Studios

This is a new series aimed at beginners in Grasshopper. The design method pioneered by Grasshopper with the way he defines geometric relationships is becoming increasingly popular today. Its interactive interface, which looks like a game or a puzzle at first glance may seem easy and its impressive geometric results are a little dazzling. But when you enter the world of Grasshopper, it is understood that it is not a simple toy at all. It is very difficult to get…

Hydrophilic Structures is the 2018-2019 Spring Semester Graduate Studio of the Architectural Design Program. The studio aims to increase the public interaction with water, while being sensitive to the ecological and historical context of the shores of İstanbul. Students will be encouraged to design sustainable, floating modules and structures, which can be integrated into semi-open architectural programmes. A full-scale prototype will be fabricated and tested at the Santral Campus coast to Haliç. The main conceptual framework of the studio consists…

Below are some of the student works from the 2018 course: Design Mathematics. The final project of the course was about experimenting the designerly creativity. This included utilizing the mathematical concepts and objects studied throughout the semester. This was a rather open-ended homework question. But in the following years, I am not planning to repeat it. Because it becomes difficult to assess the learning outcome from open-ended homework within such a strict course content. Ayşenur Gençsoy experimented with the tool…

In Design Mathematics 2019 course, Berke Çelik designed the Enneper Slide in his final project. The Enneper surface is an interesting case since it is a minimal surface with potential variations for spatial implementations. Berke used Rhino Math and Grasshopper / Weaverbird to generate his design. I think the Enneper Slide, as a minimal surface, is an exciting start for a Design Mathematics student work. But as always, much more could have been studied. Unfortunately, Rhino Math is no longer…

Today, I am introducing a student work from the Design Mathematics course. Foad Sarsangi is a very talented designer, who attended my elective course last semester. The final project he studied was inspired by Peter Zumthor’s Bruder Klaus chapel. Foad wanted to experience its special production process. However, as the course was about “mathematics”, he also studied, solved, and generated an interior volume to be subtracted from a solid mass. Here are the project documents: This is the production workflow….

This is a student project of the Computation-based Basic Design Lanterns finals of the year 2019. This year was exceptionally successful in creating 3d components and constructing relationships as a systematic whole. Again, the students started with small-scale experiments on folding and attaching cards. This is a study of how planar elements can generate volumetric units. They also studied Archimedean solids to understand geometric performances of particular shapes. We encouraged students to develop and control three-dimensional structures instead of thin…

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 about a design exercise of dataflow diagrams. In the most…

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 are some of the photos of the design and construction…

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 the well-known “right-hand rule”. In mathematics and physics, the right-hand…

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