The Smartgeometry Workshop

The heart and soul of the Smartgeometry Conference is the actual workshop. From the event’s beginnings in 2001 to its present configuration, the workshop is where ideas, strategies, concepts and design-thinking gets tested, exercised and fleshed out. Shane Burger, of Grimshaw Architects PC in New York, is one of the directors of the Smartgeometry organization and stated that the entire history of the event is one in which a few dedicated and inspired professionals–from computational or advanced computing divisions of renowned architectural practices–got together to explore the state-of-the-art of computing in architecture.

Over the years this annual get-together formed into a conference, a merger of professionals, academics, students and the software industry. As the current Smartgeometry website states, “As smartgeometry has progressed, and the tools and techniques have matured, smartgeometry has emerged as a forum where the new critical language of digital architecture can be formed.”

This Year’s Theme: Building The Invisible

This year the theme of “building the invisible” is an expression that describes the process whereby real world data is incorporated into “design thinking.” A big emphasis at the workshop this year was the use of sensors. These sensors, of the handmade variety, were built around Arduino boards. (see image 01) Now like us you are probably thinking, “what is an Arduino board?”  Exactly!

The official website says that “Arduino is a tool for making computers that can sense and control more of the physical world than your desktop computer.” Developed in Italy, these microcontroller boards are open-source hardware and come with an open-source software IDE (intergrated development environment). The reality is these Arduino boards are pretty cool! And we’ll be writing about them in more detail in further reports.

Most of the workshop clusters (there were 10) were using sensors to bring in real-time or captured-time data. This data is the “invisible” information from which designers have the opportunity utilize in the exploration of their design work.

The Workshops

There were ten workshops at this year’s conference and the Smartgeometry website does a very good job of describing them in detail here. So we won’t recap them in that manner. However, we do want to make some notes about several of them and provide some links to relevant information we think you will find interesting.

Use the Force

This was one of the more interesting workshops because of the tools made and employed in their experimental work. Daniel Piker was one of the cluster champions (leaders of the cluster) and he is the creator of the plugin Kangaroo, a physics plugin for Grasshopper and Bentley Generative Components. The goal of this cluster was to explore the link-up between the digital and the physical. The physics engine of Kangaroo was linked up with a malleable floor surface with sensors beneath it (see image 02 below). As you walked on the floor surface sensor data would determine not just force data but motion. This data was fed to Grasshopper which contained a digital representation of the analog, sensor-based floor.

Another key component in this workshop was the use of a software tool called Firefly. Andy Payne, a licensed architect and doctoral degree candidate at Harvard’s GSD, is Firefly’s creator and a fellow cluster champion. We will be doing a feature on Andy coming up.

Urban Feeds

Another interesting cluster was Urban Feeds, led by Luis E. Fraguada, Tomas Diez and Felipe Pecegueiro. This group focused at the urban scale and had a large array of model-to-projection displays within their cluster area (see image 03-05). It was not always easy to understand the theoretical goals behind some of their investigations. However, the techniques and technology used was very interesting.

The group used sensor data, captured from the city of Copenhagen and connected to Grasshopper through gHowl, a set of custom software components. They were interested in generating design based on relationships between two or more sensor parameters.

One example projected a map of color-coded terrain onto a 3D pliable (analog) model. Adjustments could be made to the model, and agents–projected onto the model–would respond to changes in the analog model terrain. (see image 03). In one case agents would avoid activity in an area that combined two data inputs (like steep terrain, measured in 3D and temperature). Agents (people) would be represented by dots. The dots would move in response to real-time data changes. If I pushed the analog model with my fingers to create steep terrain in an area of high temperature the agents would move from that zone to another zone. (see image 04).

Other cluster workshops that caught our attention included Responsive Acoustic Surfaces, Agent Construction and Hybrid Space Structures. In the first the aim was to evaluate a new generation of parametric tools that embed what the conference called “emergent” behavior in parametric models. Swarming, Flocking, Cellular Automata, Genetic Algorithms and Dynamic Relaxation are all examples of emergent tools. The cluster searched for new forms for acoustic surface design that accentuate certain frequencies of sound and muffle others. (see image 06)

In the second cluster invisible processes–in this case air and energy–generated by emerging structures can be visualized during the construction process in an effort to aid the ongoing fabrication in real time. Rather than starting with a pre-designed blue-print of a structure, a feedback loop linking the emergent structure with invisible processes informs the ongoing construction. This work was oriented to the research of Rupert Soar (who we will write more about later) which deals with transient ventilation strategies and structural homeostasis within termite mounds. (see image 07-08)

Finally, the last cluster we will highlight worked on hybrid space structures based on modular polyhedra first made popular in the 1960’s but now being used again in non-modular formation. The cluster participants used Generative Components and/or Grasshopper to make precise parametric models of non-modular space structures. “Seed” templates were given to each participant to explore (these consisted of tessellated and scripted armatures and compatible components in GC and Grasshopper).

This cluster also used the software tool Karamba, a parametric structural evaluation tool developed by cluster leader Dr. Clemens Preisinger and Bollinger-Grohmann Schneider Engineers. Karamba is a FE (Finite Element) plugin for Grasshopper that allows designers to interactively calculate and analyse the 3D forces on a structural system. Karamba generates an intuitive “feedback loop” between physical behavior and geometry to inform design decisions. (see image 09)

We will publish a gallery of images from the event and conference a bit later. For more information and to read on all the work of the cluster workshops go here.