Joseph Bergin‘s pedagogical patterns for computer science education returned my attention to teaching methods I’ve searching for almost five years. Here is a phrase from a paper submitted to pedagogical pattern language project: Most educators and trainers are not taught how to teach. Rather, they often find themselves teaching by accident. Typically, a person with a skill that is in demand, such as a particular programming language, will be asked to teach […]

We can model a musical composition using native Grasshopper components. After the experiments with the timer component (here and here), I managed to build a definition that allows us to produce outputs in various time intervals. I converted a small part of Bach’s Bouree in E-Minor into Grasshopper as a guitar tablature. I used Guitar Pro 5’s MusicXML export function to convert classical guitar tablature into XML data, then organized […]

[GHX:0.8.0066] Here is today’s improvement on my metronome with the timer component, which started here. It’s straightforward to tell Grasshopper about seconds and organize it according to it. Using an interval smaller than 1 second, this small script catches every second and returns a different value. However, it’s much harder to implement smaller values than seconds. It seemed easy at first sight but getting accurate results smaller than seconds requires working […]

The logical structure of computer-aided architectural design tools is based on object orientation. New design methodologies named Building Information Modeling or Virtual Building aim to improve this structure by synchronizing the digital object classes with real architectural products. Therefore, CAD becomes smart and parametric. But from the design educator’s point of view, most commercial CAD tools are not useful and too complicated to implement basic spatial concepts. This is the […]

This was before Spherical Fantasies, while I was trying to update my surface equation definition. In between designerly intentions and mathematical facts, it’s hard to maintain a process, while keeping the definition yet simple and open to exploration. Grasshopper definition is here: [GHX: 0.8.0066] A little tired of mathematical definitions, I started to give names to the animate surfaces I develop. Like the Spherical one, this is also a trigonometric equation […]

This is about conforming distortions on surfaces and creating imperfect (say ugly) surfaces. I started with planar surfaces, however, I continued with spherical ones. There are interesting results when applying trigonometric functions to spherical surfaces. Example surface equations: W=(sin(x*y)) / 2 and W=(cos(x)+sin(x-y²)) / 2 Please be patient if animations are loading slowly. But they represent a way of creating free-form-looking surfaces, highly mathematical behind the scene. Here is the […]

This is probably the most simple definition on this site but I think it’s very useful. The timer is a special component of Grasshopper that is significant in terms of the real-time sketching paradigm. This basic use of a timer includes a 1-second update to a Vb script. Inside the script, the system date’s seconds are returned, so we see a real-time increasing number at output A. Beyond this point, […]

The Truncated Icosahedron (5,6,6) is an Archimedean Solid we often recognize as the iconic soccer ball. This geometric structure, also affectionately known as the “Buckyball” in honor of the visionary architect Buckminster Fuller, has gained significant popularity and recognition both within the realms of mathematics and everyday life. It is composed of twelve regular pentagons and twenty regular hexagons, meticulously arranged to achieve a harmonious balance. This symmetrical nature makes […]

Here is an interesting six-year-old quote from Rivka Oxman, telling us about a potential class of designers. The particular character, type, class or whatever we call could be more sophisticated people than we imagine today. It tells me that, advances in design computing does make high-end techniques available for large communities, and re-define basics of architectural geometry for everyone in digital age, but always there seem to remain a small […]

Truncated hexagonal tessellation (or named 3-12-12) is represented in hyperbolic space (as far as I understood it). The idea is simple if you don’t mix it with complex equations. Below is the 2-dimensional representation of hyperbolic projection. Paper space is defined by the thick line there. Projection is based on a two-sheet hyperboloid surface. Euclidean version of this tessellation is described here. Here is the Grasshopper3D file containing the above […]

[GHX: 0.8.0066] This is my second attempt on getting into non-euclidean representations of space. Althouth it seems easy at first sight, this represents a close point of theory between mathematics and contemporary computational design geometry. As always, architects tend to use mathematical terms such as “non-euclidean geometries” but as far as I saw, most of them have no idea about what it is. So, I’m trying to learn and understand this […]

İstanbul Bilgi University Faculty of Architecture Basic Design II Spring 2012 undergraduate studio* group 6 includes both a geometric exploration and material research. They examined various formal alternatives, using wooden sticks and plastic tie-wrap connectors. After these experiments, they constructed a 1:1 material system spanning 4 meters in length and 2 meters in height, using 2.5km of wooden sticks and 18.000 tie wraps. This was an enormous effort to create […]

This is my first attempt at representing a non-euclidean space. There are several representations of a non-euclidean space in euclidean means such as Beltrami-Klein or Klein, Poincare, Poincare half-plane, and Weierstrass. Here, I tried to understand Poincare’s approach. Random straight lines are drawn on a hypothetical hyperbolic space using a simulation of Poincare’s famous disk representation. Although there is a precise description of the disk and its construction, I used a ready-made […]

İstanbul Bilgi University Faculty of Architecture Basic Design II Spring 2012 undergraduate studio* group 8’s project is a metal surface construction. Group of first year design students were capable of designing, modeling, fabricating and assembling the structure with a good precision. After physical prototypes of the proposed spanning structure, they further experimented in rhinoceros and sent faces to plasma cutting and bending process. Finally, they assembled the faces with nails […]

Below is the final project of group 3 at İstanbul Bilgi University Faculty of Architecture Basic Design II Spring 2012 undergraduate studio*. First photo shows students’ efforts on generating  formal variations. They studied much on this folding components and attaching them together to create surfaces. Their final surface spans nearly 2.5 meters in height. Forex is used as main material and they nailed them from faces.  The different sizes, shapes […]

Using SPM Vector Components developed by two talented people, Daniel Hambleton and Chris Walsh (website here), I’ve studied ways of displaying dynamic diagrams of form. I’ve modified an example file and found myself in a surprising formal exploration. It’s like watching the clouds, giving them meaning like a sheep, a flower, a baby… Here is a link to the Grasshopper file. Right-click and save it to your computer (don’t left-click it) [GHX: 0.8.0066: SPM […]

This is the final project of group 2 at İstanbul Bilgi University Faculty of Architecture Basic Design II Spring 2012 undergraduate studio*. 1:1 material system is constructed by two layers of tesselfations, triangular and hexagonal. They studied much for the connection detail and elaborated the structure to maintain stasis within a dynamic pose. They have used a Grasshopper definition (described here) to label and measure all of 800 rods into […]