PHD thesis topic help + books or references for literature review

Hello Everybody,

I am a PHD student in Alexandria University-Architectural Engineering Department in Egypt, I got my masters degree in Digital Architecture, and was looking for a topic for my PHD thesis, I am very interested in scripting and coding in digital architectural media, but don't have much experience in it, so I started watching the Grasshopper tutorials on this site, and am also researching python online.

My question is: Do you have any recommendations for references or books that give a literature overview of Scripting and Coding in digital media related to architecture? so that I can grasp or understand the whole concept of coding theoretically, and then start to learn or research technical application, for example using Python in Grasshopper, or if you recommend another programming language to learn first, that would make it easier to approach python or advanced programming languages later, I am open to that too.

Thank you very much

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Aditya Tognatta on October 3, 2016 at 5:06am

Hi Sherif,

I 'am not sure what you want to do coding, are you interested in ecological modelling or urban emergence. Try Emergence in Architecture its the ball these days. Before running straight into coding read up on various computational techniques such as genetic algorithms, cellular automata, space syntax and graph theory etc. Well if you just want python tutorials, there are many online, you could simply start with the python primer for grasshopper(if you just want to do it for grasshopper). it's super easy to pick up. But Peter(the Dark Lord) would suggest the C# "Dark Side" of computation. Hope this helps.

Best,

Mr A.

Permalink Reply by Sherif Zeid on October 4, 2016 at 1:02am

Thank you Aditya for ur quick reply and helpful insight. Unfortunately I am not looking for any urban related topic, I would prefer topics related to buildings.

Permalink Reply by Armin Seltz on October 3, 2016 at 8:01am

Hi Sherif,

here are a couple of books and resources that should get you started:

AAD Algorithms-Aided Design. Parametric strategies using Grasshopper by Arturo Tedeschi
Parametricism 2.0 by Patrik Schumacher (Zaha Hadid) and in fact most issues of AD (Architecture Design)
The Politics of Parametricism: Digital Technologies in Architecture by Matthew Poole, which is kind of a follow up

In my opinion learning Grasshopper will be enough and there is no need to learn Python to use it successfully. Best to have a deep understanding of Grasshopper and what it can do then to try and learn too many things at once. It will help you in applying the principles to other code and not the other way round (ie. learning the concepts first and then going into grasshopper). The best way to learn the concepts is by applying and trying them in a tool like Grasshopper.

I absolutely recommend that you visit a Grasshopper workshop, as that will teach you a lot more than Youtube videos. If you cant visit a workshop, then I recommend the rese.arch video series on Grasshopper. They're really indepth and go from simple introduction to very advanced. You should ideally buy and complete all of them.

Also there is of course Dynamo and its integration with Revit and BIM, which is something to look at, although Grasshopper covers all of that as well, at least with the integration with ArchiCad. Autodesk products are more common around the world though.

Be aware that a lot of the power of Grasshopper is also in the plugins you can get for it, like Kangaroo (physics simulation), Ladybug&Honeybee (environmental analysis), Karamba (finite element analysis), Hoopsnake or Anemone (looping) and many, many more. You can find them at food4rhino.com.

Good luck!

Permalink Reply by Sherif Zeid on October 4, 2016 at 1:07am

Thank you so much Armin for your detailed reply, it helps a lot, specially with the book titles, those should keep me busy for a while. There's just something I am not sure I quite understood, do you mean I should start with learning and applying grasshopper, before learning the concepts& principles? or the other way around?

Permalink Reply by ng5 Alex on October 3, 2016 at 8:10am

This is also often suggested source.

best

alex

Permalink Reply by Sherif Zeid on October 4, 2016 at 1:08am

Thx, will definitely check it out, cheers!!

Permalink Reply by mire on October 3, 2016 at 12:21pm

Hi Sherif, Daniel Davis PhD thesis on the subject is very interesting as well

Permalink Reply by Sherif Zeid on October 4, 2016 at 1:09am

Thx mire, downloaded and checking already, cheerio!!

Permalink Reply by Fegalevac on July 28, 2019 at 8:47am

I also recently encountered writing thesis, but I wrote my scientific work on web design, which I didn’t understand very much at the beginning of my work, but then when I read a lot of literature, after several years of practice, everything fell into place. If you have difficulties at the beginning, you can see examples of thesis papers online on your topic. Now on various resources there are ready-made and scientific works that can be used as an example, for example, look here edusson.com I really like this resource.

Permalink Reply by Mishin Alex on August 26, 2019 at 7:12am

In fact, now there are a huge number of services that help students.
Here's an example of the best book report services https://paidpaper.net/best-book-report-services/ . Perhaps, whom any of users they, too, will come in handy. I wish you good luck.

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