Wire-bending is a craft that started in the Trinidad Carnival in the 1930s. Projects in this area explore wire-bending at scales of architecture, dancing sculptures, and artifacts. This includes designing and conducting structural tests of connections and tectonics, materials testing, fabrication, construction technologies, and methodologies. The Bailey-Derek Grammar is a series of drawings that describe the materials, steps, and techniques in the craft of wire bending embedded in the Trinidad Carnival. This computational description allows analysis, synthesis, and the transmission of wire-bending knowledge and expertise for education and practice. Projects draw on theory to explore and extend a developing theory of wire-bending for new understandings of the relationship between wire-bending and society in practice and pedagogy and extend the Bailey-Derek grammar and its applications.
Related areas include:
Publications:
(2019) Vernelle A. A. Noel. “Reviving a Craft through Architecture: Computational Making of a lightweight pavilion based on wire-bending techniques,” in Form and Force, Proceedings of the International Association for Shell and Spatial Structures Annual Symposium 2019 – Structural Membranes 2019 – IASS, Barcelona, Spain. (October 2019).
(2019) Noel, Vernelle A. A. 2019. “A Framework for Repairing Craft: A Case Study on Wire-Bending in Trinidad & Tobago.” Pennsylvania State University.
(2019) Vernelle A. A. Noel. “Design Computation and Restoring Craftsmanship: The Bailey-Derek Grammar in Wire-Bending,” in Hello Culture! Proceedings of Computer Aided Architectural Design Futures Conference – CAAD Futures, (Daejeon, Korea. (June 2019): 950-969.
(2016) Vernelle A. A. Noel. “Crafting as Inquiry into Computation: Exploring wire-bending in traditional practice and design education,” in Complexity & Simplicity. Proceedings of the 34th Education and research in Computer Aided Architectural Design in Europe Conference (eCAADe), University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland, (August 2016): 311-320.
(2015) Noel, Vernelle A.A. 2015. “The Bailey-Derek Grammar: Recording the Craft of Wire-Bending in the Trinidad Carnival.” Leonardo 48 (4): 357–65. https://doi.org/10.1162/LEON_a_01089.