Toolbox Torino project submission on Parametricismo

The press office of Caterina Tiazzoldi / Nuova Ordentra contacted me to publish their project Toolbox - Torino Office Lab & Co-working. I was very pleased to post such a nice work on Parametricismo.

Caterina Tiazzoldi is a Researcher at NSU, Columbia University and Faculty at Politecnico de Torino, where she also has her practice. She owns the blog Digital Primitive, along with Eduardo Benamor Duarte.

I did the translation to Portuguese with the great help of Gonçalo Castro Henriques, for what is the first collaboration we do together as blog editors.

Some Update Notes

AA_NAI_SP_WORKSHOP by Kim Azevedo on Facebook

I wish I had more time to post some interesting things happening here.

The AA – NAi Design Workshop São Paulo was incredible. The event was way too intense to reserve some time to post something, and I didn’t have a decent camera to record it anyways… I now have 60+ more friends in Facebook and Twitter, and they have share a lot of pictures (seriously, various GB!), too much to choose from. Fortunately, there are other media that had cover it:

• TV Brasil - Arquitetos criam peças recicláveis para espaços públicos 
• ZOOblog - AA NAi Design Workshop São Paulo - P1 - P2 - P3 - P4 - P5 
• Facebook | Photos of AA - NAi Design Workshop São Paulo 

I just begun to collaborate with Atelier UM, a recently recognized, Curitiba based architecture & design office. I’m looking forward to produce very interesting things with them.

I’m also working on the proposal of various workshops, most of them for the next year. And of course, I’m also doing a lot of other things, some of them will worth posting them. But one thing I should be doing is my thesis…

Osseous Truss Pavilion

In some of the courses I’ve taught, people asked me how to make the structures of these workshop poster images. In this post I show the osseous truss pavilion that I generated to be the image of the workshop at SIGraDi 2009 that I taught along with Gonçalo Castro Henriques.

It is a system originally developed in Grasshopper 0.60019, based on the Surface Box-Box Morph combination explained in section "11.2 Paneling Tools" of the Grasshopper Primer, by Andrew Payne and Rajaa Issa (p.79-83). The first difference is in the prototype that makes the unit of the truss (or geometric pattern, as is referred in the tutorial). In the beginning it was made directly on Rhino, from NURBS curves of degree 2, closing the three points of the triangle of the diagonal division of a square. For this update, the prototype is generated entirely in Grasshopper, using only the grids of control points.

But the key for this to work as the structure from the image is on the topology of the base surface. The base surface of this pavilion is designed in Rhino, lofting between curves that were previously oriented, point by point, to begin longitudinal, grow to become transversal and end longitudinal again, bending over to make a sort of bridge with two supports. The deformation of these surface isocurves was inspired by the stereographic projections of Cartesian grids.

Posted in Parametricismo.

Download here the updated definition for Grasshopper 0.60059.

Launching Parametricismo

The name Parametricism was coined by Patrik Schumacher in: Parametricism as Style - Parametricist Manifesto, originally presented at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2008. The idea is being criticized, among other things, because it’s being questioned whether it is valid to continue classifying architecture in styles or trends. Two years have passed and still we haven’t heard many people use the term.

Probably the word Parametricismo won’t be included in Spanish or Portuguese language dictionaries in the near future as well. So I thought it was a good name for a blog in Portuguese on parametric and generative modeling in Architecture and Design.

Thus, the blog formerly known as Design Paramétrico – UP, —born from a workshop I taught at Universidade Positivo, Curitiba— has reborn as Parametricismo to express a more open but still specific web resource about these technologies and methods, with links, news, workshops and other experiences, published mainly in Portuguese, which is unprecedented so far.

I’m already working on it on Twitter and Facebook, and also waiting to confirm some interesting collaborations coming…

Gonzalo Vélez Jahn, premio Francisco De Venanzi

El 18 de junio, al recientemente galardonado Profesor Gonzalo Vélez Jahn, se le hizo entrega del premio Francisco De Venanzi, importante reconocimiento a la trayectoria en investigación en la Universidad Central de Venezuela en el área de Ciencias, Ingeniería y Arquitectura.

Su hijo Roman Vélez, tuvo la gentileza de compartir su experiencia de asistir al evento y documentarlo en fotos y video. También cedió una copia de la carta de postulación que escribió el Profesor Pedro Luís Hippolyte, antiguo docente del LTAD y actual Coordinador de Investigación de la EACRV – FAU – UCV, de la cual cito:

“A lo largo de su carrera profesional, por más de 50 años, se le considera pionero –en Venezuela- en el campo de la Computación aplicada a la Arquitectura. Fundó en el año 1974 el Laboratorio de Técnicas Avanzadas en Diseño, el cual durante sus 30 años formó estudiantes, profesores e investigadores en la […] Universidad Central de Venezuela y otras universidades del país. En la Facultad de Arquitectura de La Universidad del Zulia impulsó y desarrolló la opción de computación en la maestría de arquitectura.

Ha sido un visionario en el uso de las nuevas tecnologías aplicadas a la arquitectura como la Realidad Virtual, Comunidades Virtuales, Educación a Distancia y las Tecnologías de Información y Comunicación; promovió y desarrolló los primeros encuentros virtuales en Internet […].

Fue uno de los miembros fundadores de la Sociedad Iberoamericana de Gráfica Digital – SIGRADI […]. Participó y coordinó los Congresos Virtuales de Arquitectura 2000 – 2001, Congreso Venezolano de Aplicación de Computadoras en Arquitectura CONVEACA 1999 y 2001 […].

Es un investigador nato; así lo demuestran los numerosos artículos publicados en revistas especializadas y conferencias magistrales dictadas a nivel nacional […] e internacional […].”

Nosotros, los antiguos integrantes del LTAD nos llenamos de alegría y orgullo de ver a nuestro maestro ser reconocido después de tantos años de valiosos aportes a nuestra disciplina y a nuestra Alma Mater.

¡Muchas felicitaciones, Gonzalo!

AA - NAi Design Workshop São Paulo

From July 16 to July 24 I’m going to collaborate in the workshop: Micro-Revolutions: AA – NAi Design Workshop São Paulo (AA Visiting School), at Espaço de Cultura Contemporânea Escola São Paulo, which promises to be a great event:

The goal of the joint Architectural Association and Netherlands Institute of Architects (AA- NAi) Design Workshop in São Paulo is to explore the rehabilitation of otherwise obsolete, residual and overlooked urban environments, communities and physical materials, through critical urban analysis seminars, as well as through the use of innovative computational design and digital fabrication processes. […]

The intense, studio-based workshop, which will be open to designers from all over the world, will include extensive digital parametric modelling design tutorials using Rhino Grasshopper and Rhino Scripting, computer-numerically controlled (CNC) fabrication, including rapid-prototype, laser cutting and CNC routing and milling. Evening seminars and a full-day Forum will include lectures and contributions from both Brazilian and international architects, designers, urban planners, street artists, photographers and other specialists. […]

Quoted text and images: http://saopaulo.aaschool.ac.uk/

Results: Territórios de Ambigüidade workshop in Brasilia

Due to the specific theme and schedule, the contents of the workshop Territórios de Ambigüidade - Oficina de Estratégia Avançada de Projeto e Desenho Paramétrico was oriented to morphing, overlaying, grading and other strategies for contrasts negotiation, according to contextual parameters, in many cases at urban scale, but also with special emphasis (at least theoretically) in digital fabrication.

Photos: Beatriz de Abreu e Lima. Mosaic: Ernesto Bueno.

We were fortunate to have among participants Igor Lacroix, an architect who, in his office protoarq, has a 3D printer. He developed a resin prototype (image 2) and polyethylene prototype (image 3) from class exercises.

The fourth image shows the model of Lucas Martino (Photo: Beatriz de Abreu e Lima), on the issue of triangulation and 2D cutting fabrication, executed on paper as an exercise.

The last image belongs to Maria Gabriella Gama, from her graduation project on the lawn of the Esplanada dos Ministérios (Brazilian Ministries Plateau).

Thanks to Beatriz for all the organization. I also thank the MS Desenhos staff for their support in the classroom.

Workshop: Territórios de Ambigüidade - Brasilia

On April 24 – 25 and May 15 – 16, I’ll teach a workshop for the development of parametric-generative strategies with Grasshopper for architectural design, conceptually exploiting the issue of contrasts and ambiguous territories in Brasilia’s public space. The workshop is coordinated by Beatriz de Abreu e Lima, and aimed primarily for her Architectural Projects’ students at Centro Universitario de Brasília.

The event will take place in the arts training school MS Desenhos, Brasilia, Brazil.

Radiolarian Pavilion IJAC article is online

Geometrias Complexas e Desenho Paramétrico published in Vitruvius