Discourses

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…

Studio exercises are short-term and open-ended design activities that represent a constructivist learning approach by limiting design domains. They are student-centered, model and process-oriented educational tools. These qualities make studio exercises potential tools for integrating contemporary Digital Design thinking into architectural education. This research aims to reveal these potentials by defining an analytical perspective and logical connections between the pedagogical intentions of studio exercises and the theory of Digital Design. The first chapter of this research includes a definition of…

Under the dust of 10 years; revisiting my master’s thesis. This paper introduces research about the Computer Aided Instruction (CAI) tool which is based on the master thesis of Tuğrul Yazar from Yıldız Technical University (YTU) Faculty of Architecture Computational Design Graduate Program (BOM). The thesis is named “Expert Systems for Architectural Education: The Expert System of Sinan Mosques” and was completed in 2003 under the supervision of Dr. Birgül Çolakoğlu. YTU Department of Computer Engineering supported this research by…

This started as a pragmatist search of the term “Objectile”. I was curious about the real meaning of it, while the famous 1995 works of Bernard Cache were the thing I was looking for as images. I found two things about this word. One of them is the reproductions and online marketing of those famous carved panels (I was searching for), and while the second thing was a very interesting philosophical text from Levi Bryant, this blog (then became much more important…

Here is an interesting phrase from Jill Larkin and Herbert Simon’s famous article. It is “Why A Diagram (Sometimes) Worth Ten Thousand Words”; The phrase from the article My Thoughts on “A Diagram…” While perusing this text, I found myself curious about the correlation between “formal languages,” “algorithmic architecture,” “scripting,” and “problem-solving” and why we teach them together. The introduction to these subjects occurred during my enrollment in the Shape Grammars graduate course. Over the past decade, a fascinating re-connection…

This is my first try at DesignScript syntax. It is quite easy to understand and on-screen reference help seems to work well. It creates regular AutoCAD entities when you run. One of the most important concepts of this language is said to be a kind of associativity that updates objects when any parameter is changed while the script is running. However such associativity is not possible after the script has finished running. If you want to use the regular imperative…