Discourses

This is an old research paper, prepared with Birgül Çolakoğlu. It is in Turkish and includes our first results in some of the Rhinoscript exercises. Here is the abstract of the paper; Recent research in architecture have focused on to understand computational methods of formal exploration and expression. Computational mechanisms have been used to readdress formal issues using new techniques and methods. Computational tools that operate on algorithmic logic are central in these explorations. Despite the proliferation of computers in architecture today, use…

One of the cult texts in Shape Grammars theory is Stiny‘s Chinese Ice-ray Lattices Grammars. Although it is full of technical terms, it represents an analysis of a working algorithm. We can directly transfer that from the behavior of an artist. One can imagine a Chinese artisan, summoned to a building site. He brings tools and implements and a collection of finely finished sticks. Then, he begins his design by selecting a stick of the appropriate length and carefully attaching…

This month became a retrospective for me. This was my first animation, prepared for the CAAD Graduate course of Ahmet Turan Köksal in 2002. It was an inspiration from SDF-1 of Robotech. The terminal model is my graduation project at YTU Faculty of Architecture in 2001. It was a terminal bus project for İstanbul modeled in AutocadR14. I mirrored it with a ground plane to create the space station. Other spaceships and grape-like houses are done with Rhinoceros 3.0 (again, they were my…

Below is a part of Heidegger’s famous text, “The Question Concerning Technology”, on Techne, Epistinio, Poiesis; Revealing “… We are questioning concerning technology, and we have arrived now at Aletheia, at revealing. What has the essence of technology to do with revealing? The answer: everything. For every bringing-forth is grounded in revealing. Bringing forth, indeed, gathers within itself the four modes of occasioning – causality – and rules them throughout. Within its domain belonging to end and means belongs to…

After explaining the beautiful parquet deformations of William Huff, Douglas Hofstadter states his opinions about the algorithmic potentials of those patterns. Although it was 30 years ago, Hofstadter points out a fundamental discussion related to today’s parametric design tools; …for a machine to make simple variants of a given design, it must possess an algorithm for making that design which has explicit parameters; those parameters are then modifiable, as with the pseudo-Mondrian paintings. But the way people make variations is…

In 2007, we conducted a computational design studio in YTU / CADU with Birgül Çolakoğlu. Below is the brief of the paper published at METU JFA Vol24 issue 2 titled “An Innovative Design Education Approach: Computational Design Teaching For Architecture”. We were dealing with how new technologies are affecting the design cycle. Rhinoscript is used as an educational tool, and various short exercises are conducted with it. After 6 years, I still think of ways how to construct a proper…

Architectural education in its relation to computational technologies is both becoming a part of these studies and having the potential of renovating itself with the knowledge of emerging technologies. This paper, in this framework, will be presenting a design research studio that aims at developing relational thinking capabilities in the computational design process. In this studio, topics of parametric design, parametric modeling, and relationality were questioned through the design process. In the 2006-2007 spring semester in the Graduate Studio II…

This simple tool, N-Grid resembles John Hejduk and colleagues’ famous design exercise “The Nine-Square Grid”. I developed the tool in 2009 using MaxScript. The nine-square grid is one of the most common kit-of-parts exercises in design studios for over 50 years. To explain briefly, the nine-square grid exercise is based on transforming a nine-square grid into a series of alternatives. The nine-square grid is an open-ended educational application with a limited but flexible context. It can have infinite interpretations to meet various studio objectives. Robert Slutzky, John…

From the 2009 eCAADe paper presented with Birgül Çolakoğlu titled; “Designer as Casual Coder: Overview of an Experimental Design Studio”; In recent years, computational approaches in architecture started to change the scope of the architect’s work. He/she is not any more a passive tool user instead, became a casual tool developer. Conventional CAD systems that focus on geometric representation of a designed artifact, are transforming into systems in which the design is represented as a parametric process. By increasing utilization…

It was the 2008, eCAADe Presentation at Antwerp together with Birgül Çolakoğlu and Serkan Uysal. This paper presents a student work developed in the Introduction to Computational Design graduate course titled “Designing the Design” at Yildiz Technical University. The course focuses on the use of algorithms as design tools, rather than coding experiments. The course runs parallel to the shape grammar course. There, we study the basic concepts of computation through visual design exercises. So, the shape grammar course teaches…