It's a tool

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Luis Fraguada on September 15, 2011 at 6:08am

...discuss...

Permalink Reply by Ángel Linares on September 15, 2011 at 2:06pm

This is the same discussion that I had for years in Seville with my schoolmates. Everything out of yourself (pencil, paper, ruler, laptop, Rhino, Grasshopper) is a tool...Every tool makes easiest some task: trace straight lines is easier using a ruler, etc. Someone could say that hand sketching is more sentient and natural like expression tool than ruler drawing...but we need the technic and accurate measure to build.

 

GH is only another tool that lets you play with tons of data and let you analize tons of results in minutes. 

 

Now, we could talk about how a tool could influence the results and how important the designer capacity, formation, culture, perception, sense of humor, etc, is.

 

In my school some teachers said the same with ACAD 10 years ago: "is only a tool and you spend lot of time tuning the results, organicing layers, importing blocks, changing your workflow..." My answer is: God bless CAD software developers :P

 

Today buildings are more complex machines than in the past and we need to manage lot of information and calculations. Urban law is very complex, programs are really complex too...To have a tool to deal with complexity could be not a bad idea.

 

To finish: a tool is a good tool (IMO) if it lets you work faster and better than without it.

Permalink Reply by Michael Pryor on September 15, 2011 at 10:44am

Grasshopper for use on a serious project should have initial design intent before hand and GH enhances and optimizes the design. I hate when people just plug a bunch of crazy stuff in and create some crazy thing of mirrors, flips, arrays, attractors and then call it architecture. Oh don't forget the silhouette people. On the other hand I think that the "arbitrary" grasshopper kind of stuff is okay for experimentation and learning the program limits and methods.

Permalink Reply by Nathan Miller on September 15, 2011 at 12:33pm

"Grasshopper is just a tool that lets you do cool things with a shit ton of data."

 

Seems accurate.  ;)

Permalink Reply by Homer Garcia Santana on September 15, 2011 at 1:49pm

This reminds me this other vid:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tc5dZ7lnoG0

( it gets interesting at 3:07 with the AntiBLOB)

Permalink Reply by Chris Tietjen on September 15, 2011 at 6:45pm

That video has no redeeming value.  It's condescending to women and just vulgarity for it's own sake.

Really, Luis???

 

Chris

Permalink Reply by Luis Fraguada on September 15, 2011 at 11:52pm

I did not make the video, I came across it on You Tube, and found it curious that grasshopper was the main topic.  It serves as a way to incite conversation surrounding the tool.  Apologies if anyone was offended.  If you look past the vulgarity, I think it brings up many interesting perspectives on this and any other tool we may adopt for our work.

 

Luis