proof

All,Personal circumstances have conspired to keep me out of the studio today, and Melnyk's on vacation. But fear not! Next week we will be back in full force! I am pleased to see that everyone has jumped into Catia with both feet, and are starting to get their experiments in modeFrontier under way.  There are some very exciting experiments taking shape. In a way, observing this progress from a distance reinforces the points on presentation that I had made in our first class last Friday. Specifically, that your experiments will be much more successful if you can clearly define what they are trying to achieve. In the initial entries to your blogs, I should be able to understand the exact purpose of your experiment, the setup, and some hypothesis on the outcome. If you need an idea of a relatively concise problem definition, check out Jay's synopsis. I would challenge you all that your problem definition can be even more concise. What is the minimum number of statements and questions that can be raised? Steven's sketches are great, because they show the development of the experiement. One day, when you're all famous designers and they write your monologues, no one will want to look at pages of mode-frontier output (scintilating as it is), they'll show your sketches as testament to the clarity of your thought process. Of course your sketches will have to be on napkins from expensive restaurants (Gehry) or on someone's body (Stark) or scrawled inside a bathroom stall (Hadid)....nonetheless.  I see some recurring themes in people work to this point. Attractors and repellors are a popular venue for research. Why? Surely it's not because they're the easiest thing to set up in Catia. You'll find that I'm interested in natural analogues. So your assignment for next week, involving some small component of the building - a piece of the facade, might use this language of attractors and repellors as a series of openings in the facade responding to a local environmental condition. Like skin? Again, lay this out in your problem definition. I'm big on incentives. Extra credit will go to those teams that actually provide compelling reference materials, images, models, and other chunks of physical stuff. Right, this class is pass/fail, but certainly you'd like to be the team that earns my unvarnished pride. John wins this week's prize for most compelling visualization. This warping sheet of circles brings to mind issues that are at the forefront of computational research for architecture right now. Cladding optimization, panelling, and packing algorithms are gaining wider use as people try to warp flat materials onto curves surfaces. So what if the circles didn't just move and grow in a grid? What would be necessary to make them pack together, thus maximizing radi while minimizing the surface area? Guys have done PHDs on circle packing. If you don't believe me, google "Circle Packing." This first assignment is a team endeavour. A couple of teams have started presenting their work together here. Make sure for next week that you present a unified front for your research. If someone could also post a list of the pairings before next friday so that I can peruse the site and understand all the connections, it would be very helpful. As a final thought... This semester is meant to be a laboratory for the development of these tools. Start thinking about your experiments in broad terms. What capabilities would you like to see inherent in the tools? Now that you've all had a chance to work in Catia, start thinking algorithmically. For instance...."Making all these parameters to pack circles is a pain in the ass....I wish I had a packing tool." Have fun! See you all next Friday.!an p.s. Here's the shame list : Hages, Michelle, Jinpyo, Sharon, Kiseok, Chi-Chen, Matthew, and Casey - YOU NEED TO POST SOMETHING.