ADS:AJournal Week 02

Carl Madsen 357577

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Grasshopper is a notably powerful plugin for the Rhino3D program intro-duced last week.

What was quickly evident when first playing with the Grasshopper interface and elements was its ability to con-stantly and fluidly change extensively complex designs; the system of nodes below represents the multiple rotations of curves around the same curve. By simply changing the sliders, the design reacts in a rpedictable way, allowing the user to develop and explore the intricacies of the design. In a tradi-tional modelling application (such as SketchUp or vanilla Rhino3D) chang-ing the width of a certain element that is connected throughout the model would require a large amount of time and patience; however with Grasshop-per, this is achieved by simply moving a slider and changing a number within the program.

The possibilities for this plugin seem vast, and will no doubt be a staple en-vironment for my future designs.

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The Digital Teahouse Workshop held at the University of Tokyo in 2010 was a com-petition between three groups to produce a Japanese style tea house using the Grasshopper plugin for Rhino3D. The entirely computationally designed projects showed the varying designs of the same structure using parametric logic and concepts, as based on the differing interpretations of the brief. The constraints of the plywood offered unique challenges in the fabrication of the designs: one team etched lines in the flat CNC-routed plywood panels in order to allow them to be able to curve with the structure in waves, which would not be possible with a flat surface. Other teams decided to produce visual curves by incorporating gradual directional changes in the structure, which they adjusted to a fine point by modify-ing parametric values in grasshopper.

As an overall, the teahouses produced made a compelling argument for the appli-cability of parametric design for both large and small installations, that an ideal result can be achieved not only faster, but to a higher precision.

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“The Water Cube is one of the well recognized buildings in China where it was pri-marilly designed for the 2008 Olympics. It was also important to consider the use after the Olympics as a national aquatics centre.The building project of this archi-tecture was important to express China’s growing international role. An international competition for the aquatics centre began in 2003 to find a design appropriate for the criteria.

The current design of The Water Cube was able to win the competition as it was the most outstanding and feasible design and came up with a great concept inspired by soap bubbles.

Even though the shapes of soap bubbles seem random, their nature always touch each other without leaving any empty spaces in between and are three dimention-ally repeatable. However, to make a feasible Water Cube, there needed to be over a hundred of different ‘bubbles’.

To create this numerous complicated shapes, parametric modelling had to be used. Its role as an ‘Olympics stadium’ and its publicity and advertisement of 2008 Olympics was not the only reason of the architecture’s discourse. The unique soap bubble structure suits well with its use as an aquatics centre and creates interesting aesthetics with its complicated patterns.” (Kim, 2012)