an interesting project, as it confronted some fundamentals of generative design and the process of evolution while working within the constraints of aesthetics and of a historical context. As well as of course, some serious technical limitations. Rather uniquely, I was given the opportunity to develop the project pretty much on my own, supervised by Alexandros Tsolakis, senior architect and Matthew Clark, UVA’s creative director. Which was great.



The project itself isn’t interactive, but the two 10 metre drilled panels are the result of quite an exhaustive process. As an excerpt from the project manual I left behind describes:

One starts by generating the main branch structure, or genetic tree, in 3dsMax. Once this structure has been properly set up, a Maxscript interpolates between every two nodes, generating leaves and branches whose form represent the evolution from one node to the next. For every section between two nodes, the generated branches and leaves are rendered and exported as a heightmap.

Using Processing, the hundreds of exported heightmap images are aligned, blended and composited into three layers, those being leaves, branches and the main structure. The whole process is typically repeated a few times to provide more layers of leaves and add depth. Also in Processing, the rock texture is being generated by use of Perlin noise and some blending modes.
In Photoshop, the layers of generated imagery are composed together and with some human touch condensed into a controlled design which is then superimposed on the background layer. This background has the original park topography (where the evolution parameters were based on) embedded in it. The whole image, which has a resolution of a 0,5mm stepover, is now being divided into 20 slices approximately 1000px wide.

Again in Processing, the exported heightmap slices of the panel are converted to 3d models. The program generates one .obj file for every slice with a corresponding depth of 5 mm.
These .obj files then are sent to the CNC milling machine, drilling out the final panels. And that’s it! Easy as pie. Project done!

