surface

Relief in the context of art and sculpture refers to a technique where a three-dimensional form is created on a flat surface. The object or figure “protrudes” from the background, creating depth and texture. In this short tutorial video, I am modeling waves relief using…

Truchet patterns refer to a set of geometric designs based on simple, repeating shapes, usually tiles or squares. These tiles can be rotated or flipped to create complex and visually interesting patterns. A French mathematician, Michel Truchet introduced these patterns in the 1970s. Since then,…

In art, design, and geometry, folding involves bending or creasing a material—such as paper, fabric, or other flexible substances—into defined shapes or patterns. Folding techniques can also be used to create multidimensional forms and structures, blending artistic expression with practical functionality. In this short tutorial…

I have created a straightforward Grasshopper code that generates a Voronoi diagram on a surface. Then, it adds thickness to form a structure called a “Voronoi Cage.” In the initial step, I project a surface onto the ground plane (Z=0). The projected frame serves as…

I studied the interlocking joint details in Grasshopper here and here. This time, the interlocking structures were revisited with a cleaner code and an in-depth explanation. I believe that this is a very good educational exercise for learning the potential of the native Grasshopper components….

This is a useful tip both to solve some of the problems with custom surface subdivisions, and to explain the uses of parametric surface evaluations (the U, V, W thing) and the practical use of data lists. Step 1: Put your points inside 0,0,0 and 1,1,0…

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…

Fracture is a simple effect experiment on Grasshopper. Although it is not the best tool for an interactive media installation regarding its performance, I tried to use it as a simple sketching tool for concept development. It is the sketch of a material system we…

This is based on my failure of creating an optimum solution for planar polygonal subdivisions. There is a method called Tangent Plane Intersection (TPI), explained briefly here (sometimes similar algorithms are called “planar remeshing” and  “variational shape approximation”) which is effectively used in the Trada…

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…

This group used aluminum expanded mesh in order to test its balance between structural capacity and weight. They folded different-sized sheets to create components, then assembled them creating a span of 2,5 meters approx. They managed to control the macro form by manipulating the component…

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…

Previous studies on trigonometric surface equations showed me an interesting alternative. This is the modification of the breaststroke surface definition. This time, I’m trying to fix the equation and change input values in a fashion that the waves of the surface are not symmetrical. Here…

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…

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…

Digging out with Grasshopper, Rhinoscript, and Paneling Tools, everything seems to be more and more automated and fast. However my colleagues Mete, Benay and Elif reminded me that, we can always do much with those high-end architectural geometry tools, but we still have to understand…

Experimenting with various plug-ins for solar calculations, I found Daniel Da Rocha’s robust implementation of the solar position algorithm in vb.net. It calculates the solar angle of any place and time. Although it’s written in the old vb.net component, it still works great. I’m trying…

This is the basic form of a surface division, based on curvature. As each point on the surface has a curvature value, this might be used to dispatch those values and see the points at flat and curved parts of the surface. Here is the…

Trying to further improve my experience in parametric modeling, I’m mixing and joining old definitions to reveal different potentials. I’m experiencing spatial mapping or morphing in Grasshopper. This is an equivalent form of the “flow along surface” command in Rhinoceros. It re-builds a geometric composition…

Today, we’ve finished first phase, the introduction to dataflow management in visual programming environments; and conducted “well defined” part of the mid-term examination. First two questions were designed to test technical skills of data matching, geometric evaluation. First one was a simple algorithm that calculates…