ST. LOUIS, MO | RHINOSCRIPT, GRASSHOPPER, & FABRICATION | AUG 9TH-12TH, 2010

Hosted by Washington University in St. Louis Sam Fox School of Art and Design
Sponsored By McNeel Rhinoceros

Material Resonance will be a four day, intensive workshop focused on practical application of Rhinoscripting or Grasshopper.  The workshop will also train participants in CNC fabrication using MasterCAM and the Washington University DIL fabrication lab.  There will also be demos of the new plug-ins Firefly and Kangaroo. 

The workshop is meant for professionals or students with a working knowledge in Rhinoceros.  Prior experience with Grasshopper or Rhino VB scripting is not necessary.  The workshop will start from first principles and cover topics from tessellation, components and connections to part organization, nesting and labeling.

Instructors  
Marc Fornes _ theverymany Rhino VB scripting
Andy Payne _ LIFT Architects Grasshopper
Kenneth Tracy _ Associated Fabrication MasterCAM

For more information and to register go to:
http://samfoxschool.wustl.edu/events/workshops/3630

I am excited to announce that I will be working as an Associated Faculty member at the Biodynamics Structures workshop being hosted by the Architectural Association and the California College of the Arts from July 12th-21st, 2010.  Both institutions have assembled a truly first class set of instructors and it promises to be a ground breaking event.  I would like to thank Andrew Kudless and Jason Kelly Johnson for this invitation.  See workshop details below.

BIODYNAMIC STRUCTURES
AA Visiting School @ CCA California College of the Art
Monday 12 to Wednesday 21 July, 2010

Biodynamics is the study of the force and energy of dynamic processes on living organisms. Through simple mechanisms embedded within the material logic of natural systems, specific stimuli can activate a particular response. This response occurs in carnivorous plants such as the Venus fly-trap, which uses turgor pressure to trap small insects in order to feed, and worms, which by contracting differently oriented muscles, achieve movement. This ten-day intensive workshop, co-taught by the faculty of the Emergent Technologies and Design Programme at the AA and the faculty of Architecture and MEDIAlab at California College of the Arts, will explore active systems in nature, investigating biomimetic principles in order to analyze, design and fabricate prototypes that respond to electronic and environmental stimuli. Students will work in teams to research specific biological systems, extracting logics of organization, geometry, structure and mathematics. Advanced analysis, simulation, modeling and fabrication tools will be introduced in order to apply this information to the design of both passive and active responsive architectural systems. Investigation and application of robotics, sensors and actuators will be employed for the activation of the material system investigation through the construction of working responsive prototypes.

+ CONTENT TAGS: Biodynamic, Parametric, Scripted, Mimetic, Responsive, Interactive, Digitally Fabricated
+ SOFTWARE: Rhino, Grasshopper, Firefly, RhinoScript, Arduino, Processing

CORE FACULTY
Michael Weinstock (Academic Head, Director of Emergent Technologies Programme, AA London UK)
Christina Doumpioti, Evan Greenberg, Konstantinos Karatzas (Tutors, AA EmTech Programme, London UK)
Jason Kelly Johnson [Future Cities Lab], Andrew Kudless [Matsys] (CCA MediaLab Coordinators, SF CA)

ASSOCIATED FACULTY
George Jeronimidis (Director of Center for Biomimetics, University of Reading UK); Andrew Payne (LIFT Architects, Grasshopper Primer); Daniel Segraves (ASGG Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture); Ronnie Parsons + Gil Akos (Studio Mode, NY); Daniel Piker (Kangaroo Project Live Physics)

ENROLLMENT INFORMATION
http://sanfrancisco.aaschool.ac.uk; or visit the CCA MEDIAlab website: http://mlab.cca.edu
(Workshops are non-credit. Enrollment is processed by the AA. Workshop will run the full 10 days.)

CONTACT
visitingschool@aaschool.ac.uk or mlab@cca.edu

SAN FRANCISCO, CA | PARAMETRIC URBANISM WITH GRASSHOPPER | FEB 13-14, 2010 | 10:00am-5:00pm

I am really excited to be participating in the upcoming Formations 2010 workshop series being held at the California College of the Arts campus in San Francisco.  There is a really great lineup of instructors teaching a wide array of topics:

• Mapping Urban Information with ESRI ArcGIS by Mona El-Khafif (CCA URBANlab) and Richard Kos (CCSF GIS Education Center/ San Jose State University)
• Neocartography - an Introduction to Interactive Mapping with Flash by Sha Hwang (Stamen Design)
• Parametric Urbanism with Grasshopper by Andy Payne (Lift Architects) and Andrew Kudless (Matsys/CCA MEDIAlab)
• Sensing the City with Arduino and Processing by Jason Kelly Johnson (Future Cities Lab/CCA MEDIAlab) and TBA instructor
• Parametric Design Modeling with Revit by David Fano (Case, inc./ DesignReForm.net/Columbia GSAPP)
• ECOlogics with Ecotect by Nataly Gattegno (Future Cities Lab / CCA ECOlab) and Olivier Pennetier (Symphysis)

Below is a synopsis of the Parametric Urbanism workshop I will co-teaching with Andrew Kudless.
Instructor: Andy Payne (Lift Architects) and Andrew Kudless (Matsys/CCA MEDIAlab)

This workshop will focus on the generative modeling of urban design logics using the Grasshopper plugin for Rhino 4.0. From the early work of firms such as MVRDV to the more recent investigations by Zaha Hadid, a parametric approach to urban design has allowed designers to condense complex hierarchies of design data into solutions that exhibit highly differentiated patterns of urban form. The workshop will cover several techniques that attempt to integrate common urban design parameters dealing with massing, program, and density into one associative model allowing the designer to quickly and accurately test multiple design scenarios. The first day of the workshop will introduce many of the central topics and techniques of parametric urbanism while the second day will focus on the implementation of these techniques in a large, complex urban masterplan.

Eligibility: Open to all design students and professionals.
Cost: $100 for students, $200 for professionals.
Click here to register for this event.

ARLINGTON, TX | INTRO/INTERMEDIATE GRASSHOPPER WORKSHOP | FEBRUARY 6th, 2010 | 9:00am-6:00pm

I would like to thank Andrew Vrana, Brad Bell, and Kevin Patrick McClellan for inviting me to teach two sessions at the first ever TEX-FAB event being held at the University of Texas at Arlington School of Architecture from February 4th-6th, 2010.  The weekend event promises to be an exiciting one with key note speakers, workshops, and an exhibition planned to highlight the growing interest in digital fabrication and design.

TEX-FAB is a new resource for designers, academics, fabricators, and students seeking out the innovative application of digital technology to the physical environment. Within Texas there is an emerging network of companies, institutions, and individuals focusing on the exploration of parametric design and the digital production of building components. Specifically, there is a growing opportunity for collaborative exchange between the academic, technical, and professional communities by leveraging the immense resources found in some of the largest metropolitan centers across the United States. TEX-FAB seeks to create a forum for the exchanges of these ideas and techniques through workshops, lectures, and exhibitions.

I am pleased to announce that I will be teaching a 3-day fabrication workshop at the University of Toronto from July 17th-19th.  The first two days of the course will be set up to teach the fundamentals of the software plugin and we will work through a diverse range of topics.  However, the third day will be focused on the construction of a full scale urban intervention where we will be using Grasshopper to facilitate the fabrication of a full scale prototype.  We will examine Toronto's existing urban infrastructure, namely it's post and ring bicycle lock system, and develop a parasitic design that can be modified for each site's unique characteristics (such as volumetric dimensions (length, width, height), bike lock spacing, screening systems and solar orientation, and acoustical response.  We will also be using a 5-axis CNC Mill (PADE Spin-W) capable of machining 1.2m in the z-axis and roughly a 2.5m x 2.5m x-y bed-size. 

I'd like to thank Matthew Spremulli and Valentina Mele for helping organize the event.  The workshop is open to University of Toronto students only and is currently sold out.  I will be posting more about the workshop and some fabrication shots very soon.  Stay tuned!

Update 21 July: Below are a few screenshots from the workshop hosted at the University of Toronto this past weekend.  We really covered a lot of ground and the images below display an amazing amount of progress made for students who were completely new to the software system (after just 2 days).

It's been a while since I have seen something that has truly changed the way I look at technology... But a few of the projects designed by Johnny Chung Lee, a Ph.D. graduate student at Carnegie Mellon's Human-Computer Interaction Institute, are quite remarkable in their ingenuity.  While many of his projects are applicable becuase of their use of products that are readily available, two projects of his stand above the rest.  If you haven't seen these yet, make sure to check out his demonstrations of "Head Tracking for Desktop VR Displays using the Wii Remote" and "Foldable Interactive Displays". 

Head Tracking for Desktop VR Displays and other Wii Projects
Projector-Based Location Discovery and Tracking with Foldable Displays
About Johnny Chung Lee

This is one of the options for the new identity for Payne Jones Public Relations, a new start up company in Greenville, SC.  The challenge was to create a visual logo for a client who primarily deals with written text.  So, I decided to make use of the font itself to create an interesting visual identity for her firm.   Make sure you check out the website also designed by [LIFT]architects at http://www.paynejonespr.com.

This is my entry for the 2005 Miami Biennial Future Possibilies architecture competition where I placed as a semi-finalist.  The premise behind the entry is that it was a series of explorations on the idea of the network... So for that I had to define exactly what a network is, which to me has three intrinsic properties: 1) Scale 2) Protocols (the way the network behaves) and 3) Time.  So, I created a matrix that would isolate each of these three properties and allow me to combine them in different ways to generate new projects... Since the matrix had 10 slots for each category, you could invariably have up to 3,628,800 different combinations, thus a lot of different network explorations.  Becuase the focus of the project was based on the idea of the network, I wanted to create a flash interface that would complement the concept, and have a non-linear "network" navigation system.  I'll let you check it out, and play around with the interface and also check out the work, but notice that the different nodes have set attractions, so that as you drag certain rings around the page, the other "like" nodes begin to pull nearer to it, so that they begin over time to collapse into one complete project.  Enjoy!  Click here for the link: http://www.thenprojects.com