COMPUTATION AS DESIGN:
RON RESCH AND THE
NEW MEDIA OF GEOMETRY

"Have mind, will travel" 1

Page from Hal Knight, “New Field of Design Found in Crumpled Paper Wad,” Deseret News, 30 April 1970. University of Utah Archives

Page from Hal Knight, “New Field of Design Found in Crumpled Paper Wad,” Deseret News, 30 April 1970. University of Utah Archives

The late 1960s and early 1970s were a period of profound experimentation in the application of the computer to diverse research questions. The advent of powerful and more affordable mainframes like the IBM 7090 series opened computational research to selected government, academic, and corporate groups eager to use the machines’ new power to extend the frontiers of fields as disparate as perceptual psychology and design. A few influential laboratories with the ambition to use the computer in innovative and cross-disciplinary ways emerged in corporate and academic environments, and these laboratories attracted experimental polymaths of all persuasions. Among this new breed of experimentalists was the designer Ron Resch, whose groundbreaking work qualifies him as one of the first true computational designers.

Resch joined the fledgling Computer Science Department at the University of Utah in 1969. At the time, Utah was already one of the most important centres of academic research into computer graphics in the world. As the only designer working in this context, Resch drew on his unique perspective and the expertise of research scientist collaborators to hybridize spatial geometry, computational methods, digital fabrication, and film media in a new way. He combined an artisan’s approach with computational tools to define an embodied understanding of complex geometry that was both physical and digital. Resch was no stranger to the messy process of invention, and he could be considered one of the earliest “design hackers,” embracing the opportunistic adaptation of both hardware and software. He was also one of the first designers to embrace the filmic and animated aspects of computational media, combining them with his physical models to explore innovative geometries. Most of all, Resch’s work prefigured the synthesis of design and computation:

Design is a kind of feedback between the artist and the environment, between the designer and some posed problem. It seems that the person is always in a position where he says, “What would happen if?” . . . The environment responds with collapsing quite often at his proposed solution when he fabricates it and then he makes modifications and goes again. And this loop goes back and forth. . . . It’s my hope that the computer can become a medium in which these posed ideas and supposed solutions can be tested. . . . The excitement for me is to try to develop the computer as a medium for exploration and as a medium for expression. 2

1

Ron Resch, quoted in Paul Hoffman, Archimedes’ Revenge: The Joys and Perils of Mathematics (New York and London: W. W. Norton, 1988), 84.

2

Ron Resch and Elmer Armstrong, The Ron Resch Paper and Stick Thing Film, 1970.

The unique constellation of researchers at Utah was essential to Resch’s innovative work. His career illustrates the possibilities created when designers work in such interdisciplinary contexts. Many of Resch’s most significant projects would not have been possible without the unique resources of Utah’s forward-thinking Computer Science Department: its large mainframe computers, its collaborations with mathematicians and computer scientists, and its tolerance for iterative and open-ended experiment. Architecture departments at other universities did strive to establish laboratories that drew from other disciplines and applied a quantitative approach—such as Harvard University’s Laboratory for Computer Graphics and Spatial Analysis, founded in 1965, and the University of Cambridge’s Centre for Land Use and Built Form Studies, founded in 1967. What differentiated Utah was that the focus on computer graphics was inherently cross-disciplinary, and Resch’s collaborators were often developing research that had far-reaching implications well beyond design. Resch demonstrated the potential of architects to engage this new research at the source, and in so doing created a template for a new kind of experimental designer.

A HEURISTICS OF
PAPER FOLDING

The research interests in geometric transformations that guided Resch’s computational investigations were already apparent in his work as a student of art at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, where he earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1963 and his Master of Fine Arts degree in 1966. As Resch explains in his self-made documentary The Ron Resch Paper and Stick Thing Film (1970), his investigations began with a class that addressed spatial compositions made with simple materials. This type of direct engagement with material was very much part of the legacy of Josef Albers’s pedagogy, established in his Vorkurs (“preliminary course”) at the Bauhaus between 1923 and 1933. As Albers and other Bauhauslers decamped to the United States in the 1940s, courses that drew from Bauhaus methodologies were introduced in art, design, and architecture schools across the country, and explorations of material were often foundational to these methodologies. According to Albers, paper was one essential medium of design and invention:

All art starts with a material, and therefore we have first to investigate what our material can do. So, at the beginning we will experiment without aiming at making a product. At the moment we prefer cleverness to beauty. . . . Our studies should lead to constructive thinking. . . . I want you now to take the newspapers . . . and try to make something out of them that is more than you have now. I want you to respect the material and use it in a way that makes sense—preserve its inherent characteristics. If you can do without tools like knives and scissors, and without glue, [all] the better. 3

3

Josef Albers quoted in Hannes Beckmann, “Formative Years,” in Bauhaus and Bauhaus People, ed. Eckhard Neumann (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1970), 196.

Josef Albers examining a folded-paper construction with students at Black Mountain College, 1946. Museum of Modern Art, New York

Josef Albers examining a folded-paper construction with students at Black Mountain College, 1946. Museum of Modern Art, New York

As if to take Albers directly at his word, Resch explored the inherent geometry and structure of paper under the self-imposed limitation of one single sheet with no cuts, only folds. Resch described his method as “pure phenomena-oriented research.” His chosen operation was a simple crumpling, followed by the precise measurement and rationalization of the resulting folds. From this intuitive action, he extracted and reinforced the creases that seemed the most primary or integral. Iteratively and methodically, he regularized these crease patterns as straight or simply curved, reducing them to essential and repeatable units. Finally, using these elemental units, he derived patterns of modules repeated symmetrically to create two-dimensional tessellations that induced, through folding, intricate three-dimensional structures. His process was a continuous feedback loop between the designer and the geometric constraints of the modelling medium.

If Albers’s methodologies indirectly influenced Resch’s early experiments, his ideas were directly shaped by the work of Buckminster Fuller. Much of Resch’s early work and writings were in conversation with Fuller’s Design Science program, a specific vision for the cultivation of intuitive problem solving toward systemic and global issues. While still an art student, Resch presented his work to Fuller at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, where Fuller was a research professor at the recently founded Department of Design. Fuller believed that artists had special advantages as design scientists due to their “capacity to recognize nature’s inherent patterns and extrapolate comprehensive design applications from them. ”4 In particular, Resch’s empirical but intuitive understanding of geometry resonated with Fuller’s emphasis on “experimentally founded mathematics,” a commitment to testing hypotheses and direct, un-self-conscious formal invention. 5

4

“According to Fuller, this was because artists had resisted specialization and maintained their inherent ability to think independently, intuitively and comprehensively.” Dana Miller, “Thought Patterns: Buckminster Fuller the Scientist-Artist,” in Buckminster Fuller: Starting with the Universe, edited by K. Michael Hays and Dana Miller (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 2008), 23.

5

Miller, “Thought Patterns,” 22.

Ron Resch meeting with Buckminster Fuller and his wife, Anne Hewlett Fuller, in Carbondale, Illinois, ca. 1960–1963. www.ronresch.org. © Douglas Trumbull

Ron Resch meeting with Buckminster Fuller and his wife, Anne Hewlett Fuller, in Carbondale, Illinois, ca. 1960–1963. www.ronresch.org. © Douglas Trumbull

Ron Resch meeting with Buckminster Fuller in Carbondale, Illinois, ca. 1960–1963. www.ronresch.org. © Douglas Trumbull

Ron Resch meeting with Buckminster Fuller in Carbondale, Illinois, ca. 1960–1963. www.ronresch.org. © Douglas Trumbull

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Many of the patterns that Resch uncovered in his thesis work as a student at the University of Iowa proved enduringly fascinating to him and became a core thread of exploration through his later research at the University of Illinois, where he taught after receiving his MFA, and ultimately at the University of Utah. His inventions include methods of understanding paper as a hinge system and a series of geometric modules that hinted at a general means of folding almost arbitrary forms from a single sheet. Specifically, Resch developed and patented what he called “tiled surfaces” or “flexible structures”: patterns of rigid shapes, such as triangles or squares, grouped in periodic formations so that they could rotate relative to each other and geometrically adapt to complex surfaces. The hinged movement of the shapes allowed simple two-dimensional patterns to fold into intricate three-dimensional forms.

Ron Resch. “Geometrical Device Having Articulated Relatively Movable Sections,” United States patent, 1965

Ron Resch. “Geometrical Device Having Articulated Relatively Movable Sections,” United States patent, 1965

In 1967, the Museum of Contemporary Crafts in New York organized the major exhibition Made with Paper, which situated Ron Resch’s geometric inventions between the legacy of Bauhaus structural paper folding and the geodesic structures of Fuller’s design science. The exhibition featured “structural uses of paper in architecture and design . . . illustrated by examples ranging from models of experimental geometric forms in the Bauhaus tradition by Kurt Londenberg to slide projections and enlarged photographs of modular systems for domes by R. Buckminster Fuller and Ernest Schaeffer.” 6

Resch’s contributions included geometric screens as well as a few larger installations. “Undulating between floor and ceiling anchor points was a huge white ceiling structure made of scored and folded paper modules, designed by professor Ronald Resch of the School of Architecture of the University of Illinois.” 7 In her introduction to the exhibition, Jane Fiske McCullough 8 writes:

Paper became the medium of ideas, in the sense shown in the Made with Paper exhibition as the by-product of a teaching approach—perhaps tried in many places but brought to fruition by Josef Albers in Dessau, Germany, about 1925. . . . The school’s teaching purpose, like Albers’s, was to destroy the academic tradition of copying of imposed aesthetic rules. Paper was not chosen as an instructive prototype of other material problems. Bauhaus paper study was a discovery process.

Thus, for McCullough, as for Albers and Resch, paper was “the raw material of ongoing creative search.”9

6

Flyer for Made with Paper, 1967. Courtesy American Craft Council Library & Archives.

7

Flyer for Made with Paper, 1967. Courtesy American Craft Council Library & Archives.

8

Later Jane Thompson

9

Jane Fiske McCoullogh, “Paper and the Bauhaus,” Made with Paper (New York: Museum of Contemporary Crafts, 1967), 6.

Ron Resch. Tetra Screen, 1967, in Made with Paper (New York: Museum of Contemporary Crafts, 1967). Courtesy American Craft Council Library & Archives

Ron Resch. Tetra Screen, 1967, in Made with Paper (New York: Museum of Contemporary Crafts, 1967). Courtesy American Craft Council Library & Archives

Ron Resch. Folded-paper study, installation view at Made with Paper, 1967. Personal archive of Robert Lang

Ron Resch. Folded-paper study, installation view at Made with Paper, 1967. Personal archive of Robert Lang

Ron Resch. Folded-paper study, installation view at Made with Paper, 1967. Courtesy American Craft Council Library & Archives

Ron Resch. Folded-paper study, installation view at Made with Paper, 1967. Courtesy American Craft Council Library & Archives

Ron Resch. “Self-Supporting Structural Unit Having a Series of Repetitious Geometrical Models,” United States patent, 1968

Ron Resch. “Self-Supporting Structural Unit Having a Series of Repetitious Geometrical Models,” United States patent, 1968

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COMPUTATIONAL MEDIA:
AN EMERGING ENVIRONMENT

Ron Resch and Elmer Armstrong. Ron Resch and Elmer Armstrong. The Ron Resch Paper and Stick Thing Film, 1970. R. Buckminster Fuller Collection, Stanford University

The architect, the engineer, and the designer have one common object of interest: the physical model. . . . If he changes some aspects of the model, he does not know what will happen to the total behavior. At this point he performs some kind of experiment.10

10

Ron Resch, “Experimental Structures,” in Emerging Concepts in Computer Graphics, eds. Don Secrest and Jürg Nievergelt (New York: W. A. Benjamin, 1968), 311–312.

After his graduation from the University of Iowa in 1966, Resch became a professor in both the architecture and computer science departments at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, where he would remain until 1969. This joint appointment matched Resch’s increasingly hybrid methods, through which he sought to embed computation in an architectural-scale process of form finding. The computer augmented his specific model-based experimental methodology, while architecture provided a ready set of spatial problems. Resch often began his research with a hypothesis about the implications of a particular folding process. He interrogated this hypothesis through tactile empirical experiment, gradually refining an atomic set of transformation rules. The computer came into play when certain geometric phenomena become too intricate to grasp intuitively, or a certain question was too cumbersome to answer with paper models. The formal rules were then precisely described in an appropriate mathematical or computational language, often in conversation with other experts. Resch frequently collaborated with mathematicians and computer scientists to refine and implement the ideas he initially crafted using physical methods. During his short time at the University of Illinois, Resch moved fluidly between the computer science and art communities through events, exhibitions, and computer graphics conferences.11 In these contexts, he elaborated on his design methodology:

In my experience I have usually begun wondering what would happen if. . . . Appended to this “if” was some vague idea about how to relate the geometric elements of a structure. . . . Slightly oversimplified, this process may be viewed as a dialogue between man and the physical world, in which a question is raised and perhaps months later some kind of information is extracted. . . . The dialogue with the responsive physical environment can now be replaced by the dialogue with the responsive computer environment. Once the physical model can be simulated on the computer, rather complex alterations can be obtained and studied at relatively small expense of time and energy. It is not hard to imagine certain physical models are sufficiently complex, so that controlled observation is prohibitive, and only under computer simulation can one begin to grasp and describe the relationship variables.”12

Resch soon began using the computer to produce simulations and animations of patterns and dome structures. He also applied the computer to visualize trans-scalar transformations, from periodic patterns to more intricate systems. In addition to the computer’s ability to automate his existing investigations, Resch saw its potential to integrate assembly and structural solutions that could move geometry beyond surface to volume and architecture. In effect, the computer could realize the non-visible forces and information flows that had long fascinated Fuller.13 Using his computational and geometric skills, Resch consulted Fuller and the designer Peter Pearce for the development of software to calculate spaceframe bar strengths or automate fabrication of nonstandard frames. In Resch’s work, investigation into material qualities and an ambition for scale coincided with a powerful new digital means of simulation and realization.

11

Notably, Resch participated in the “Emerging Concepts in Computer Graphics” conference at the University of Illinois in 1967, along with the Bell Labs researcher Kenneth Knowlton and others.

12

Resch, “Experimental Structures,” 313.

13

According to Dana Miller, “Artists, specifically those engaged with developing media, closely followed Fuller’s emphasis on non-visible forces.” Miller, “Thought Patterns,” 37.

Ron Resch and Elmer Armstrong. Ron Resch and Elmer Armstrong. The Ron Resch Paper and Stick Thing Film, 1970. R. Buckminster Fuller Collection, Stanford University

Ron Resch and Elmer Armstrong. Ron Resch and Elmer Armstrong. The Ron Resch Paper and Stick Thing Film, 1970. R. Buckminster Fuller Collection, Stanford University

In 1969, Resch participated in two significant exhibitions that brought together work by notable emerging talent in computation. The first exhibition was the influential Cybernetic Serendipity, organized by the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, considered to be the first major exhibition on computational aesthetics. Resch’s contribution was a series of animated experimental structures, including geodesic domes and domes made through periodic patterns. The exhibition’s curator, Jasia Reichardt, included Resch’s film work in The Computer in Art, her 1971 book that expanded on the exhibition. 14

14

Jasia Reichardt, Computer in Art (London: Littlehampton Book Services, 1971).

Ron Resch. A two-dimensional transformation of a set of squares, in Emerging Concepts in Computer Graphics, eds. Don Secrest and Jürg Nievergelt (New York: W. A. Benjamin, 1968), 315–341

Ron Resch. A two-dimensional transformation of a set of squares, in Emerging Concepts in Computer Graphics, eds. Don Secrest and Jürg Nievergelt (New York: W. A. Benjamin, 1968), 315–341

Ron Resch. Domes and space frames, in Emerging Concepts in Computer Graphics, eds. Don Secrest and Jürg Nievergelt (New York: W. A. Benjamin, 1968), 315–341

Ron Resch. Domes and space frames, in Emerging Concepts in Computer Graphics, eds. Don Secrest and Jürg Nievergelt (New York: W. A. Benjamin, 1968), 315–341

Ron Resch. Domes and space frames, in Emerging Concepts in Computer Graphics, eds. Don Secrest and Jürg Nievergelt (New York: W. A. Benjamin, 1968), 315–341

Ron Resch. Domes and space frames, in Emerging Concepts in Computer Graphics, eds. Don Secrest and Jürg Nievergelt (New York: W. A. Benjamin, 1968), 315–341

Ron Resch. Domes and space frames, in Emerging Concepts in Computer Graphics, eds. Don Secrest and Jürg Nievergelt (New York: W. A. Benjamin, 1968), 315–341

Ron Resch. Domes and space frames, in Emerging Concepts in Computer Graphics, eds. Don Secrest and Jürg Nievergelt (New York: W. A. Benjamin, 1968), 315–341

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Resch was also invited to participate in the significant but little-known 1969 exhibition Mind Extenders, organized by New York’s Museum of Contemporary Crafts. The exhibition was positioned as

An assembly of new tools of design, intended to point out some of the possibilities for extending man’s powers further than ever before through technological processes . . . to increase the awareness on the part of both designers and the general public of the possibilities for flexibility and innovation through the imaginative use of new technological tools. . . . The exhibition is primarily concerned with tools and processes, and the relationship between them and the individual. It is not a show of specific techniques, nor one of definitive results. Rather it is an investigation of the design potential, often still in the exploratory stage, of technological equipment.15

15

Mind Extenders press release. American Craft Council Library & Archives.

Ron Resch. Computer-generated images, installation view at Mind Extenders, 1969. Courtesy American Craft Council Library & Archives.

Ron Resch. Computer-generated images, installation view at Mind Extenders, 1969. Courtesy American Craft Council Library & Archives.

Other participants in the exhibition included the filmmaker John Whitney, Nicholas Negroponte and Leon Groisser from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and the computational sculptor Robert Mallary, whose Quad III is one of the earliest numerically fabricated sculptures. Quad III is a stacked sliceform that resembles a finely turned wooden finial, and it was designed computationally and precisely cut using computer numerical control (CNC). A centrepiece of the exhibition was a replica of Charles Babbage’s difference engine, a conceptual predecessor of the modern computer, anchoring the exhibition in historical instruments of calculation. Mind Extenders placed Resch squarely among the core experimentalists defining a new approach to aesthetics through computational media.

Mind Extenders, installation view with Quad III by Robert Mallary (at left) and woven hangings made through computer-aided design by Janice Lourie, 1969. Courtesy American Craft Council Library & Archives

Mind Extenders, installation view with Quad III by Robert Mallary (at left) and woven hangings made through computer-aided design by Janice Lourie, 1969. Courtesy American Craft Council Library & Archives

IN THE LAB: THE DESIGNER
AS RESEARCH SCIENTIST

Resch joined the faculty of the Computer Science Department at the University of Utah in 1969 and embarked on a rigorous set of investigations into computational design geometry, building on his work at the University of Illinois. In the late 1960s, several universities and research institutions, such as MIT and Bell Labs, and non-profit organizations, such as Experiments in Art and Technology, called for fruitful cooperation between artists, designers, architects, and scientists. Often, cooperation was generously supported by government funding—notably from the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) of the United States Department of Defense—which had a crucial role in the reformation of American universities into more synthetic research institutions. 16 Resch’s position at Utah exemplified the collaborative work of the time: he was a designer, artist, and experimentalist in the context of a larger laboratory primarily devoted to scientific topics in computer graphics. When Resch joined the university, the Computer Science Department was already one of the pre-eminent centres of computer graphics in the world. There were only a few laboratories in the United States devoted purely to computational research, and many focused on more theoretical topics or were housed in departments of mathematics or other disciplines. Research into more applied topics, such as computer graphics, was not a concern for universities; the developments in computer graphics and early computer-aided design were led by corporate research centres such as General Motors. 17

16

James Lehning, “Technological Innovation, Commercialization, and Regional Development: Computer Graphics in Utah, 1965–1978,” Information and Culture 51, no. 4 (2016), 479–499.

17

Jacob Gaboury, “Image Objects: An Archeology of 3D Computer Graphics” (PhD dissertation, New York University, 2014).

Martin Newell. The Utah teapot wireframe, ca. 1975. This icon of computer graphics was developed in part to test visual rendering and simulation methods. School of Computing at the University of Utah. © School of Computing at the University of Utah

Martin Newell. The Utah teapot wireframe, ca. 1975. This icon of computer graphics was developed in part to test visual rendering and simulation methods. School of Computing at the University of Utah. © School of Computing at the University of Utah

Utah was an exception. The young department was founded in 1965 by David Evans, who had previously taught at the University of California, Berkeley, and worked with industrial computation applications. Evans was given unusual freedom to shape the research program. His aim was to build the department as a “Center for Excellence in Graphics,” a focus unique in the world. As Evans began the search for funding for his department, ARPA established a specific program for graphics work, through the influence of the computer graphics researcher Ivan Sutherland. 18 ARPA’s “visionary money” funding system was directed to specific figures and institutions with very little direction or prescription in terms of the research outcome. 19 Evans secured major research funding from ARPA and, over the course of the following decade, ARPA invested over 10 million dollars in the Utah program. This flexible structure was essential to fostering the exploratory character of research at the Computer Science Department. 20

18

Gaboury, “Image Objects,” 30–31.

19

Gaboury, “Image Objects,” 28–29.

20

Gaboury, “Image Objects,” 33.

Computer graphics were of interest to other institutions, but Utah’s program set them as the major focus. According to Ed Catmull, a graduate of Utah and later co-founder of Pixar:

Even at the time we knew it was special. And I would say a lot of it was driven by Dave Evans, who had almost an eclectic taste in getting unusual people together. So he wasn’t trying to come up with this rigorous program for how you develop this. It’s more like, “I’m going to get these people who are unusual thinkers and put them together in an unusual environment, and some good stuff will happen.” 21

21

Ed Catmull, quoted in Lehning, “Technological Innovation, Commercialization, and Regional Development,” 479–499.

Evans attracted many key figures in the field, including Ivan Sutherland—who later became Evans’s business partner, in the computer graphics firm Evans & Sutherland—as well as a handful of people from other disciplines who shared an interest in computer graphics. Through this strong thematic focus but diverse research agenda, the University of Utah managed to position itself at the forefront of computer graphics research.

Resch, more artist and designer than scientist, fit in well in the eclectic context of Utah. Despite a general culture of collaboration between computer scientists and artists, the Computer Science Department at Utah remained technically focused, and artists were often unable to satisfy the basic technical requirements for incoming faculty. 22 But Resch had developed a powerful geometric and graphic intuition, and this led to a number of research questions that related closely to the core of the department’s mission. His work on architectural, structural, and deployable systems offered a meaningful paradigm for potential applications of graphics research. Resch’s work at Utah exemplified Evans’s desire to build a department in which ideas count more than experience. 23

22

Gaboury, “Image Objects,” 258.

23

Gaboury, “Image Objects,” 261.

Ron Resch. Computer-generated kinematic analysis figures, in “Kinematic Folded-Plate Systems,” in Final Technical Report for Research Sponsored by ARPA, “Graphical Man/Machine Interactions” (1971), 29

Ron Resch. Computer-generated kinematic analysis figures, in “Kinematic Folded-Plate Systems,” in Final Technical Report for Research Sponsored by ARPA, “Graphical Man/Machine Interactions” (1971), 29

Like most of his colleagues in the department, Resch’s position depended on funding from ARPA, and his role at Utah was primarily devoted to research. His few classes included workshops co-taught with Ivan Sutherland “to familiarize about twenty graduate students with the methods that were being developed under the ARPA grant,” as well as some seminars of special interest, which were “fairly informal . . . four or five students in the class and it was just a forum for him to describe to us various ideas he had and show us some of the constructions that he had done in the past.” 24

24

Jim Blinn, interviewed by the authors, 2017.

Resch’s research work, on the other hand, was extensive. According to ARPA’s 1971 research report, Resch directed “the exploration of dynamically defined geometries and their potential applications.” During his career at Utah, Resch led two main projects: one on kinematic folded plates and another on curved-creased folding. An integral part of this research was the development of bespoke software to simulate folding geometry. Engineering professor Hank Christiansen collaborated with Resch on the development of mathematically and kinematically accurate digital models of Resch’s patterns. Resch’s later research considered the much more complex geometry of curved-creased developable surfaces. In this effort, he collaborated with the mathematician Ephraim Cohen to set up software for the design and manipulation of developable surfaces, defined by arbitrary curved folds in space. Although curved-creased developable surfaces had previously been explored by Albers and others, Resch was the first to approach this problem computationally. 25

25

His approach inspired the MIT computer scientist David Huffman, who later developed a mathematical understanding of curved-creased developable surfaces.

Ephraim Cohen and Ron Resch. Developable program, screenshots, ca. 1972. Personal archive of Ephraim Cohen

Ephraim Cohen and Ron Resch. Developable program, screenshots, ca. 1972. Personal archive of Ephraim Cohen

Ephraim Cohen and Ron Resch. Computer-shaded image of the curve crease as a folded edge, ca. 1972. Personal archive of Ephraim Cohen

Ephraim Cohen and Ron Resch. Computer-shaded image of the curve crease as a folded edge, ca. 1972. Personal archive of Ephraim Cohen

Ephraim Cohen and Ron Resch. Computer-shaded image of the curve crease as a folded edge, ca. 1972. Personal archive of Ephraim Cohen

Ephraim Cohen and Ron Resch. Computer-shaded image of the curve crease as a folded edge, ca. 1972. Personal archive of Ephraim Cohen

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A TOPOLOGY OF OBJECTS

Ron Resch. Computer-simulated images of folded-plate trusswork in flat, wrapped, and domed configurations, in “Portfolio of Computer Shaded Images,” Proceedings of the IEEE 62, no. 4 (1974): 496–502

Ron Resch. Computer-simulated images of folded-plate trusswork in flat, wrapped, and domed configurations, in “Portfolio of Computer Shaded Images,” Proceedings of the IEEE 62, no. 4 (1974): 496–502

A major result of Resch’s research at Utah was his 1973 paper “The Topological Design of Sculptural and Architectural Design Systems,” in which he elaborated on a vision of a future architecture, an anticipatory understanding of an emerging parts-to-whole relationship made possible by the computer. In this paper, Resch proposed an advanced “topological design system” for a new era of integrated design and manufacturing. His method is a system made of parts that are topologically uniform but may geometrically vary in their specific dimensions. The connectivity between these pieces is flexible and may adapt to various surface forms by folding.

Resch believed the new approach to manufacturing that the computer made possible could revive pre-industrial notions of craftsmanship. He argued that pre-industrial craftspeople made their designs based on prototypes that emerged from knowledge transmitted over generations. They were in close communication with the users of their products, and could adjust prototypes to meet specific needs. The Industrial Revolution, according to Resch, enforced standardization and segmentation of implicit design knowledge “into several explicit tasks and machines,” 26 interrupting the communication between the maker, user, and object. For Resch, a re-integration of this knowledge was possible by encapsulating the principles of geometry and transformation into automated systems, in which all the rules of elastic transformation were embedded. The result of this encapsulation is the possibility of what Resch called a “soft prototype,” a pliable and geometrically variable object that maintains transformable rules of fabrication and assembly, like a pre-industrial craft object. According to Resch, the soft prototype unlocks a universe of forms from elementary and component-based construction.

26

Ron Resch, “The Topological Design of Sculptural and Architectural Design Systems,” in AFIPS ’73 Proceedings of the June 4–8, 1973, National Computer Conference and Exposition (New York: Association for Computing Machinery, 1973), 643–650.

TOWARD A SOFT PROTOTYPE

While at Utah, Resch applied his ideas of numerically controlled topological design with the development of one of the first large-scale generatively produced and CNC–cut objects in the world. The object in question was a monumental egg-shaped sculpture for the small town of Vegreville, Alberta. Resch developed and built the Vegreville pysanka—a decorated Easter egg traditionally made in Ukraine—between 1973 and 1975. The project was highly publicized and was significantly ahead of its time in terms of its design methodology and integration of computer-controlled fabrication.

The Vegreville Pysanka (n.p., 1976), accessed through www.ronresch.org. © Douglas Trumbull

The Vegreville Pysanka (n.p., 1976), accessed through www.ronresch.org. © Douglas Trumbull

The project was initiated by the town of Vegreville, known for its large Ukrainian population, when it decided to erect a monumental sculpture of a pysanka to commemorate the one-hundredth anniversary of the establishment of the North West Mounted Police, later the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Aluminium was chosen as the material, and Permaloy Enterprises—which happened to be based in Ogden, Utah, not far from the University of Utah—agreed to anodize the material in three colours. 27 Executives from Permaloy knew of the work on dome structures that Resch was doing at the university, and he was soon brought onboard. “At first,” Resch recalled, “I laughed . . . but when they ended up giving me the job, I quit laughing for a year and a half.” 28

27

The Vegreville Pysanka (n.p., 1976).

28

Hoffman, Archimedes’ Revenge, 82.

Newspaper clippings, ca. 1976. University of Utah Archives

Newspaper clippings, ca. 1976. University of Utah Archives

For the next several months, Resch worked with two of his students, Robert McDermott and Jim Blinn, on the computer programming and mathematical description of his geometric concepts. McDermott was completing his PhD under Resch’s supervision, and his dissertation, “Geometric Modeling in Computer Aided Design,” detailed the process of developing the Vegreville pysanka.

A University of Utah informal meeting, with (from left to right) Yon Resch, Alan Schoen, Ron Resch, Robert McDermott, and Margit Resch, ca. 1973. Personal archive of Ephraim Cohen

A University of Utah informal meeting, with (from left to right) Yon Resch, Alan Schoen, Ron Resch, Robert McDermott, and Margit Resch, ca. 1973. Personal archive of Ephraim Cohen

Resch and McDermott created kinematic computer simulations of folded-pattern surfaces, searching for the most flexible and accurate surface approximations. Their first intuition, to approach the target shape through surface folding, proved problematic. They spent six months trying to sculpt and place the vertices of the triangles on the egg’s geometry, but ultimately failed. Complicating matters was the fact that an egg shape does not have a pure parametric description; it is neither an ellipsoid nor a sphere. According to Resch, “I took the egg project because I thought it would be easy. At the time, I had just made one of my folded-sheet structures in the shape of a dome. It looked much like the end of an egg, so I thought I’d take two of these domes, put a kind of bulging barrel shape between them, tie the three together.” In fact, the project demanded much more complex methods of reverse-engineering geometry. 29

29

Hoffman, Archimedes’ Revenge, 81–107.

HACKING, SHAPING, MAKING

From a geometric point of view, Resch and his team circumvented some of the challenges of the pysanka project by developing new geometric descriptions that aided the rationalization of the egg’s form. First, they defined the surface of the egg using B-spline functions, a recent development in graphics research. 30 They then simplified the patterning by mapping equilateral triangles—rather than folds—directly onto the surface and calculated any necessary displacements. Resch’s models of the egg were developed on a DEC PDP-10 computer in the SAIL programming language, a variant of ALGOL developed by the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at Stanford University. Blinn recalls that “McDermott originally wrote the program. I came in and just made some modifications to fix a few problems and speed it up a bit. And then once we had that, I took the data and put it in the PDP-11 computer that we had for my research, to do some colour images.” 31

30

Robert McDermott, “Geometric Modeling in Computer Aided Design” (PhD dissertation, University of Utah, 1980).

31

Jim Blinn, interviewed by the authors, 2017.

Ron Resch and Elmer Armstrong. Karol Media. The Challenge of the Unknown, 1983. © ConocoPhillips

Vegreville pysanka, diagram, in Jim Blinn, “The World’s Largest Easter Egg and What Came Out of It,” IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications 8, no. 2 (March 1988): 16–23

Vegreville pysanka, diagram, in Jim Blinn, “The World’s Largest Easter Egg and What Came Out of It,” IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications 8, no. 2 (March 1988): 16–23

Vegreville pysanka, diagrams, in Jim Blinn, “The World’s Largest Easter Egg and What Came Out of It,” IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications 8, no. 2 (March 1988): 16–23

Vegreville pysanka, diagrams, in Jim Blinn, “The World’s Largest Easter Egg and What Came Out of It,” IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications 8, no. 2 (March 1988): 16–23

Vegreville pysanka, screenshots, in Robert McDermott, “Geometric Modeling in Computer Aided Design” (PhD dissertation, University of Utah, 1980)

EVegreville pysanka, screenshots, in Robert McDermott, “Geometric Modeling in Computer Aided Design” (PhD dissertation, University of Utah, 1980)

Vegreville pysanka, screenshots, in Robert McDermott, “Geometric Modeling in Computer Aided Design” (PhD dissertation, University of Utah, 1980)

EVegreville pysanka, screenshots, in Robert McDermott, “Geometric Modeling in Computer Aided Design” (PhD dissertation, University of Utah, 1980)

Mapping the Vegreville pysanka, ca. 1973. The Vegreville Pysanka (n.p., 1976), accessed through www.ronresch.org. © Douglas Trumbull

Mapping the Vegreville pysanka, ca. 1973. The Vegreville Pysanka (n.p., 1976), accessed through www.ronresch.org. © Douglas Trumbull

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In addition to pursuing analytic and mathematical principles of graphics modelling, like his colleagues in the Computer Science Department, Resch directly connected modelling to fabrication. But, in the case of the egg, the intricacy of the geometric approach proved a challenge to fabricate. Resch had originally agreed to produce only the drawings and specifications of the Vegreville sculpture, with the understanding that the town would find appropriate contractors for the fabrication, painting, and assembly: “It became clear to me, however, that there was no way Vegreville could build it without calling an aerospace company to machine the tiles. . . . So I told them I’d build and paint it.” 32

Resch, McDermott, and Blinn developed a method of generating tool-path instructions from the computer model that included mechanical connections. As McDermott states in his dissertation, “A geometric definition does not immediately produce a part definition for a structure.” 33 The team divided the geometry into star patterns and equilateral triangles. Each star pattern was then “sandwiched” between two triangles and fixed with bolts. Alphanumeric codes were generated to label the pieces, and tabs were added to the star pattern that extended to the centroid of adjacent triangles. In this way, the abstract structure of the geometric definition was atomized into mechanical units that could be assembled.

Resch’s custom modelling software could produce machine instructions for the numerical control tape. These instructions drove a specially hacked computer-controlled plotter to create a numerically controlled scoring machine, first for paper and then for aluminium. Once the tool path had been defined, the fabrication process itself required considerable ingenuity. According to Blinn, “One of Resch’s most impressive achievements on the project was that he was able to convince the University Computing Center to let him use their flat-bed pen and replaced it with a motorized milling tool and replaced the paper with sheets of aluminium. The plotter then carved out all the different shapes.” 34 Finally, the colouring pattern was designed in collaboration with a Vegreville artist.

32

Hoffman, Archimedes’ Revenge, 107.

33

Robert McDermott, “Geometric Modeling in Computer Aided Design,” 121.

34

Jim Blinn, “My Time at Utah, 1974–1977” (presentation, School of Computing, University of Utah, 30 September 2017).

Cutting aluminium for the Vegreville pysanka, ca. 1975. The Vegreville Pysanka (n.p., 1976), accessed through www.ronresch.org. © Douglas Trumbull

Cutting aluminium for the Vegreville pysanka, ca. 1975. The Vegreville Pysanka (n.p., 1976), accessed through www.ronresch.org. © Douglas Trumbull

Cutting aluminium for the Vegreville pysanka, ca. 1975. The Vegreville Pysanka (n.p., 1976), accessed through www.ronresch.org. © Douglas Trumbull

Cutting aluminium for the Vegreville pysanka, ca. 1975. The Vegreville Pysanka (n.p., 1976), accessed through www.ronresch.org. © Douglas Trumbull

Assembly of the Vegreville pysanka, ca. 1975. The Vegreville Pysanka (n.p., 1976), accessed through www.ronresch.org. © Douglas Trumbull

Assembly of the Vegreville pysanka, ca. 1975. The Vegreville Pysanka (n.p., 1976), accessed through www.ronresch.org. © Douglas Trumbull

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The Vegreville pysanka project challenged Resch to apply his concepts of topological modular geometry to a large-scale construction project. Resch ultimately patented these developments in 1977 as “Self-supported Structural Unit Having a 3-Dimensional Surface.” 35 This patent manifests all of his conceptual innovations: the universality of his parametric tiling system, the potential of geometric modelling and computer graphics simulations to “map” the system onto any surface, and the direct connection of geometric modelling to numerically controlled fabrication. This patent constituted the first fully developed system of generative design and CNC fabrication for structures at an architectural scale. Similar sophistication would not be achieved in architecture again until decades later.

35

Ron Resch, “Self-supported Structural Unit Having a 3-Dimensional Surface,” United States patent, 1977.

Ron Resch. “Self-supported Structural Unit Having a 3-Dimensional Surface,” United States patent, 1977

Ron Resch. “Self-supported Structural Unit Having a 3-Dimensional Surface,” United States patent, 1977

LABORATORIES, COMPUTERS, AND
THE MEDIA OF DESIGN RESEARCH

Resch occupied a unique position both as a hybrid character at the border of architecture and the emerging field of computer graphics, and as a designer fully immersed in a computer science laboratory. The CAD-CAM revolution was decades away and the notion of a pliable, quasi-parametric language for architecture was even more distant. Resch was a pioneer on both of these frontiers, aided significantly by his unique role at Utah. The laboratory context of the Computer Science Department allowed him to work with mathematicians and computer scientists who could implement his intuitions. It also opened access to rare and expensive computer and fabrication hardware that was simply not available in architectural contexts.

Ironically, the aspects of the laboratory environment at Utah that allowed Resch to do groundbreaking work also limited his presence in architectural contexts. The notion of topology, later widely discussed in architecture, was not even on the horizon for most designers of the time. At certain points in his academic career, Resch did have opportunities to connect the architecture and computer science professions and to apply the potential of CAD-CAM, and he consulted on projects with architects who embraced mass-customized and quasi-parametric structures. 36 He otherwise remained largely outside the forum of architectural conversation. His experiments found more applications in unconventional design projects, such as speculative future architectures in film. Resch notably collaborated with Douglas Trumbull—the effects designer for 2001: A Space Odyssey—to develop the geometric designs of the kinetic megastructures and space vessels for Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979). Resch’s ultimate goal, the full industrialization of the non-standard construction method he developed for the Vegreville pysanka, proved elusive. His heavily experimental method could itself be a challenge. As Jim Blinn recalls:

His idea was that he had this tiling pattern for the egg and he was trying to figure out how to generalize that . . . in order to match up any surface. So he came up with various ideas. “Let’s try this,” and he tried and it didn’t work, and then, “Oh, let’s try that,” and it didn’t work. . . . So I learned after a while not to respond too quickly to ideas, because it took a lot of work, and it turned out that with a little thought, we realized that the idea would not work anyway.” 37

Nevertheless, Resch’s work endures as a remarkably synthetic and prescient model of design research. Through a powerful geometric intuition for the operative capacities of models, both physical and computational, Resch defined a methodology that proved well suited for a laboratory, and that was in turn shaped by the laboratory context. The symbiotic exchange between Resch’s intuition and his colleagues’ technical capacity was facilitated by the development of software that served as a medium of communication and as a repository for shared knowledge. Both the laboratory and the software became new frames for the recombination of organizational expertise. Software was the matrix in which the concept of the “soft prototype” as an adaptable structure evolved into the “hard prototype” of an industrial product. Resch reconstituted not only the disciplinary boundaries of the designer but also the frame and possibilities of the design research laboratory itself.

36

Resch addressed architecture directly in several presentations over the course of his career, including “Application of Computer Graphic Techniques to Architecture” (1968), “Computer Techniques as Applied to Architects and Architectural Education” (1968), and “The Designer-Computer Interface” (1982).

37

Jim Blinn, interviewed by the authors, 2017.

COMPUTATION AS DESIGN
Works Cited

Beckmann, Hannes. “Formative Years.” In Bauhaus and Bauhaus People, edited by Eckhard Neumann. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1970.

Gaboury, Jacob. “Image Objects: An Archeology of 3D Computer Graphics.” PhD dissertation, New York University, 2014.

Hoffman, Paul. Archimedes’ Revenge: The Joys and Perils of Mathematics. New York and London: W. W. Norton, 1988.

Karol Media. The Challenge of the Unknown. Bartlesville, OK: Phillips Petroleum Company, 1983.

Lehning, James. “Technological Innovation, Commercialization, and Regional Development: Computer Graphics in Utah, 1965–1978.” Information and Culture 51, no. 4 (2016): 479–499.

McCullough, Jane Fiske. “Paper and the Bauhaus.” In Made with Paper. New York: Museum of Contemporary Crafts, 1967.

McDermott, Robert. “Geometric Modeling in Computer Aided Design.” PhD dissertation, University of Utah, 1980.

Miller, Dana. “Thought Patterns: Buckminster Fuller the Scientist-Artist.” In Buckminster Fuller: Starting with the Universe, edited by K. Michael Hays and Dana Miller. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 2008.

Reichardt, Jasia. Computer in Art. London: Littlehampton Book Services, 1971.

Resch, Ron. “Experimental Structures.” In Emerging Concepts in Computer Graphics, edited by Don Secrest and Jürg Nievergelt. New York: W. A. Benjamin, 1968.

Resch, Ron. “The Topological Design of Sculptural and Architectural Design Systems.” In AFIPS ’73 Proceedings of the June 4–8, 1973, National Computer Conference and Exposition, 643–650. New York: Association for Computing Machinery, 1973.

Resch, Ron, and Elmer Armstrong. The Ron Resch Paper and Stick Thing Film, 1970.

The Vegreville Pysanka. N.p., 1976.

Computation as Design: Ron Resch and the New Media of Geometry is part of Studies in the Design Laboratory, a series of digital publications produced by the Canadian Centre for Architecture and the Harvard University Graduate School of Design that investigates case studies of the laboratory environment as an incubator for the integration of digital tools into design practice in the second half of the twentieth century.

Authors
Andrew Witt and Eliza Pertigkiozoglou

Editor-in-charge
Andrew Goodhouse

Design
Eric Hu and Matthew Tsang

Development
Daniel Hirunrusme

Special thanks to Jim Blinn, Ephraim Cohen, and Robert J. Lang

CCA The Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) is an international research centre and museum founded on the conviction that architecture is a public concern. Based on its extensive collection, exhibitions, programs, and research opportunities, the CCA is a leading voice in advancing knowledge, promoting public understanding, and widening thought and debate on architecture, its history, theory, practice, and role in society today.

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ISBN 978-1-927071-69-4

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