#polyhedra

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 restrict the interaction of the citizens with the shore, and destroy the spaces for sea creatures, and vegetation. Thus, this random placement makes it difficult to interfere with a design/arrangement. Citizens try to reach the…

This year’s Computation-based Basic Design Studio finals were very successful. Below are some of our student’s design works, and lanterns that light the campus area at İstanbul Bilgi University. It was a great experience for them to seek a design system between the domains of material computation and architectural geometry. 28 first-year students of architecture, interior design, and industrial design completed their projects in groups of 4. Students: Aleyna Demirkök, Aleyna Yıldız, Ali Hayder Ali Al Obaidi, Ara Yerlikaya, Aybike Sarıgül, Ayşe…

According to Wolfram, By the duality principle, for every polyhedron, another polyhedron exists in which faces and polyhedron vertices occupy complementary locations. This polyhedron is known as the dual, or reciprocal”. We can use this method to generate new polyhedra from known ones. I tried to develop a Dual Polyhedra Generator in this Rhino Python script. First, the script asks a user to select a closed polysurface object. Then, it attempts to identify the area centroids of the faces. By…

Exercising the “folding” process of a nine-faced solid. Start from its net, and analyze the matching edges. Then, use sphere intersections to calculate the rotation angles. Visit here for more information about this solid.

Lokma is the name of a pastry made of fried dough soaked in sugar syrup or honey and cinnamon, typically shaped into a ring or ball. Unfortunately, it is not the “Lokma” we’ll study here. In Turkish, there is another meaning of the same word related to the history of Eastern architecture. It is the name of metal connectors in railings, mostly inside of the openings of garden walls and old Mosque complexes. We often call this system “Lokma Railing”…

This year’s “Lanterns” assignment was nothing short of spectacular. It left both the students and faculty in awe of the creative brilliance displayed. Despite facing constraints in terms of time and experience, the Basic Design students surpassed all expectations. They crafted mesmerizing compositions of polyhedra and intricate unrolled surfaces. Their ability to conceptualize and execute such remarkable lantern designs can be attributed to the valuable skills they honed in their Architectural Geometry courses. Throughout the studio sessions, we introduced a…

Below is one of the fourteen final projects of the freshman year Basic Design studio in İstanbul Bilgi University Faculty of Architecture. The component is made of folded aluminum sheets. Students insist that this is the most optimal solution to the problem of polyhedra in a component-based structure. They experimented with this shape a lot and tried their best to make one that has similar triangular faces on different sides, so the component would drive the macro form in diverse…

Becoming popular after the Beijing 2008 Olympics National Aquatics Centre‘s facade (which is believed to be a Voronoi subdivision, as an epic mistake), the Weaire Phelan structure is a solution of equal volumes with minimal surface area. This nice website briefly explains the phenomenon. There is also an implementation on Grasshopper by Jon Mirtschin. Here, I will be modeling the Tetrakaidecahedron of the Weaire-Phelan structure. First, we define the overall size by drawing a 20×10 rhombus. Copy the rhombus by…

This was a couple of weeks ago, together with my six-year-old son Mete, we decided to make a “ball” out of old memory cards. I was curious about a subdivision method, using only planar quadrilaterals to construct a sphere (named Sixty Square Sphere. There are a couple of models on www. Of course look much better than mine:=). However, my son was expecting a “ball” to play. Then, both of our expectations have been partially met, I think. You see…

This is the second year we are experimenting with a beautiful exercise with the Computation-based Basic Design 1 students at İstanbul Bilgi University Faculty of Architecture. The exercise is based on the ideas of Benay Gürsoy and Şebnem Yalınay, who are among the pioneers of this studio. The exercise is about the design and production of new year’s lanterns to be lit in the campus garden. Here are a few photos of the projects from the 2012 and 2013 semesters,…