SAN FRANCISCO, CA | PARAMETRIC URBANISM WITH GRASSHOPPER | FEB 13-14, 2010 | 10:00am-5:00pm

I am really excited to be participating in the upcoming Formations 2010 workshop series being held at the California College of the Arts campus in San Francisco.  There is a really great lineup of instructors teaching a wide array of topics:

• Mapping Urban Information with ESRI ArcGIS by Mona El-Khafif (CCA URBANlab) and Richard Kos (CCSF GIS Education Center/ San Jose State University)
• Neocartography - an Introduction to Interactive Mapping with Flash by Sha Hwang (Stamen Design)
• Parametric Urbanism with Grasshopper by Andy Payne (Lift Architects) and Andrew Kudless (Matsys/CCA MEDIAlab)
• Sensing the City with Arduino and Processing by Jason Kelly Johnson (Future Cities Lab/CCA MEDIAlab) and TBA instructor
• Parametric Design Modeling with Revit by David Fano (Case, inc./ DesignReForm.net/Columbia GSAPP)
• ECOlogics with Ecotect by Nataly Gattegno (Future Cities Lab / CCA ECOlab) and Olivier Pennetier (Symphysis)

Below is a synopsis of the Parametric Urbanism workshop I will co-teaching with Andrew Kudless.
Instructor: Andy Payne (Lift Architects) and Andrew Kudless (Matsys/CCA MEDIAlab)

This workshop will focus on the generative modeling of urban design logics using the Grasshopper plugin for Rhino 4.0. From the early work of firms such as MVRDV to the more recent investigations by Zaha Hadid, a parametric approach to urban design has allowed designers to condense complex hierarchies of design data into solutions that exhibit highly differentiated patterns of urban form. The workshop will cover several techniques that attempt to integrate common urban design parameters dealing with massing, program, and density into one associative model allowing the designer to quickly and accurately test multiple design scenarios. The first day of the workshop will introduce many of the central topics and techniques of parametric urbanism while the second day will focus on the implementation of these techniques in a large, complex urban masterplan.

Eligibility: Open to all design students and professionals.
Cost: $100 for students, $200 for professionals.
Click here to register for this event.

ARLINGTON, TX | INTRO/INTERMEDIATE GRASSHOPPER WORKSHOP | FEBRUARY 6th, 2010 | 9:00am-6:00pm

I would like to thank Andrew Vrana, Brad Bell, and Kevin Patrick McClellan for inviting me to teach two sessions at the first ever TEX-FAB event being held at the University of Texas at Arlington School of Architecture from February 4th-6th, 2010.  The weekend event promises to be an exiciting one with key note speakers, workshops, and an exhibition planned to highlight the growing interest in digital fabrication and design.

TEX-FAB is a new resource for designers, academics, fabricators, and students seeking out the innovative application of digital technology to the physical environment. Within Texas there is an emerging network of companies, institutions, and individuals focusing on the exploration of parametric design and the digital production of building components. Specifically, there is a growing opportunity for collaborative exchange between the academic, technical, and professional communities by leveraging the immense resources found in some of the largest metropolitan centers across the United States. TEX-FAB seeks to create a forum for the exchanges of these ideas and techniques through workshops, lectures, and exhibitions.

I am pleased to announce that I will be teaching a 3-day fabrication workshop at the University of Toronto from July 17th-19th.  The first two days of the course will be set up to teach the fundamentals of the software plugin and we will work through a diverse range of topics.  However, the third day will be focused on the construction of a full scale urban intervention where we will be using Grasshopper to facilitate the fabrication of a full scale prototype.  We will examine Toronto's existing urban infrastructure, namely it's post and ring bicycle lock system, and develop a parasitic design that can be modified for each site's unique characteristics (such as volumetric dimensions (length, width, height), bike lock spacing, screening systems and solar orientation, and acoustical response.  We will also be using a 5-axis CNC Mill (PADE Spin-W) capable of machining 1.2m in the z-axis and roughly a 2.5m x 2.5m x-y bed-size. 

I'd like to thank Matthew Spremulli and Valentina Mele for helping organize the event.  The workshop is open to University of Toronto students only and is currently sold out.  I will be posting more about the workshop and some fabrication shots very soon.  Stay tuned!

Update 21 July: Below are a few screenshots from the workshop hosted at the University of Toronto this past weekend.  We really covered a lot of ground and the images below display an amazing amount of progress made for students who were completely new to the software system (after just 2 days).

It's been a while since I have seen something that has truly changed the way I look at technology... But a few of the projects designed by Johnny Chung Lee, a Ph.D. graduate student at Carnegie Mellon's Human-Computer Interaction Institute, are quite remarkable in their ingenuity.  While many of his projects are applicable becuase of their use of products that are readily available, two projects of his stand above the rest.  If you haven't seen these yet, make sure to check out his demonstrations of "Head Tracking for Desktop VR Displays using the Wii Remote" and "Foldable Interactive Displays". 

Head Tracking for Desktop VR Displays and other Wii Projects
Projector-Based Location Discovery and Tracking with Foldable Displays
About Johnny Chung Lee

This is one of the options for the new identity for Payne Jones Public Relations, a new start up company in Greenville, SC.  The challenge was to create a visual logo for a client who primarily deals with written text.  So, I decided to make use of the font itself to create an interesting visual identity for her firm.   Make sure you check out the website also designed by [LIFT]architects at http://www.paynejonespr.com.

This is my entry for the 2005 Miami Biennial Future Possibilies architecture competition where I placed as a semi-finalist.  The premise behind the entry is that it was a series of explorations on the idea of the network... So for that I had to define exactly what a network is, which to me has three intrinsic properties: 1) Scale 2) Protocols (the way the network behaves) and 3) Time.  So, I created a matrix that would isolate each of these three properties and allow me to combine them in different ways to generate new projects... Since the matrix had 10 slots for each category, you could invariably have up to 3,628,800 different combinations, thus a lot of different network explorations.  Becuase the focus of the project was based on the idea of the network, I wanted to create a flash interface that would complement the concept, and have a non-linear "network" navigation system.  I'll let you check it out, and play around with the interface and also check out the work, but notice that the different nodes have set attractions, so that as you drag certain rings around the page, the other "like" nodes begin to pull nearer to it, so that they begin over time to collapse into one complete project.  Enjoy!  Click here for the link: http://www.thenprojects.com