This course aims to familiarize the student to the concept of computational design, broadly defined and understood as formal investigations based on non-linear 3D modeling approaches that are considered in a traditional perspective as counterintuitive or anathematic to traditional generative design philosophy and processes. The course will identify and build these concepts using Grasshopper as a geometric modeler - a plug-in module for the Rhino modeling software - as the prime arena for these investigations.
Computational analogues in support of design present themselves as open structures making explicit design as a modeling developmental process, adaptable to formulating and exploring new solutions to problems that were previously considered elusive or hidden underneath the final design outcome or byproduct. The recent capabilities of computational design environments have transcended to various fields of science with keen philosophical implications that expose the lack of acknowledgement of patterns previously misconstrued as non-orderly or, at the very least, incoherent, readdressing these as a complex behavior. Now, through digital and cultural meditation, computational environments have been adapted to design and an architectural practice in the form of specialized software modules such as is the case with Grasshopper.
The Grasshopper plug-in for Rhino features an innovative interface described as a graphical algorithmic editor, one of the few of its kind in use for 3D modeling, exposing the process and allowing the easy flow and exploration of new ideas. The series of exercises throughout the course permit familiarizing with the interface, build upon each other and, with practice, allow understanding how to encapsulate complex instructions - given as inputs processed through the software as dynamically modifiable outputs - into user-definable and simpler modifiable units in order to subsequently re-evaluate the available parameters and develop new sequences and therein 3D geometric structures.