Fabrications

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 EPS block. I provided the Rhino and Grasshopper files with…

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, which is already calibrated to the robot. Students used “Actual…

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 all the facets due to the limitation of the robot’s…

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 components of the Robots plug-in are used to convert this…

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 of 50mm and has 8 holes for screws with a…

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 course (not specific to any fabrication machine, however, this semester…

This is the basketball cup that won the design contest organized in 2018 by the Turkish Basketball Federation (TBF). Nadide Ebru Yazar and Mete Yazar proposed this idea, and I modeled that in Rhino and rendered it with Neon. Among more than 150 designs, the jury chose our design due to its dynamic formal expression. Cage-editing was very efficient in creating this kind of free-form surface. However, the production phase becomes a lot challenging when we realized that metal printing…

The “Common-Action Wall” Project of the POTplus Design Research Group, founded by Fulya Akipek and Tuğrul Yazar from BİLGİ Faculty of Architecture, got an honorable mention in the category of “Completed Projects/Small Projects” in “S.ARCH 2018 Project Award”. For detailed information about the “Common-Action Walls” Project, please click here and here Members of the Jury: Toyo Ito, Toyo Ito & Associates, Architects (Japan)Prof. Will Alsop, aLL Design (UK)Mats Ove Frosterud, TENGBOM (Sweden)Prof. Leon van Shaik, RMIT University (Australia)Viviana Muscettola, Zaha Hadid Architects (UK)Peter Exley, Architecture is Fun (USA)Jan Mattsson,…

In 2017, during the 4th International Architecture Biennial of Antalya, we constructed the Common-action Wall in Karaalioğlu Park. We designed this architectural prototype as a wall that enables the growth and harvesting of edible plants for park users. To facilitate plant growth and ensure sunlight access, as well as to direct rainwater toward the plants, we conducted extensive studies on minimal surfaces. Ultimately, we found that the gyroid form met all the requirements. It proved advantageous during the production process,…

It has been nearly 2 years since we designed and produced this garden. Similar to the first version, Common-action Gardens #2 is injected in formal park layouts. We build it for recreation as garden structures with an aim to support the “preserve, sustain, and share” idea. Thus, we expect to bring people together while producing. These gardens organize sustainable models for communal living by integrating raised beds, planting holes, water bowls, compost holes, seedboxes, tool pots, niches for animals, and…