ALGORITHMIC TECTONICS
E XP L OR E CUR R E N T D E VE L O P ME N T S IN COM P UTAT I O N AL D E S I G N
I’m Angela Urbano and I’m a third year majoring in B.S. IST (Information Systems: Design and Development) with a minor in Architecture Studies. I was in the B.Arch program here at Penn State for the last 2.5 years. In that time, I learned that design is really a matter of problem solving; to design means to improve through careful analysis. With that said, I am excited to explore the field of creative computing in this class.
VISUALIZE
Assignment 1.1
MAKE
ANGELA URBANO: ALL SORTS OF CALCULATORS
My coding experience so far has been limited to basic C++ and web design with HTML and CSS. I taught myself C++ years ago just out of curiosity and used it to program all sorts of calculators.
This assignment is intended to cover preliminary aspects of the course, such as the blog, an introduction to your work, (very) basic aspects of the Processing language, and a first exploration of the state of the art in computational design practices.
I am Ardavan Bidgoli, a graduate student in Design Computation Cluster at Stuckeman School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture. My current research is mostly focused on the Architectural Robotics and its affordances.
Write an introductory blog post in the course’s blog. Use this part of the assignment to become familiar with the Wordpress platform, and introduce yourself and one computational project you have developed using computer code (it can be as simple as a website you coded, or a script you wrote for manipulating). Introduce the project with a description of the ideas and motivations behind it, as well as a technical section about the technologies/languages you used. Add a section about what you think is more interesting about the project, and a critical section saying what you would now do different now, and the pitfalls you encountered. Document the project with images, videos or animated gifs of the project. If you haven’t worked on a project involving computer code, write a post about a project that you would like to create using code. Include a text describing the project conceptually and technically, as well as sketches, drawings, links, etc. Tag the project with both your name, and the tag “Introductions.”
a) Data Manipulation
Cast a wide net in search of computational design projects that are interesting to you. You can use the links below as starting points (but ideally you should explore more). The projects of your choice must fall broadly within the category of “experimental CAD systems:” computational tools that enable a way of designing or producing shapes that departs from conventional CAD systems and metaphors. The projects of your choice must also involve original software. Choose three different projects and explain why you chose them. Try to choose different projects and in your documentation/analysis, try to explain how you think they work.
Processing has proven itself as a powerful tool in the hand of amateur developers, artists and obviously architects to benefit from both computer based facets and the artistic opportunities it provides. It is even expanded beyond the software limits, towards hardware and microcontrollers by Arduino platform as an open source movement.
DESIGN
ARDAVAN BIDGOLI: ROBOTIC AFFORDANCES
Ardavan Bidgoli Graduate Student in Design Computation
During Spring 2014, as a part of our design studio project, our team developed a toolkit to record site environmental data in real-time, which later helped us in the decision making process. Since the site was a vast land of 20×10 miles, it was impossible to collect any meaningful data using conventional methods. Thus, we suggest a system to read data continuously while being mounted on a truck, running across the site.The toolkit was made by an Arduino Uno board programmed in Arduino environment (basically a distribution of Processing) which could process the signals being generated by connected CO2, Air Quality, and Temp. sensors. The processed signals then sent over a 2.4 GHz data transmitter to another Arduino Uno board, where through a USB cable our laptop could receive and allocate them to a CSV file.
Lastly, download Processing into your computer (http://processing.org). Get familiar with the fundamentals. Write your first Processing program making sure that you understand the basics of shapes, color, and mouse interaction. If you have no experience programming, don’t be afraid of starting with the basics. Daniel Shiffman has a basic intro that is very easy to follow: “Hello Processing” tutorials (http://hello.processing.org). Get familiar with the concepts of syntax, variables, and data types. Be prepared to discuss these concepts during next class. Introductory Project by Ardavan
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Design Ecologies Laboratory
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