Discourses

There are cognitive, technological, and pedagogical ideas and experimental studies on architectural design education in virtual environments. In the existing literature; new software tools were developed, add-ons to existing software were developed, or software prototypes were developed and tested on various platforms such as game engines. In the distance education model, currently, there is no stand-alone software, specifically developed for the needs of architectural design studios. Similarly, there is no generally accepted pedagogical approach in this field yet. Virtual Environments…

This is a return to the Swirly Flames tutorial I made in 2013 here. Since then, Photoshop changed a bit. There is no more Variations tool. Therefore, I had to use other tools such as Color Balance, Hue/Saturation, Inverse, etc. to achieve the same effect. It is still cool for me, personally, although we are in the age of AI-generated images now. It is not the visual result only, but the memories it carries until today. Nowadays, I am translating…

This paper investigates the integration of robotic fabrication into first-year undergraduate design education, particularly in a basic design studio. Traditionally, robotic technologies are not introduced at this level due to perceived skill gaps among novice students. The study demonstrates the potential and strategies for incorporating robotic arms into early design education through an experiment conducted at Istanbul Bilgi University. The experiment involved 32 students from various design disciplines, divided into control groups using hand-held tools and test groups using a…

The SpaceChase plugin for Grasshopper focuses on initiating dynamic capabilities to Space Syntax theory by introducing the “Dynamic Canvas” model along with real-time editing capabilities in an interactive physics-based environment. Therefore, SpaceChase is a software development project for “Mekan Dizimi Tasarım Uygulaması” (no:119M082) under the ARDEB 1001 program of TUBITAK (The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey). Architectural design, as a cognitive activity, has always been fed by architectural knowledge based on practice and theory, and it has been questioned how creative…

This is the new paper with Meryem Nurefşan Yabanigül, published at Automation in Construction. It is also Meryem’s master’s thesis. This study is about testing the production of curved surfaces with non-linear robotic hotwire cutting and shape memory alloys. Below is the abstract of it: Robotic arms are being used by construction firms and schools of architecture around the world in design/build research and material studies. Some of these studies utilize robotic hot wire cutting (RHC) as an efficient production…

The SpaceChase plugin for Grasshopper focuses on initiating dynamic capabilities to Space Syntax theory by introducing the “Dynamic Canvas” model along with real-time editing capabilities in an interactive physics-based environment. SpaceChase is a software development project for “Mekan Dizimi Tasarım Uygulaması” under the ARDEB 1001 program of TÜBİTAK. It is a collaborative research project between İstanbul Technical University, İstanbul Bilgi University, and Tuşpa Design Studio. You can find more information about the project here. In SpaceChase, a Kangaroo-based dynamic graph is introduced along with contextual node and…

This is a new paper published in Nexus Network Journal. I tried to implement euclidean constructions by compass in the approximation of famous parametric curves; Bézier curves, and B-Splines. Then, I created the algorithms to calculate the number of steps on a compass-only construction of Bézier curves. I developed a simple Python script to simulate the geometric constructions. However, I have been studying this topic for nearly four years. In the future, I wish that it would be a good…

Together with Sevde Dinçer, we published a new study on the digital reconstruction of muqarnas. This is also Sevde’s ongoing Ph.D. topic. Previously, she started studying muqarnas geometry in her master thesis under the supervision of Togan Tong. Then, she advanced her studies in this field. Eventually, my contribution to this study was about redefining and comparing the three major modeling approaches. Apart from that, the case study, literature research, and all the rest were done by her. This paper…

As the design of free-form architectural surfaces becomes easier, questioning and foreseeing the feasibility of the construction of these surfaces becomes important. Such an inquiry requires sufficient knowledge of architectural geometry besides the knowledge of materials and structural systems. In this article, we present a preliminary example of a guide. It supports the design and production process of building surfaces with different geometric properties is presented. This guide aims to reveal the relationship between Gaussian curvature and surface paneling. It…

This paper covers ongoing research titled “Growing an Architectural System”. It is an interdisciplinary work relating permaculture studies with computational design and production technologies. It includes testing some issues of performance via full-scale prototypes. Growing Pots is the first study we will mention in the paper. It is about the design of a micro-permaculture system and 3d printed products realized by students of an elective course. On the other hand, in the second part of the paper, we explain the…