Double Buckle
Simulating Failures
Instructor: Evan Farley
Project Team: Carrie Anderson, Jae In (Samuel) Choi, Roger Labib
The project began with a column—one of architecture's most elemental structural figures—and a question about what happens when it gives way.
Working with SolidWorks, we modeled a standard 6" round column and ran it through a structural failure simulation. Rather than treating the resulting deformation as something to correct, we took it as a formal proposition: the buckled, compromised geometry became the intended output, a physical expression of simulated collapse.
In casting the form at full scale, a 6' column, the material introduced its own logic. The casting failed: it burst, leaked, and buckled under conditions the simulation had not anticipated. What had been a digitally predicted failure was met with an actual one.
The final column carries both. The cracks, bulges, and leaks left by the physical failure were not repaired or concealed; they were absorbed into the piece as a second layer of expression. The project became a record of two distinct failures, one controlled and computed, one contingent and material, and the formal residue each left behind.
Double Buckle sits at the gap between simulation and substance, asking what is lost, added, or revealed when a digital prediction meets the resistance of the real.
Instructor: Evan Farley
Project Team: Carrie Anderson, Jae In (Samuel) Choi, Roger Labib
The project began with a column—one of architecture's most elemental structural figures—and a question about what happens when it gives way.
Working with SolidWorks, we modeled a standard 6" round column and ran it through a structural failure simulation. Rather than treating the resulting deformation as something to correct, we took it as a formal proposition: the buckled, compromised geometry became the intended output, a physical expression of simulated collapse.
In casting the form at full scale, a 6' column, the material introduced its own logic. The casting failed: it burst, leaked, and buckled under conditions the simulation had not anticipated. What had been a digitally predicted failure was met with an actual one.
The final column carries both. The cracks, bulges, and leaks left by the physical failure were not repaired or concealed; they were absorbed into the piece as a second layer of expression. The project became a record of two distinct failures, one controlled and computed, one contingent and material, and the formal residue each left behind.
Double Buckle sits at the gap between simulation and substance, asking what is lost, added, or revealed when a digital prediction meets the resistance of the real.
2025
Mold & Cast
Failure
SolidWorks Simulation
