This is our eCAADe paper with Fulya Akipek, explaining our 2013 Workshop series called “Infections”.

Contemporary trend of the computational design education is grounded on an integration of domains such as fabrication technologies, material studies, and generative techniques. This requires not only an intuitive handling on digital tools and methods, but also an experience on material and production constraints simultaneously.

Patterning emphasizes a material shift in the generative side of the digital paradigm, and a geometric shift in the material side, as well. The study presented in this paper is an example of the integration between digital tools and material practices by implementing pattern deformation as a synthesizer. Such integration liberates students from passive and formal search of an on-screen parametric modeling, familiarizing them to a more practical and sophisticated body of knowledge about the physical becoming itself. Nevertheless, the articulation and reconstruction of patterns help pedagogical objectives as they promote temporal but instant, explicit but unstable nature of design exploration.

Here is the rest of the paper if you are interested: [PDF File] Also, the “workshop” section of this blog has detailed coverage of the first two Infections Workshops.