Here are two macros that automate some of the classical structural styles in today’s architectural geometry. They could be developed more to include joint details, however. It is a relaxing experience to study macros when the process doesn’t have algorithmic expressions (such as recursion, iteration, or conditionals). It is today’s subject in the first-year design computing course at İBU. The first one requires at least two curves already present in order to define a lofted surface (to be “waffled”): The second…

Here is the video of the project Life Sciences, designed together with Fulya Akipek, and engineered by Filika Interactive. To be presented in the 2014 Vitra Contemporary Architecture Series Exhibition, Life Sciences is an interactive project produced by Filika Interactive using Openframeworks following the conceptual and visual design by Fulya Özsel Alipek and Tuğrul Yazar. The project is an interactive presentation of the content obtained from the interviews made with primary education students by artists in a visual structure that resembles a…

Here is the simple Grasshopper definition that activates Rhinoceros’ camera by given parameters. Camera position is determined by the “point-oriented” method here. This means that you have to have a target point for the camera first. In fact, I was trying to find a suitable command for getting the actual camera position of the Rhinoceros but I think it is impossible (for now). I couldn’t track the camera object by its ID number also. There are some Grasshopper components that deal with…

Here is the winning team of this year’s mid-term jury competition in the first-year Basic Design studio at İstanbul Bilgi University. The challenge they undertook was called “Void by Subtraction.” Initially, the students engaged in a series of short-term exercises exploring solid and void relationships. Alongside the studio sessions, they honed their digital modeling skills through Architectural Geometry courses. Their task was to create a contoured structure within a restricted 8m3 volume. Through various iterations using clay and foamboard prototypes,…

Together with Fulya Akipek and Mehmet Ali Altın, we’re conducting a 4-day workshop at Anadolu University, Eskişehir, between the 1 and 4th of May. We’ll be focusing on Grasshopper + Firefly + RhinoNest (the casual trio), in order to introduce some of the basic concepts of parametric design to students. Materyal dünya, sayısal ortamın olanaklarıyla entegre edildiğinde beklenmedik performanslar açığa çıkabilir. Parametrik modelleme teknikleri, tasarımcıya tekil ürünün ötesinde olasılık setlerinin araştırılabileceği bir ortam sağlar. Bu tür olasılık setleriyle çalışmak, tasarım…

Design Computing classes conducted a “voluntary” assignment; a “contouring” fabrication, that outputs physical prototypes of the previous parametric wall assignment. They worked very well with the corrugated cardboard in fact and extended the simple contouring exercise in Rhinoceros into a design study of patterning and transparency. It seems that corrugated cardboard is a perfect material to study the shift from digital to the material. Below are some of the student works that study various angles of contouring on different seamless surface…

Here is a good brief explanation by Mark Garcia on how patterns re-emerged in the digital age after Modernism and Postmodernism. …In the 1980s and 1990s, Postmodernist patterns predominated, and especially those of Robert Venturi, Rem Koolhaas, Stan Allen and Sanford Kwinter (fields), along with historicist, folding, sprawl, cross-programming, high-density/proximity, non-places and other Deconstructivist and high-tech patterns. In 1992, Henri Lefebvre’s last book Rhythmanalysis: Space, Time and Everyday Life was published. Because Lefebvre’s keystone concept of ‘rhythm’ is identical to…

Vitra Contemporary Architecture Series #3, Life Sciences Project by Fulya Akipek and Tuğrul Yazar. The installation is a part of the exhibition called “Dreams to Realities” at İstanbul Modern Art Museum, curated by Şebnem Yalınay Çinici. Filika coded our design, an algorithm that generates rhizomatic structures of typography, that include words of children about “education”. Here is a preview image: A video is posted here. While systems aim to educate masses to achieve ideal standards, can the individual be a…

It is Baldequin (or Baldachin) in English, Baldeken, or Baldöken in Turkish. I don’t know which one is correct, but it is the name of a structural system of arches and pendentives that carry a dome. Sinan experimented with square, hexagonal, and octagonal variations in his mosque designs (as I developed parametric definitions of them in my 2003 master thesis (here)). Today, together with students we’ve modeled the system and tried to generate some variations by manipulating its parameters. Below…

Here is one of the student’s works from this semester’s parametric modeling elective course. We refer the first couple of hours in molding of concrete as its “alive” phase. During this phase, due to various reasons concrete sweats, respires and in a way contains an inner circulation of forces. This phase ends when concrete dries and hardens, creating a kind of its fossil. Air bubbles are frozen inside and some even are seeable from on surface. Just like human lung structure, concrete wall contains patterned random porous…