My interest in polyhedra, Bézier curves, and other computer-generated geometric and mathematical abstractions does not come from a desire to model nature. What draws me to them is their sort of “alienness.” These are not objects we encounter ready-made in the natural world; they are constructed by the human mind. Yet once we construct them, they are no longer subject solely to our minds. The moment we define a tetrahedron, a Bézier curve, or any other geometric structure, relationships, necessities,…

Sharing the latest scary pattern from my old pattern archive. This time, instead of using Parakeet, I designed it using only standard Grasshopper components. We start with a hexagonal grid. We exploded the cells of this grid and found the midpoint of each edge. By connecting these midpoints, we again created closed polylines. Then, we exploded these closed polylines, turning them into a sequence of data lists. Next, we place a point on each exploded segment (reparameterized with a t-value…

15 years ago today, on my older son Mete’s 5th birthday, I started writing the designcoding.net blog. My first post was titled “Emergent Polygons.” Back then, I had just started learning a new language called Grasshopper. I was working on defining emergent polygons, one of the key issues in the theory of Shape Grammars, using Grasshopper. I updated the GHX code to GH and re-posted it in 2024. Now, exactly 15 years and exactly 600 posts later, Mete turned 20…

For a long time, the vocabulary of my work has been built on the tools and languages of architectural geometry. Through the blog chapters of Algorithms, Discourses, Studios, and Fabrications, my days are spent on this production. ​Yet, as time passes, a quiet friction begins in me. ​There is a distinct difficulty that comes with living entirely within symbolic systems, languages that measure, calculate, and optimize. I strive to capture complexity through code, but in doing so, I sometimes stop…

Continuity in piecewise Bézier curves was one of the important topics of our first-year architecture geometry course. Here, I will briefly summarize what this course attempts to convey. Since there are many ways to define it, I have summarized them below and tried to indicate how each is perceived visually. C0: Position Continuity This refers simply to the end-to-end connection of two Bézier curve segments; there are no gaps between the curves. The endpoint of the first curve is on…

During my sabbatical at Loughborough University in 2023, as part of a project we carried out together with Prof. Avşar Gürpınar, I had the opportunity to use the Parakeet and pyEmbroidery add-ons together in Grasshopper. Gürpınar and I wrote the following text based on this experience. Digital embroidery preserves several prominent and intrinsic qualities of lace while opening the design realm to digital and parametric modeling. It is possible to establish a seamless yet dynamic operational and creative bridge between…

I see that nowadays everything is accelerating at a terrifying pace with AI. Acting like a complete dinosaur in yesterday’s class, I looked back and talked about this facade design code I wrote in 2015. One of its early versions was a classic wavy facade using an aluminum frame and membrane. 10–15 years ago, these were very trendy. They were designed for use on a factory facade. Right now, my goal is to use this to explain some fundamental concepts…

I found the Grasshopper code I wrote in 2014 while helping a friend with a construction detail project. These structures were cigar-shaped and featured quite challenging interior layouts. A significant part of the detail design phase was the facade study. Such a waveform was requested for the balcony railings, wrapping around all the building’s facades. As you can guess, Grasshopper was a tailor-made tool for this exact job. I revised the code in 2020. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find the version…

I would like to share my Polyhedra library, which I have used in many projects. Initially, I wanted to build this code based on the geometric constructions of polyhedra. However, because I urgently needed it for projects I was working on at the time, I took a simpler route and hardcoded the vertex coordinates directly inside. Yes, that wasn’t quite in the spirit of designcoding, which is why I called it a “library” rather than a “Polyhedra Generator.” Currently, the…

Informal use of Voronoi diagrams can be traced back to Descartes in 1644 Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet used two-dimensional and three-dimensional Voronoi diagrams in his study of quadratic forms in 1850. British physician John Snow used a Voronoi-like diagram in 1854 to illustrate how the majority of people who died in the Broad Street cholera outbreak lived closer to the infected Broad Street pump than to any other water pump. Voronoi diagrams are named after Georgy Feodosievych Voronoy who defined…