I will try to explain the student project called KUKABAE that was developed in my Robotic Fabrication elective course in 2018. This was a very interesting project. Initially, the students were doing the design to attach an ordinary pen holder to the robot. but then the project changed by chance. they decided to replace a pen holder with a ceramic knife. As seen in the video and pictures, the relationship […]

Here is a design exercise I’ve been giving to students. It aims to familiarize students with the concept of dataflow diagrams used in Grasshopper. Dataflow is a different concept than conventional computer programming. Here is a good comparison between control flow and dataflow languages. In most educational settings (such as courses and workshops) we concentrate on the fundamental issue of dataflow management via design projects. This requires us to think […]

Today, we have studied creating complex robot programs manually again. Platonic solids were the subject of this study. Students tried to create a sequence of robot moves that produces a Platonic solid out of a 17cm EPS cube. We simply call this the robotic hotwire cutting polyhedra exercise. However, the size of our hotwire cutter became one of the problems because of its risk of crashing. We crashed several times […]

This project is developed in the summer workshop titled Robotic Earthcrafts conducted at İstanbul Bilgi University Architectural Design graduate program. Students call this project “ZOM”. Students are Murat Sökün, Zeynep Çakmak, and Özlem Güven. We organized the workshop together with Fulya Akipek and Hülya Oral. You can find more details about the workshop here. In this project, a simple robot code created the EPS molds of the rammed-earth module. Below […]

Today, we tried to understand one of the ways of generating multiple planes in Grasshopper. This is an important step in utilizing the robot program efficiently. Instead of manually jogging the robot, we designed the path that the robot will dig lots of chopsticks. In the “Robotic Chopstick Digger Exercise”, every student designed their own paths and decided the height, orientation, and number of sticks to be dug on an […]

In the Digital Fabrication course, I needed to explain the plane orientation and rotation angles. This is why I prepared this Spatial Recognition Test. This is an important topic regarding the matching of the TCP (tool center point) plane of the robot and the plane(s) designers generate. In Rhino, we define a construction plane by red (X), green (Y), and blue (Z) colors. The relative positions among those axes are […]

Today in the Digital Fabrication course, we examined digital-physical translations utilizing the robots add-on for Grasshopper. Students learn how to get coordinate data from a physical environment, use it in the digital model and apply it to a robot motion. We aimed to dig chopsticks into an EPS block by using a special wooden tool called “Chopstick Digger”. In the first hour of the class, we attached the “pointer” tool, […]

In the Digital Fabrication course, we are in the middle of a sea, full of technical details, and students need motivation. This is why I felt I should do something simple and educational but funny at the same time; a “kissing the cube” exercise. The planned exercise was about programming the robot to touch every facet of a cube without colliding with it. Of course, we couldn’t manage to kiss […]

One of the new assignments of our Computation-based Basic Design studio is called “Self-Organizing Patterns”. Although I’m not very sure about their self-organization potential, there are several good examples of systematic pattern-making. In the third week of their design education, some of the students proved themselves very well in analyzing and re-configuring natural structures in 2D abstract compositions. Selina Şişik Kardelen Kurt Sude Aydın

Today, we started learning Robots add-on for Grasshopper. The first two codes we experimented with were similar to the first week’s jogging exercises. In the first one called “axial jogging”, we had 6 number sliders to control the angles of the axes. Every number slider generates values between -Pi and +Pi. These numbers are joined into a text by adding a comma in between. Then, Create program and Simulate Program […]

On the second day of the Digital Fabrication course, we tried to understand what is a “tool” and how to draw/ produce/ attach/calibrate a simple penholder tool for our robot. This study will hopefully make students aware of the effects of these procedures in robotic design and fabrication. The tool we used here is based on this Rhino drawing laser-cut from a waste plexiglass sheet. The flange of our robot has a diameter […]

In this semester, I started a new elective course at İstanbul Bilgi University Faculty of Architecture. Second, third and fourth-year architecture, interior design, and industrial design students attend the course titled “Digital Fabrication”. I am very excited to study the basics of robotic fabrication together with the students. I’ll try to report the content of the lectures and the robot exercises on designcoding.net. Below is the general brief of the […]

This is the first assignment named Design in the Forest of the new “Computation-based Basic Design” curriculum at İstanbul Bilgi University Faculty of Architecture. We are excited to see the students merging their conceptions of natural structures with the skills they start gaining in geometry classes. In the next assignments, we expect to generate patterns and structures by the abstraction of these initial sketches. Humay Aliyeva Sude Akay Here is an […]

In the first-year Computation Based Basic Design studio at İstanbul Bilgi University, the aim is to help students understand that design, due to its prevalent relational nature incorporates different forms of reasoning as indispensable constituents within the creative process (Yalınay Çinici, 2013). The studio integrates the 1:1 scale construction via computational thinking which consists of geometric relations, material computation/performance, and CAD/CAM technologies. The aim of the studio is to develop an awareness of immediate or far surroundings […]

Jumping into the world of mathematics as a designer seemed to be frightening at the beginning but I opened a new elective course at Bilgi, Design Mathematics. Starting today, I’ll try to log my experiences with the students while we are trying to understand mathematics. The ultimate objective is to find paths that may lead to answering the following question; “what is the relationship between design and math”? Next week, […]

The Cut & Fold & Craft exercise is the mid-term project for last year’s Computation-based Basic Design Studio at İstanbul Bilgi University Faculty of Architecture. I really enjoyed the technique called Kirigami. Most of the projects are not flat-foldable but they are all cut from a single sheet of paper. This technique seemed a little bit limiting at the beginning, but the students managed to design very interesting compositions in […]

Here is a short series of videos showing the basic usage of Ladybug tools in a canopy design. So, I prepared this for my Parametric Design Systems elective course. Then, I encouraged my students to design their own canopies utilizing a similar Ladybug workflow in Grasshopper. In this first video, I am building a test surface in Grasshopper. I use the Graph Mapper component to derive 3D points and Interpolated […]

This year’s Computation-based Basic Design Studio finals were very successful. Below are some of our student’s design works, and lanterns that light the campus area at İstanbul Bilgi University. It was a great experience for them to seek a design system between the domains of material computation and architectural geometry. 28 first-year students of architecture, interior design, and industrial design completed their projects in groups of 4. Students: Aleyna Demirkök, Aleyna Yıldız, […]

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 complex patterns. Below are some of the student works from this exercise. I think the black-and-white coloring helps in terms of reducing the requirements. Although […]

This exercise was a popular one in the 2015 and 2016 Architectural Geometry classes. Recently, I found these images of student works. However, some of the students’ names are missing (please e-mail me if one of them is yours). I love this exercise because it is a quick and efficient way of explaining and experimenting with the workflow of digital to physical production. In this particular exercise, students created Rhino […]