course description

Digital Architectural Design Studio - Spring 2012

(Shape) emergence is key to creative processes in visual and spatial media.  It is why designers and artists choose to sketch in the early phases of their creative processes. It is also how they produce multiple design solutions to a single problem. In the context of this course, emergence stands for the ability to see (conceptualize) relations that have not yet been cognized.

The course focuses on emergence in shape computing. The aims are to define emergence, inform students on the problem of shape representation in emergence, allow them to articulate this problem in the context of their own design processes, and to encourage them to develop strategies to enhance emergence in computer aided design exercises.

The theoretical foundation of the course is the theory of shape grammars – a formalism for visual and spatial thinking. The phrase literally refers to visual design grammars that represent styles. But more importantly, the formalism handles ambiguities, which digital computing does away with.  The course focuses on this aspect, and using this formalism, aims to objectify and trace emergence.  Visual schemas as described in the shape grammar formalism will be used to follow students’ processes whereas voting sessions and discussions will allow for establishing consensus on evaluation criteria for deciding on what we (the course instructors and students) call shape emergence based on the theoretical foundation built in the first weeks. 

The first weeks in the semester are allocated to lectures and short design exercises. The remaining part of the semester is allocated to the development of a project in phases. The project is the conception of a design, its variations and their fabrication. The course dwells on two components of designing: emergent ideas/shapes and representation in a very broad sense (of manifestation of an idea). Accordingly, the project explores the relation between the two with reference to a third component of constraints specifically introduced through material. Students are expected to conceptualize an individual architectural design problem that is to be built out of one particular material. They are to analyze this material in depth and utilize the analysis to guide their actions to transform/shape the material to create a myriad of variations of a theme.  

The course outcomes will be articulation(s) of the problem of shape emergence in relation to digital representations, a (fabricated) set of variations on a theme (as a result of the project), and a publication.


Istanbul Technical University
Graduate Program in Architectural Design Computing
MBL514E Digital Architectural Design Studio 
Spring 2012 - Wednesdays 9:30-12:30 @ BIM 3