Team leader Brett Kearney presenting project outcome
This short but intense workshop at the Virginia Commonwealth University in Doha was looking at parametric adaptation of Islamic patterns. It was conducted as team efforts, with students and teachers collaborating on projects in different scales. Rhinoceros and Grasshopper were introduced as the working platform, and the projects explored how a contemporary view of patters could be implemented in terrain, furniture or product scale. Facilitated over five evenings, the teams managed to both get a basic understanding of parametric principles, and deliver project outcomes. I was invited by assistant professor Johan Granberg, teaching in the department of interior design, but the participants came from several departments including fashion and graphic design.
The Parametric design loop is a general field of exploration of certain parametric principles I feel needs to be explored further.
In response to discussions at several seminars recently, I have continued the exploration of the design solution space concept. As a starting point I revisit the outline in the licentiate thesis, using the PARCEL development. In essence, I am setting up a parametric system continuing the idea of aggregates of the panel using diffferent parameters, basically joining the diagram (Projects p. 41) with the panel assemblies done previously manually (Projects p. 42-43). This allows me to set up a system in which a spline curve with differentiation in XYZ inside the graphical solution space is used to control the aggregated panel, rather than a single point controling one panel set. In this way the curve as a diagram makes sure that there is a consistency between each iteration of the panel, which is useful for larger aggregates. The GenerativeComponents model will allow me to manipulate this control curve in real time, showing the direct effect on the aggregated model.
Images below shows permutations. Click each image for enlarged view that shows shifts of geometry in detail.
Control curve in solution space (left) and corresponding aggregated panel (right), instance 1 Control curve in solution space (left) and corresponding aggregated panel (right), instance 2Control curve in solution space (left) and corresponding aggregated panel (right), instance 3Control curve in solution space (left) and corresponding aggregated panel (right), instance 4Control curve in solution space (left) and corresponding aggregated panel (right), instance 5Control curve in solution space (left) and corresponding aggregated panel (right), instance 6Control curve in solution space (left) and corresponding aggregated panel (right), instance 7Control curve in solution space (left) and corresponding aggregated panel (right), instance 8
There are several reasons for revisiting this concept.
I need the material in order to clarify the idea of the design solution space, allowing me to use the actual GC model to show the principles more clearly in seminars and discussions.
I hope to create a tool that will be useful in the continued work with the Paratable design loop, and in this way establish the first clear link between the first and second thesis.
It provides opportunities to continue the direct systematic design work in GC, to balance the reading and writing that I am preoccupied with at the moment.
It also is a result of recent thoughts I have had on the relationship between dissemination and investigation. After being more exposed to the international scene through the work at the AA, I realize more and more that I need to raise the level of my actual design work in order to make it internationally challening. In certain regards my previous thesis can be seen as being maybe not basic, but maybe a primer of contemporary techniques. In many ways its audience has been seen as being outside the field of parametric design (in lack of a better definition), and I have focused on communicating complex techniques to this audience. The publication for Arkus will obviously be similar in nature, in the sense that it is aimed at an audience outside the discourse of parametric design as well as outside academia. While I think that the specific nature of my PhD work will continue to link innovative design, design management/communication and industrialized processes, the Parametric design loop is an attempt to establish a more advanced discourse on the parametric.
