Environmental Intensities Workshop

Can the dichotomy between obsessive tooling and strong design agenda be overcome? Can innovative software like Grasshopper be the ideal platform to marry computation, creativity and ecological thinking? What can be done to speed up the process? Algorithmic Design Workshops is a platform created by ecoLogicStudio to engage these questions introducing novel parametric modeling techniques in the context of architecture and landscape design. Each event will be a opportunity for learning design techniques, testing new methods and debating their potential applications or evolution. Architects, Landscape architects, urban designers and students alike will find in the workshops a unique opportunity to improve their technical skills while confronting themselves with the most debated advanced design subjects.

The aim of the workshop is the exploration of 3-D modeling techniques in Grasshopper and the generation of “soft skin” building envelopes. Soft skins are systems characterized by the capability of defining their morphology in relationship to a series of environmental inputs. The workshop will start with the generation of 3-dimensional envelopes that will become the playground for the following explorations, where a series of different skins will be tested on the envelopes. External inputs [proximity, orientation and solar radiation] will affect the shape of each single component and, as a consequence, the overall morphology of the system. The behaviour of these skins will be explored through the creation of catalogues of variation in the single components and through the production of short animations. 3-dimensional models will be eventually exported in Rhino and rendered for the final presentation.

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