the disContinuum

Friday

Jan072011

00

NEWS

View the AC2011 News Archive here.

To explore the Approaching Convergence 2011 course overview and student gallery, select a tab to the right.

Thursday

Jan062011

01

OVERVIEW
Visual Studies // APPROACHING CONVERGENCE

Have we reached a stasis in the long-heralded potential of the parametric?
We as architects have certainly acknowledged the limitations of the performance-based paradigm, challenges both human—the inescapability of embedded presuppositions + subjective determinations of fitness—and technological—perhaps most concerning, the lack of a universal computational language for modeling + analytics. Along the way, our ambitions for performative design have shifted to generative + nonlinear potentials, while exploiting our control over the efficiency, fluidity + substantive analyses of the parametric system to close the gap in the exchange of information has remained largely unexplored.

The architect has always operated across a multitude of domains at once. This course emerges from the assertion that the architect of the very near future will design workflow + software as integrally as projects + buildings. We aim to establish sizable research + progress toward this end, first developing then employing an encyclopedic catalogue of dynamic computational operations and systems, grounded in robust, performative evaluation + time-tested mechanisms + techniques. Navigating through, between, + within modeling applications as a continual platform for exploration, students will launch into a variety of opportunities for advanced + fluid interoperations. The ultimate goal is to begin to approach a convergence of varied + disparate computational platforms of design, with a specific focus on integrating techniques of digital craft + analysis into a near-seamless and active coexistence.

Wednesday

Jan052011

02

SCHEDULE

WEEK01: ORIENTATION + NAVIGATION
Course Overview + Resource Introduction
Operation #0 Assigned: Concept Sketching + Warmup Tutorials

Week02: GH OPERATIONS
Component + Operation Toolsets

Week03: GH LOGICS
Data Management + Conditional Statements
Operation #1A Assigned: inSourced Operations

WEEK04: GH WORKFLOW + EXTENSIONS: intraOPERATIONS
Scripted intraOperations + Toolset Extensions

WEEK05: DYNAMIC SYSTEMS: interOPERATIONS
Data Streaming + Dynamic Text I/O
Operation #1A Due (Student Documentation)
Operation #1B Assigned: outSourced Operations

WEEK06: WORKSESSION 0.1
Operation #1B Checkpoint

WEEK07: RESEARCH REVIEW
Operation #1B Due (Student Presentation + Documentation)

Post-Break: Final Submittals

Tuesday

Jan042011