This year’s first semester at Basic Design Studio was full of surprises. Together with Can Sucuoğlu and Birgül Çolakoğlu, we coordinated 9 student groups in their 4-week final project called “Arboriforms“.  “Arbori-” is derived from the Latin word “arbor,” meaning “tree,” and “-form” indicates a shape or form. Therefore, we can understand “arboriform” as an adjective describing something that is tree-like in appearance, structure, or form. For example, one might […]

Again, we revisited the seamless patterns exercise this semester. This is one of the main exercises of architectural geometry class. We expected to improve students reasoning on generative patterning while they explain their processes step by step. The key element of this exercise is the usage of compass and ruler constructions. However, we didn’t keep this rule limiting their creativity too much. In this activity, we tasked students with developing a personalized […]

This is the Grasshopper definition that generates a tetrahedral helix (also called as Boerdijk-Coxeter helix) but in a funny way. This geometry is also a solution for tangent spheres. I generated the helix using Anemone components for recursion and gave it a little bit of responsiveness. I don’t know if it depends on the speed of your CPU but if it is slow enough, you’ll see the snake game of tetrahedral […]

This is one of the works of the three-day workshop at Eskişehir Anadolu University, called “Animate Patterning“. This project is based on our previous folding experiment posted here, while students advanced it, testing a folding style called “Miura”. They built a 2.5m x 1m folding pattern, explained briefly here. After analyzing, and testing the folding technique, they drew the tessellation composed of a single parallelogram. They joined the structure together with hinges and […]

Inspired by this cut-fold pattern, we developed a prototype with Fulya Akipek. The first experiments were made from 3mm thick foamboards and they worked very well with 50×70 plates. However, when the project gets bigger and bigger, we needed to add a joint detail and use 5mm thick foamboards to achieve our goal (that is to develop a 1m by 2.5m shutter system). Then, we tried to animate its folding behavior by […]

This is one of the ideas we’ve tested for the workshop “Animate Patterning“. Inspired by this work, Apart from the pattern that turns around, the torque, rotation radius and speed of the servo, weight, connection detail, and a number of foamboards become important inputs for this design. In the three-day workshop, one group of students interpreted this idea of using several moving layers and creating an emergent pattern at the […]

This is a Cycloid-like family of curves, generated by its classical description: a rolling circle. I had several other studies on similar topics before. In this cycloid experiment, I used Grasshopper in which, we don’t need to roll the circle. Instead, we can divide a parametric curve, utilizing data lists to simply rotate a circle around it. Finally, evaluating the circle repeatedly creates a Cycloid-like result. I found this as […]

While testing Anemone components for Grasshopper, I accidentally generated these branches by looping. In fact, I was trying to develop the definition that mimics the well-known “Arch SED” component method. This method uses the tangent vectors for the endpoints of the arcs. Then, it iterates the process in a random fashion so that the branches (arcs) join nicely. Anyway, this definition develops new branches from a previous one. It does […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

I’ve come across this nice website about the short history of tilings and tessellations. In this post, I am regenerating a tiling of Dürer rhombii. Albrecht Dürer sounds like one of the pioneers of some of the concepts of today’s emerging field of architectural geometry. Here is a phrase from that website about Dürer; “…Like Kepler, regular polygons and polyhedra fascinated Dürer… A large section of the Painter’s Manual is dedicated to […]

Below is some student works from this year’s Architectural Geometry / Pattern Deformations assignment. Students developed their own pattern deformation sequences mostly on regular tessellations. Based on the classical Parquet Deformation exercise, we tried to implement a rule-based approach in order to explore emergent patterns. The exercise seems to reveal endless improvisation potential. The exercise requires students to design a pattern deformation on a 28cm by 28cm area. It should […]

Force fields might be one of the most influential component sets of Grasshopper. Thus it also becomes a de-facto standard design approach like the Voronoi subdivision. There are beautiful examples of this mathematical solution. Here is a good explanation of mathematics underneath, and here are my previous studies. I tried to use the Grasshopper’s force field components and see how it looks like when animated. Thus, multiple spin forces are merged […]

While searching for a way to work with random points and growing populations, this idea appeared accidentally. I wasn’t trying to mimic the behavior of Karyokinesis of biological cells (in fact I’m in serious doubt about biomimicry in general). The trick is to use a timer + data recorder + a knob for the arbitrary user input. It starts to breed when you start the timer, but to change the […]

I learned this method from the open math resources website. I couldn’t help myself repeat it in Rhinoceros. It was quite fun to solve circle tangency problems in 2D, this is one of them: drawing the circle that passes three given points, not using ready-made commands but only geometric tools of the circle (compass) and ruler (line). Here is the sequence of it: First of all, we need to know […]

Here is a simple explanation of the famous Euclidean Constructions: Why didn’t Euclid just measure things with a ruler and calculate lengths? For example, one of the basic constructions is bisecting a line (dividing it into two equal parts). Why not just measure it with a ruler and divide by two?One theory is the the Greeks could not easily do arithmetic. They had only whole numbers, no zero, and no […]

Grasshopper still surprises me. This definition draws a spiral by using a random component. It is obvious that the seed value of the random component has a relationship with an archimedean or a similar spiral. My intention was to create a definition to put a number of random points inside a circular area, not a rectangular one. While I grow the radius of a circle and get a t parameter […]

I at the Center is a multiple-axes vertex deformation based on a quadrangular hyperframe, designed by David Oleson at the studio of William Huff in 1964. Below, you see the original drawing and my Grasshopper animation based on a single-point attractor, creating the “I” wherever it is. It was a pleasure to read and repeat this deformation, which is a nice exercise in data tree operations and also one of the […]

Instead of searching for an iterated and rule-based variety, this method captures instances of spatial deformation by transforming the hyperframe. This liberates us from a classical understanding of pattern deformations that are enframed within regular polygons, mostly rectangles or hexagons. Grasshopper has a built-in component to study such variety. The spatial Deform component gets vectors as inputs and transforms any given geometric object according to it. This website has also […]