I recently stopped by the Institute of Technology in Architecture, ETH Zurich to try the new coffee machine and to give a presentation on optimization. Thanks a lot to the members of Gramazio Kohler Research for bearing with me. I had a great time … and coffee.
Imagine that I give you a flexible rope like the one in the figure above and promise to give you as much land as you can encircle with it on a flat surface. What shape would you choose? This is a classic isoperimetric problem that I used to start my presentation last week.
