Agent Assemblages – GH L.2

Workshop Agent Assemblages – GH L.2

“Agent Assemblages GH L.2” is a 3-day(24-hour) Grasshopper marathon workshop, dealing with the implementation of multi-agent strategies in architectural design. Drawing inspiration from Robert Stuart Smiths’ iconic “Helsinki Public Library” project, we are aiming towards the appropriation of agent behaviour mechanics, for a bottom-up approach in design. During the course of this class, you’ll learn and comprehend the fundamentals of visual programming with Grasshopper3d, as well as delve deeper into advanced computational design concepts. The course will conclude with a design case study, aspiring to be fabricated on the final day, with our in-house digital fabrication toolset.

Agent Assemblages GH L.2 – Grasshopper recognized as an official introductory course, all trainees receive an Official McNeel Grasshopper level 2 Certificate upon completion.

This 3 days event is designed for everyone who is interested in gaining advanced computational design skills, with a focus on working with agent based modelling. During these days, you will be introduced to generative design, you will gain access to a wide range of form-finding tools and techniques and you will learn ways of preparing your designs for prototyping and fabrication.

Images used under kind permission. More at: www.robertstuart-smith.com/rs-sdesign-helsinki-public-library

Course Outline

In this training course you will learn to create and edit grasshopper definitions and get acquainted with parametric modeling. This fast-moving class deals with most of Grasshopper’s functionality, ranging from curve editing and data-tree manipulations to recursive functions.

The duration of the course is 24 hours. The course is intensive and spans three consecutive days of design training (10:00 to 19:00, with a 1 hour lunch-break at 15:00). The workshop is divided in two parts, the first being a (12-hour) general introduction to Grasshopper3d and the second (12-hour) providing in depth Grasshopper knowledge focusing on multi-agent systems.

Each trainee receives the official courseware as part of attending this course.

Structure

During this class, you will systematically move through the user interface, command access, creation and editing of curves, surfaces and solids, through computational methodologies. Further than that, you will be presented with the core concepts of computational design and the epistemological discontinuities that arise from this point onwards. Information will be presented at an accelerated pace.

Expected Outcomes

After this course students are expected to be able to:

• Create parametric models
• Understand algorithmic design principles
• Utilize intermediate parametric tools, such as attractors, force fields and agents
• Produce custom grasshopper definitions, according to their design intent
• Provide dynamic solutions to complex design problems, through iterative methodologies
• Prepare 3d models for fabrication with 3d-printing and cnc cutting technologies

Curriculum

At decode™ we believe effective training needs an intriguing goal instead of generic exercises. Most of the tutorials will be presented as part of a design process, in which we will be doing structural analysis and redesigning well-acclaimed architectural projects, as well as creating new objects from scratch. In this way each student will be guided through the process of completing a set of challenging and interesting design projects, leading up to the final design goal.

During the 20-hour course, the following concepts will be covered:

• Acquaintance with the Grasshopper3d interface
• Operators
• Analysis of geometry and parameter extraction

• Data trees and lists management
• Boolean operations and conditionals
• Transformations, population and morphing

• Pattern generation
• Attractors & Vector fields
• Triangulation algorithms
• Mesh smoothing, subdividing and quadrangulation

• Recursive modeling
• Design optimization
• Branching strategies
• Agents behavior

Target Audience

This course is for the young (at heart) design professional /design student who wants to efficiently learn advanced concepts and techniques of the Grasshopper computational modeling software at an accelerated pace, in an instructor-led environment.

Pre-requisites

Requires Windows skills and desire to create. Previous rhino3d modeling experience is deemed greatly helpful but not required. A general understanding of basic mathematical principles is also considered helpful, but an explanatory lecture will be given where needed.

All participants are required to have:

*Their personal laptop with them. Additional NUC computers can be provided after timely communication.

*Rhinoceros3d V5.0 pre-installed. You can download a 90-days evaluation version from http://www.rhino3d.com/download

*Grasshopper 3d (latest version) pre-installed. You can download the plugin for free from http://www.grasshopper3d.com/page/download-1

*Lots of patience and positive thinking, learning is fun after all!