Located in the Chelsea area of NYC, Contortion House is a housing complex designed for the artists. It has a very organic form which can stimulate the creativity of the artists and can better respond to the pop art culture rooted in Chelsea. This project is mainly based on the formal explorations using nCloth simulation in Autodesk Maya. Different material properties have been tested. A mathematic algorithm has been used to organize different individual living modules. A contrast between normative boxy geometry and organic "cloth" geometry has been made. And while the normative boxes are the private living units for artists, the organic "blobs" which inflated from the boxes become the public shared spaces which establish connections between boxes.

First, I started from testing and simulating different material properties(e.g. rigidity and thickness) and see how they behave when inflated.

Then, I applied the ideal material nCloth properties to 3 out of the 6 faces of a cube. By changing the dynamic parameters of inflation simulation (e.g. the location of the attractors, the direction of the inflation forces), I got different interesting results for a single unit.

After that, I also simulated how two different units will interact each others when being inflated at the same time. The expected results of "contortion" has been observed.

Manhattan is a pace of being "orthogonal". It does no only has a famous grid street system, it also has a lot of orthogonal architecture confined by the system. With an organic form, Contortion House challenges the normative orthogonal system and explore a new way of organizing living units.

The idea of "contortion" is in three different levels: (1) the formal contortion between different living modules in a macro scale, (2) the contortion of normative Corbusian elements(e.g. strip window and boxes) in a medium scale, (3) the contortion and interlock of different living units as represented in the section.