Studios

Another tutorial we’ve analysed together with ARCH362 students last week was the one that mimics Zaha Hadid’s Kartal Masterplan. Although the project of Zaha Hadid was pretty much controversial among Turkey’s architectural critics (and most people also), we’re not dealing with how successful or “ugly” it is, but the most simple version of the technique that generated such forms. We have a term “çakma” in Turkish that means “conscious imitation, possibly full of errors”. But however, this “çakma Kartal Project” example has…

This year’s Parametric Modeling class starts with some of the very basic use of Grasshopper concepts. This definition is a practical start-up of using force fields in the architectural design process. However it does not compute any physical phenomena (such as circulation of people, wind, or anything else), but shows a simple way to tell Grasshopper about walls that push the field, and points that pull the field. I’ll post more of this kind of basics, hopefully along with some student…

This video is dedicated to Design Computing and Basic Design students, who “contour” and then move each section by hand in Rhino. They do it individually to fabricate their laser-cut homework from cardboard. It could also be a macro but I prefer this. Because it does not work in all conditions. Maybe you should orient your contouring results similar to those shown in the video, and then use the shear command to spread them. I called this method “shear magic”. Let’s…

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 and made both physical and digital models. Two of these methods were dominant in the class however, one of them was the variations of Miura-Ori, and the other one was Ron Resch’s famous folding pattern. Below…

The Hose is our last material system of 2014, designed and produced at the Computation-based Basic Design I studio section. We instructed this section together with Can Sucuoğlu and Birgül Çolakoğlu. This group of students succeeded in developing a flexible but strong connection detail. It allowed them to generate the desired macro form quickly. However, the overall look of the final composition should have been much better. Because, it was placed in a little hurry, due to the snow and heavy rains….

The 2015 Basic Design Studio was one of the good seasons. The project named “Fireball” is an example of high concentration. A group of students developed a material system from a very weak connection detail. The interesting part of the project was making it possible to stand by itself. They created the result purely by experimentation. In the beginning, they decided on the components and the overall geometric composition. So their research focused more on the possibility and precision of the materials…

This student project named Happy Ivy was lightweight but also very strong, a good start for research on fibrous structures. The 2015 group of first-year Basic Design students explains their project as; Arboriform, meaning “something tree-shaped” was the central theme of the project, however, we decided to focus more on the entwining movement of ivy. In order to create a material system that reflects this entwining behavior, we chose to research fibrous structures, specifically PVC hoses. It was a challenge to understand…

This is a student project on Computation-based Basic Design at Bilgi. The group of students completed it in the 2015 Spring semester. This research was very successful in achieving its intended physical performance, which was holding on to a tree designed for (and even near climbing up in some cases). The system is lightweight yet very powerful, holding on but not causing any harm to its “host body“, the tree. The group of students named the design “Commensal” and explained…

This is an unfinished research on textile tensegrity technique, developed at Basic Design I Studio of Istanbul Bilgi University. The result was not satisfactory as a design outcome, but yet an interesting educational experiment. Students explain their project as follows: Coral reefs and corals themselves were starting points of our research. After analyzing some of the coral forms and a couple of studio sessions, we came up with experiments of using “textile tensegrity” in our designs. We got inspired by many…

This project named Two Plus One explains itself very well. The students explained their motivation differently from the rest of the studio. In our Computation-based Basic Design Final Project, we are inspired by Theo Jansen’s Strandbeest sculptures, and we wanted to make our arboriform kinetic. First, we made a copy model of the original kinetic sculpture for ourselves in order to observe its shape, parameters, and movement patterns. We realized that the system can also move and generate interesting variations without actually “walking”….