Design Geometry

Fields is a native group of components available since the very early version of Grasshopper. In today’s Design Computing class, we studied it again with the first-year design students. I studied these interesting and beautiful shapes earlier here, here, here, and here. The one you…

While digging through the lecture archive, I found this video I made in 2017. We introduce Platonic solids and Archimedean solids in the Design Geometry course at Istanbul Bilgi University. This video shows how we can create an Archimedean solid, the Truncated Tetrahedron, by folding…

Here is one of the exercises I tested with a few students in Architectural Geometry. The exercise is about creating Escher-like patterns. It is an introductory topic on the designerly utilization of regular tessellations. We use square, hexagonal, or triangular tessellations as underlying structures of…

Below is a simple tutorial class we studied in Rhino in 2015 and 2016. The exercise is called “A Low-Poly Habitat”. The aim is to create simple polygon models by analyzing the overall geometric topology of an animal body. First-year design students attended the exercise…

After this tutorial, we are still working on the basic ways of making contouring easier in Grasshopper. This is the updated version of the 2-year-old contouring definition in Grasshopper, with some additional functionality. It produces a flat and properly numbered output for each section. However, it…

Gaudi-like columns are generated as part of the “boolean” classes of Design Computing. The most inspiring, beautiful, and ugly variations are often done by boolean intersection, as this operation is the surprising one of the three brothers. While the class deals with the concept of…

Classical folding methods were subjects to be tested and studied in this semester’s design geometry classes. This has been very useful in introducing first-year students to 3d euclidean constructions and using physical objects as references to a digital model. Groups of students studied different folding methods…

Again, we revisited the seamless patterns exercise this semester. This is one of the main exercises of architectural geometry class. We expected to improve students reasoning on generative patterning while they explain their processes step by step. The key element of this exercise is the usage of…

It seems that our first-year students of architecture, interior design, and industrial design take Rhino’s macro functionality very seriously. This encourages us to study algorithmic techniques more and more in the freshman year Design Computing class. Below are some of the results of this week’s assignment. They…

Here are two macros that automate some of the classical structural styles in today’s architectural geometry. They could be developed more to include joint details, however. It is a relaxing experience to study macros when the process doesn’t have algorithmic expressions (such as recursion, iteration, or…

Design Computing classes conducted a “voluntary” assignment; a “contouring” fabrication, that outputs physical prototypes of the previous parametric wall assignment. They worked very well with the corrugated cardboard in fact and extended the simple contouring exercise in Rhinoceros into a design study of patterning and transparency….

While preparing the Geometry yearbook, I picked these four patterns from the 4th week’s assignment, “Seamless Patterns”. I still love to see how these patterns are generated by students with very limited knowledge of computers and geometry. There are other posts about this assignment here…

Unlike the classical Pattern Deformations assignment discussed here and here, this time we asked Design Geometry students in 2014 to explore deformations by using referential systems as a secondary space. We wanted them to create variations on a regular pattern only by deforming its underpinning lattice….

Below is some student works from this year’s Architectural Geometry / Pattern Deformations assignment. Students developed their own pattern deformation sequences mostly on regular tessellations. Based on the classical Parquet Deformation exercise, we tried to implement a rule-based approach in order to explore emergent patterns….

In Design Computing class, we have discussed how the parametric wall study (here) can be implemented to describe regular curved surfaces such as domes. This led us to well-known design compositions named Muqarnas. Previously we have studied how a parametric muqarnas definition could be in…

WFC Shangai is a design exercise in our first-year Design Computing class introduced by Onur Yüce Gün. This exercise emphasizes both analytical thinking and associative geometry and aims to utilize boolean operations as solid and void references in creating forms. We asked students to develop…

Here are some student works about the parametric wall exercise I briefly explained here along with a Grasshopper implementation of the core wall definition. Students are expected to design their own brick and compose it in a way that generates a seamless wall surface. Ömer Kirazoğlu…

This is a first-year design computing problem we studied last month. It is a simple parametric wall exercise introduced by Mete Tüneri. Creating a simple definition of a building brick to be placed on a straight path, and then manipulating the path to reform different…

This is a solid-void (or boolean) exercise for first-year students. It is initially introduced by Onur Yüce Gün as an in-class exercise but later became a design problem also. Before getting into the parametric wall and eventually muqarnas exercises, this small but effective assignment helps…

These are examples of 2.5D exercises in the design geometry course in my freshman year of architecture. We asked students to create extruded or referenced solids referenced from their previous exercise of pattern deformations, (examples are here and here). We also started to inject some…