This is a robotic fabrication student project developed in the Digital Fabrication elective course in 2018. This group of students experimented with the hot wire cutting of EPS foam. Their aim was to create curved surfaces by using a straight wire. Design research started with a literature study of precedents. Then, after several cutting experiments with the available hotwire cutter tool, they gained better control over the technology. However, they […]

I will try to explain the student project called KUKABAE that was developed in my Robotic Fabrication elective course in 2018. This was a very interesting project. Initially, the students were doing the design to attach an ordinary pen holder to the robot. but then the project changed by chance. they decided to replace a pen holder with a ceramic knife. As seen in the video and pictures, the relationship […]

Here is a design exercise I’ve been giving to students. It aims to familiarize students with the concept of dataflow diagrams used in Grasshopper. Dataflow is a different concept than conventional computer programming. Here is a good comparison between control flow and dataflow languages. In most educational settings (such as courses and workshops) we concentrate on the fundamental issue of dataflow management via design projects. This requires us to think […]

Today, we tried to understand one of the ways of generating multiple planes in Grasshopper. This is an important step in utilizing the robot program efficiently. Instead of manually jogging the robot, we designed the path that the robot will dig lots of chopsticks. In the “Robotic Chopstick Digger Exercise”, every student designed their own paths and decided the height, orientation, and number of sticks to be dug on an […]

In the Digital Fabrication course, I needed to explain the plane orientation and rotation angles. This is why I prepared this Spatial Recognition Test. This is an important topic regarding the matching of the TCP (tool center point) plane of the robot and the plane(s) designers generate. In Rhino, we define a construction plane by red (X), green (Y), and blue (Z) colors. The relative positions among those axes are […]

Today in the Digital Fabrication course, we examined digital-physical translations utilizing the robots add-on for Grasshopper. Students learn how to get coordinate data from a physical environment, use it in the digital model and apply it to a robot motion. We aimed to dig chopsticks into an EPS block by using a special wooden tool called “Chopstick Digger”. In the first hour of the class, we attached the “pointer” tool, […]

In the Digital Fabrication course, we are in the middle of a sea, full of technical details, and students need motivation. This is why I felt I should do something simple and educational but funny at the same time; a “kissing the cube” exercise. The planned exercise was about programming the robot to touch every facet of a cube without colliding with it. Of course, we couldn’t manage to kiss […]

One of the new assignments of our Computation-based Basic Design studio is called “Self-Organizing Patterns”. Although I’m not very sure about their self-organization potential, there are several good examples of systematic pattern-making. In the third week of their design education, some of the students proved themselves very well in analyzing and re-configuring natural structures in 2D abstract compositions. Selina Şişik Kardelen Kurt Sude Aydın

In the first-year Computation Based Basic Design studio at İstanbul Bilgi University, the aim is to help students understand that design, due to its prevalent relational nature incorporates different forms of reasoning as indispensable constituents within the creative process (Yalınay Çinici, 2013). The studio integrates the 1:1 scale construction via computational thinking which consists of geometric relations, material computation/performance, and CAD/CAM technologies. The aim of the studio is to develop an awareness of immediate or far surroundings […]

Here is a short series of videos showing the basic usage of Ladybug tools in a canopy design. So, I prepared this for my Parametric Design Systems elective course. Then, I encouraged my students to design their own canopies utilizing a similar Ladybug workflow in Grasshopper. In this first video, I am building a test surface in Grasshopper. I use the Graph Mapper component to derive 3D points and Interpolated […]

Here is the abstract of my last publication in the International Journal of Architectural Computing. Parquet Deformations is an architectural studio exercise of William Huff in the 1960s. It aims to improve students’ reasoning of spatiotemporal variation by utilizing sequential shape-shifting of patterns. This article examines the outcomes of this educational research from the perspective of design computing. A multilayered reading about the exercise will reveal its historical, theoretical, and artistic backgrounds. Then […]

Introducing the new YouTube channel for designcoding! The architectural Geometry playlist will contain video tutorials on several topics of basic geometry exercises for designers. Below are the introductory exercises of polyline drawing and some planar transformations such as scale and rotation. It is also an interesting plane-filling fractal you know I like it very much.

Here is one of the exercises I tested with a few students in Architectural Geometry. The exercise is about creating Escher-like patterns. It is an introductory topic on the designerly utilization of regular tessellations. We use square, hexagonal, or triangular tessellations as underlying structures of complex patterns. Below are some of the student works from this exercise. I think the black-and-white coloring helps in terms of reducing the requirements. Although […]

This exercise was a popular one in the 2015 and 2016 Architectural Geometry classes. Recently, I found these images of student works. However, some of the students’ names are missing (please e-mail me if one of them is yours). I love this exercise because it is a quick and efficient way of explaining and experimenting with the workflow of digital to physical production. In this particular exercise, students created Rhino […]

It is a nice exercise to study various components of point-to-curve transformations and vice versa. Tower Crane was our second-week exercise at İstanbul Bilgi University Faculty of Architecture Parametric Modeling class, asking students to design and draw a parametric object that has joints and parts that are moving alongside straight lines. Below is the most “safe-side” solution for me, although there are also very complicated solutions such as Mertcan’s. [GHX: 0.9.0076] here […]

About to finish the well-defined section of this year’s Parametric Modeling course, here are the mid-term questions I’ve asked; First question checks if the curve < > point conversions are well understood in Grasshopper. Evaluating a parametric curve and generating the closest point from another curve. This also requires a basic understanding of the use of the Grasshopper interface. The second question was testing a basic and classical use of […]

The 2015 Basic Design Studio was one of the good seasons. The project named “Fireball” is an example of high concentration. A group of students developed a material system from a very weak connection detail. The interesting part of the project was making it possible to stand by itself. They created the result purely by experimentation. In the beginning, they decided on the components and the overall geometric composition. So their […]

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 […]

It seems that our first-year students of architecture, interior design, and industrial design take Rhino’s macro functionality very seriously. This encourages us to study algorithmic techniques more and more in the freshman year Design Computing class. Below are some of the results of this week’s assignment. They explicated the modeling process of their prototiles into macro codes, ready to be molded. Zeynep Dutipek developed the macro to reconstruct her prototile with different parameters. She […]

While preparing the Geometry yearbook, I picked these four patterns from the 4th week’s assignment, “Seamless Patterns”. I still love to see how these patterns are generated by students with very limited knowledge of computers and geometry. There are other posts about this assignment here and here. Below are four from this semester; Ceren Atik Zeynep Dutipek Ceren Atik Meltem Bayrak