This is a robotic fabrication student project developed in the Digital Fabrication elective course in 2018. This group of students experimented with the hot wire cutting of EPS foam. Their aim was to create curved surfaces by using a straight wire. Design research started with…

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…

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…

As the design of free-form architectural surfaces becomes easier, questioning and foreseeing the feasibility of the construction of these surfaces becomes important. Such an inquiry requires sufficient knowledge of architectural geometry besides the knowledge of materials and structural systems. In this article, we present a…

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…

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….

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…

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)…

This paper covers ongoing research titled “Growing an Architectural System”. It is an interdisciplinary work relating permaculture studies with computational design and production technologies. It includes testing some issues of performance via full-scale prototypes. Growing Pots is the first study we will mention in the…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

This is a competition entry on the innovative uses of natural stone. Urban Polyhedra aims to organize the natural stone usage, especially on the shores. In the current implementation of this system, random blocks are placed to prevent landslides on the urban coastal areas, but…

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…

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….