Evolutive Design. Workshop

 

Texas A&M University Department of Architecture.

Grasshopper Scripting Workshop

October 10, 11 & 12

Taught by David Hernandez M. 

Schedule:

Thursday from 5:30pm to 8:30pm

Friday from 5:30pm to 8:30pm

Saturday from 10am to 7pm

Cost. $ 200.00

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Computational design and generative art.

“Over the last two decades computers have come to dominate almost all areas of design, taking over the burden of repetitive tasks so that the designer can focus on the act of creation. As a result designers have become dependent on software, tools that shape both the process and the end result. This dependence invariably becomes a limitation, forcing the designer to adapt her work to the decisions and metaphors chosen by the programmer.

Computational design represents a new approach, an attempt to provide designers and artists with a new literacy in digital media. Understanding that true literacy means being able to "write" as well as "read", the creator is positioned as designer of computational processes. In this way she is able to question existing models of space and interaction, fully exploring the possibilities of electronic media.“ Computational Design. Künste University, Berlin. 2009. http://workshop.evolutionzone.com/old/

--Workshop will focus on the nature of information processing and how it can be used to manipulate data, stream inputs from various sources and use data feeds to inform geometry or data structures from the very simple up to more complex ones. The aim is to give an understanding of information and data articulation as already a spatial and architectural operation. Results may range from pure data communication protocols, dataviz or data-driven geometries.  

KEY TOPICS: Basis of grasshopper parametric plug-in for rhinoceros; tracking design constraints, flow paths, particles, etc.; understanding the inherent craft of data-collection; data flow – parametric modeling & analysis; understanding of data management through grasshopper; 3d printing into digital fabrication.

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PROGRAM.

Day 1.

1.           Introduction to computational design.

·       Generative Design.

2.           Visual scripting and programming theory.

3.           Object Oriented Programming.

4.           Why Grasshopper as interface?

5.           Grasshopper Basics.

a.   Introduction: interfaces, canvas, navigation.

b.   Components: structures, colors, menu, wires.

c.    Data flow basics: geometry types, data types.

d.   Geometry creation: points, planes and vectors, curves, surfaces.

e.   Data flow intermediate. Lists management:   domain, interval, range, series; pre-rationalization:  constraints, range definition, domain mapping and modulation.

Day 2.

f.     Data flow intermediate: conditional operations, data visualization and control (text tags, panel).

g.   Data flow advanced: data tree & pathmapping; geometry instantiation (component to proliferation environment); attractor logics (one and multiple points, curves); informing geometries: colors & tagging.

h.   Example & case studies.

6.            Parametric Analysis.

7.            Simulation and Iterative scripting.

8.            Manifolds.

·        Grids.

¨     Triangular.

¨     Quad.

¨     Hexagonal.

¨     Variable.

¨      

Day 3.

9.   Mesh.

¨     Metaballs.

¨     Complex geometry.

10.                 Evaluation & Evolutionary functions.

·       Modeling optimization.

·       Evolutionary Solvers.

·       Genomes.

·       Fitness

·       Galapagos.

11.                 Data mining.

12.                 Dimensions.

13.                 Digital Fabrication.

·       Mesh optimization

·       3D printing.

·       Structural Joints.

·       Text tags.

 

Cliff House

Fabrication

 

Mitchell Lab. Texas A&M University. Department of Architecture. Spring 2012. 
Collaboration with Roland Snooks. Kokkugia.
Team:
Gabriel Esquivel: Coordination and Fabrication.
Adrian Cortez, Project Manager and Designer
Zach Hoffman, Stephen Renard, Rafael Vazquez, Andrew Horne, Tyler Nagai.

Fabrication Team:
Jorge Cruz: Project Manager
Adrian Martinez, Cody May

For more info:http://kokkugia.com/cliff-house

Special Thanks to Prof. Mark Clayton for his enormous support.

Fibrous House

 

Fabrication

Mitchell Lab. Texas A&M University. Department of Architecture. Spring 2012. 
Collaboration with Roland Snooks. Kokkugia.
Team:
Gabriel Esquivel: Coordination and Fabrication.
Ryan Wilson, Project Manager and Designer
Drew Busmire, Jacob Patapoff, Emily Knapp, Hong Bea Yang,
Jose Padilla, Nick Gutierrez. Ashley Ricketson

Fabrication Team:
Jorge Cruz: Project Manager
Adrian Martinez, Cody May

For more info: http://kokkugia.com/fibrous-house

Special Thanks to Prof. Mark Clayton for his enormous support.

COCO Final. ArtFill Bryan, Texas

CO-CO.  ArtFill Project. Bryan, Texas.

Concrete Panels with coconut fiber reinforcement.

Team: Gabriel Esquivel, Dr. John Nichols, Jorge Cruz, Steven Hewett, Jeff Lemley, Eli Wood.
Concrete Mix: Knife River, Bryan, Texas.
Thanks to Renee and Chris Lawrence.

There is currently a great deal of interest in developing the technology for using natural fiber materials in cement composites. Natural fibers have been used to reinforce inorganic materials for thousands of years. This project examines the effect of twined coconut fibers as reinforcement to 10’ x 10’ concrete panels. For treatment, 25% twined coconut fibers will be added as reinforcement.  The panel is a porous ornamented panel, which is more a study of small façades. This panel size has never been done, thus the importance of this project.

Flexural tests have been carried out on prototype panels to determine their strength with different volume fractions and aspect ratios of fibers. The casting will be done on site to avoid transportation. Each panels weighs about 2,000 lbs.

UCLA "RUMBLE"

UCLA. RUMBLE. June 12, 2013. Kivi Sotamaa's Review "Arts of Mars" In the photo: Marcelo Spina, Neil Denari, Eva Frranch, Kivi Sotamaa, Ferda Kolatan, Gabriel Esquivel, Craig Hodgetts, Heather Roberge.

S'MArionette. moving object. advances

S'MArionette. movable object. Automated with SMA wire and tube. Collaboration with A&M Aerospace Engineering Darren Hartl and Jim Mabe from Boeing.
Team: Gabriel Esquivel, Chris Tackery, Stephen Hewett, Jorge Cruz, Calli Friesenhahn, Eli Wood.

The Birth and Reverberation of an Object

Texas A&M University. Department of Architecture, Spring 2013. Graduate Thesis.
Shane Bearrow
Advisers: Gabriel Esquivel, Weiling He and Ergun Akleman

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“Birth and Reverberation of an Object” is, in part, an analysis of Graham Harman’s object-oriented ontology, through which a natural object is stripped of its ontology through a series of craft iterations. The basic idea of this project was to conduct a series of drawing exercises going from analog to digital in order to produce a unique shape. This process was inspired by Robin Evans’ essay “Translations from Drawing to Buildings.” All steps in the process were unique, though clearly traceable and geared toward the autonomy of an architectural object. Similar to De l’Orme’s Diane de Poiters interior, diagrammatic parallel projections guided the object through instances of dimensional, textural, and shape shifting before it reached its final destination. Through a drawing-governed evolution, an object was born governed by methodological iterations, thus the use of the word “reverberations.” This object exhibits transplanted characteristics of its source while appearing strange and difficult to read, ultimately enhancing its appeal.

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We are in a moment where architecture is redefining its position, moving from a subject-centered and systematic discourse to an object-oriented situation. Objects need not be natural, simple, or indestructible. Instead, objects will be defined only by their autonomous reality. They must be autonomous in two separate directions: emerging as something over and above their pieces, while also partly withholding themselves from relations with other entities (1). Object-oriented ontology (OOO) is a metaphysical movement that rejects the privileging of human existence over that of nonhuman objects (2). Specifically, object-oriented ontology opposes the anthropocentrism of Immanuel Kant's Copernican Revolution, whereby objects are said to conform to the mind of the subject and, in turn, become products of human cognition (3).

Harman’s object-oriented ontology opens up a unique possibility for rethinking the peculiar problems associated with the problem of nature. A return to the object would have to be understood as a turning away from a mythological or sentimental understanding of nature toward the particularities and the essential strangeness of the objects themselves. In this particular project, the use of a seashell, an object of nature, was a deliberate selection. By submitting this “natural object” through a series of drawing translations, a new object related to its autonomous drawing process rather than nature was created. This object doesn’t operate in normative representation.

Assume for a moment that the architectural object is unified as an object, and remember that an architect is also an object in this ontology, not an enlightened mind outside the world of objects giving form to formless matter (4). A return to the architectural object as a disciplinary priority cannot be a nostalgic return to pre-modern academic preoccupations with character, propriety, and the idealities of a compositional balance. Nor is this return to the object a simple return to figuration and detached massing. “Object” here should not be understood in a literal sense.

Successful object making cannot be completely encapsulated by a methodology that might repeat the success. There are diverse methodologies to investigate. This object operates outside of formal indexical operations. As a non-theoretical interaction between the maker as an object and the various objects of the making process, “craft” is the ambiguous word that has, in the past, identified the unique expertise of the maker in the relationship to the material. This where the relationship between Evans’ position in regards to drawing in terms of inventing complex drawings is what we have referred to as the architect’s craft and the object-oriented ontology that allows for the theoretical revisions of the future of an architectural object.

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This project involved generating an object that departed from nature by changing its ontology at the end of the process. Use of the drawing craft presents alternatives for architecture to apply normative modes of production in a different way, through the combination of analog and digital presentations in 2-D and 3-D. The most immediate future development that we will undertake is to fabricate our object using the CNC milling machine to create a base form made out of foam. From this positive mold, we will create the final object using composite materials, epoxy resin, and c-glass; the ZBrush pattern will be unfolded from the digital model using Pepakura, and it will be printed and incorporated as a layer within the composite surface.

After the prototype was built,  a structural analysis using ABACUS was performed, a software used by aerospace engineering, and determine the performative needs and properties of the object’s surface. Additionally, materiality concerns and construction techniques were researched on an architectural scale. Once the properties of each material are deduced, the focus will shift to solving various technical challenges of fabricating parts of the object full scale.

References

1.     Ruy, David. (2012). Returning to Strange Objects. Tarp Architecture Manual (Spring): p. 38 (2012)

2.     Harman, Graham (2002). Tool-Being: Heidegger and the Metaphysics of Objects. Peru, Illinois: Open Court. p. 2. ISBN [[Special:BookSources/08126094449|08126094449 [[Category:Articles with invalid ISBNs]]]].

3.     Bryant, Levi. "Onticology–A Manifesto for Object-Oriented Ontology, Part 1." Larval Subjects. Retrieved 9 September 2011.

4.     Ruy, David. (2012). Returning to Strange Objects. Tarp Architecture Manual (Spring): p.42 (2012)