GridShell

An algorithmic structural system generating sculptural, spatial and object outcomes

Inspired by Queensland’s iconic coral reefs, GridShell is an adaptable structural system developed by Suzy Syme and Andrew Costa to generate freeform sculptural designs from repeatable cellular logic. Combining computational growth, geometric structural logic and fabrication-aware assembly, the system allows one coherent formal language to move between occupiable installation, public sculpture, lighting and object outcomes. Across the works below, GridShell demonstrates how a single structural idea can be translated across scales while maintaining material intelligence, visual identity and public presence.

System Logic

GridShell combines a shell-based structural typology with algorithmically varied cellular growth inspired by foliose corals. It is used to generate lightweight, repeatable but non-identical forms that can be scaled from object and lighting outcomes to occupiable sculptural environments.

Featured Applications

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Coralescence - Occupiable Installation

Awarded: SWELL Sculpture Festival Highly Commended Neumann Family Award 2024

A large-scale 3D printed sculpture formed from unique interlocking cells, each algorithmically generated within a triangulated shell framework. Coralescence demonstrates GridShell at sculptural and installation scale, combining computational growth, fabrication planning and assembled structural logic.

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Coral Conservation Centre - Architectural Concept

A conceptual building-scale proposition extending GridShell into architectural framework territory. The project demonstrates the system’s capacity to operate beyond sculpture and lighting while retaining its underlying shell-based structural logic.

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Coralescence - Lighting Collection

Awarded: Australia's Next Top Designer Highly Commended 2024

A luminous translation of GridShell distilling the same cellular and shell logic into sculptural light objects. This demonstrates how atmosphere, enclosure and structural identity can be retained at an intimate scale.

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Coralescence - Homewares Collection

A further object-scale translation of GridShell, showing how the system can be reduced into refined domestic outcomes without losing formal identity or structural intelligence.

GridShell Compilation - by RAVEL

Across these works, GridShell demonstrates our capacity to develop a coherent structural language that can move from sculpture and installation into architecture-facing propositions, lighting and object design. Within Converging Tides: Form Follows Place, it evidences the project’s core cross-scalar proposition: one authored system translated through spatial thinking, sculptural development and refined object outcomes.

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