As of today, nzarchitecture.com is now danieldavis.com. In this post I look back at the various incarnations of nzarchitecture.com and explain why it was time to retire the name.
ts been almost a year since my last post. I haven’t stopped writing, I have just been focusing all of my effort on my PhD thesis. A few days ago that all came to an end. I’m going to spend the next few weeks far, far away from the computer, but plan to return to [...]
xactly a year ago I wrote a post about HTML5 & WebGL. At the time WebGL was so new that most of the article was speculation extrapolated from just a couple of tech demos. The intervening year has seen remarkable progress, so much so I thought it would be worthwhile today to revisit the questions raised [...]
started this blog in November 2009. Initially very few people knew, and for many months only 10 people a day would come visit. Then on April 3rd, 2010, a man in Italy posted a link on Twitter that said: “Digital Morphogenesis – Easter eggs”. Overnight hundreds of people had followed the link, and they in [...]
n a surprisingly tranquil street for the middle of Manhattan, inside an unassuming brick townhouse, gathered around a ping-pong table, sit the members of CASE inc. Or at least the members who do not telecommute from other parts of the Americas. William Mitchell tops the pile of books on the table, although the whole scenario [...]
hin Koi Khoo is a PhD candidate at SIAL who has dreamt up, and is currently building a full scale prototype of, a materially responsive architecture (video below). Suspended on an aluminum tensegrity frame, Khoo gets his architecture to sense, react, and move, by carefully composing material composites to naturally contract in certain weather, or [...]
was pretty excited to find Digital Culture in Architecutre by Antoine Picon (on Amazon). No one has ever written a full history of digital architecture but this promises to be the book. On first flick through it seems to deliver, pictures of the Hypersuface and early diagrams of the internet, snapshots from Second Life with [...]
Software of the year My pick for Software of the Year is something I don’t use very much, you probably don’t either, but it hints at what we might use in the future. It is ShapeSmith by Benjamin Nortier. ShapeSmith can be described with all the popular buzz words: AJAX, NoSQL, three.js, open-source (on top [...]
In cracks between the evangelical facade that cocoons parametric modelling with a blanket of positive writing, you catch glimpses of dissent. These are the things you catch people talking about in private between drinks – tall tales of unexpected work, of rebuilding the model, of mistakes and incompetence. As significant as it is, I have [...]
ason Calacanis, a technology entrepreneur never shy of hyperbole, exclaims that: Anyone who has an iPad — a device that did NOT exist 18 months ago — says it’s their primary consumption device or tied for their primary consumption device. (via Launch) When I stopped to consider where I consume media – like others Calacanis [...]
cripting Cultures investigates why designers choose to script. Burry suggests two motivations: productivity and control. The evidence for these claims consists of a biographical account of Burry’s own work, intermixed with a set of ‘thought experiments,’ and a set of interviews with thirty of the industries leaders (including: Casey Reas [Processing], Robert Aish [Generative Components [...]
n 2004, Patrick MacLeamy drew a set of curves based on a pretty self-evident observation: an architectural project becomes more difficult to change the more developed it becomes. For this earth-shattering revelation MacLeamy named the curve after himself (although the title should probably go to Boyd Paulson who drew the curve much earlier [see Noel's [...]
here are 2035 parametric models shared publicly on the Grasshopper forum. I downloaded these models and looked for trends in the way they were structured. 1. Most popular nodes Unsurprisingly the slider was the most popular node with 11,842 occurrences in the 2035 models. Panel, Group and Scribble come in 2nd, 3rd and 9th place, which [...]
Evolute’s recent patenting of freeform planar surfaces and what it means for architecture. Evolute respond, as do many others, in a long debate in the comments section.
orry there hasn’t been many posts recently, I have been spending a lot of time on Yeti. Version 0.2 is ready for download at yeti3d.com. Above is a video tutorial I made for reproducing Axel Kilian’s Generative Components Roof with Yeti. It might go through stuff a bit fast because I tried to get everything into one [...]
n Australia we rank conferences – academics being academics can’t resist the allure of a quantitative measurement. The Australian bean-counters give CAAD Futures a grade of ‘A’, which was enough to justify my attendance this year. By my own qualitative measurement, CAAD Futures gets the grade of ‘pretty awesome’. Held every two years, CAAD Futures is the place to go [...]
utodesk’s ‘acquisition’ of CAD visionary Robert Aish is about to reach maturity and the return on investment is looking a little shaky. After three years working at Autodesk, Robert Aish has tentatively been previewing his latest thesis: DesignScript. Although you wouldn’t know it. The release of DesignScript parallels Aish’s release of Generative Components while at Bentley: presentations and [...]
eti is now available for download from yeti3d.com. It is still a proof-of-concept more than a parametric modelling environment, but there is enough going on that others may find it useful – particularly for setting the underlying geometry of models. The latest version allows the generation of custom objects (shown in the video above). The geometry remains [...]
nnovation comes from funny places. In 2005 Apple introduced the Dashboard; a largely impractical application that overlaid the desktop with little Widgets reminding you of the time, weather, and stock-market prices. The most redeeming feature of the Dashboard was that when you added a new Widget to the Dashboard it made the screen ripple like it was made from water and, since [...]
n alternative title might be Why CAD software hasn’t gotten any faster in the last three years. Simply, most CAD software is written to take advantage of only one processor, leaving the other three processors in your shiny new Quad-core i7 idle. The solution to the multi-processor problem is threading. Programming threads can seem daunting, I put them off [...]
y now every man, dog and archinet, has taken the Smart Geometry website and condensed it into a blog post. In this post I want to share some of the larger trends emerging from Smart Geometry – not explicitly spoken about on the website. The rise of the amateur By and large, most of the interesting stuff presented at [...]
n early sneak peak at a project I have been working on: live parametric programming for Rhino. As you edit the script, in real time, the geometry is created and modified. There is slightly more going on behind the scenes than just phrasing the text and turning it into geometry, because it is based on the Yaml language [...]
Responsive Accoustic Surfaces, Smart Geometry 2011 Phil Ayres (CITA) Mark Burry (SIAL) Jane Burry (SIAL) Daniel Davis (SIAL) John Klein (Zaha Hadid) Alexander Pena (SIAL) Brady Peters (CITA) Robin Bentley (Assael Architecture) Giovanni Betti (Fosters) Ben Coorey (UTS) Thomas Hay Adam Laskowitz (SUNY) Ralf Lindemann (Ian Simpson Architects) Eric Turkiemicz Kathy Yuen (SUNY)
There has not been a blog post in a while. Reason: Copenhagen. This month there are two projects on in Copenhagen that have been taking every waking moment. It only seems fair to share them. Dermoid have been working on Dermoid for almost a year along with almost a dozen other people, lead by Mark Burry, [...]
red Brooks once made up the term ‘computer architect’ to describe himself. In the process he created a whole new (and lucrative) job type. It is an apt description of Brooks, whose entire career entangles computers and architecture. If you read this blog, it is probably an apt description of you. At the time Brooks coined [...]
reader emailed me last month to ask, amongst other things, why I had not written about Lars Spuybroek. A fair question. The honest and slightly embarrassing answer is that I never made it past the pictures in the NOX books, dismissing the whole thing as blobitecture. Strange how you can arrive as such an entrenched [...]
ver the new year, the workshops clusters at Smart Geometry 2011 were announced. This year it is being held in Copenhagen (28th-31st of March) at the Center for Information Technology and Architecture – part of the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. The theme is Building the Invisible, and somehow I was selected to lead one of the [...]
Algorithm of the year try to solve almost any problem with a Genetic Algorithm. And when you have a hammer as big as a Genetic Algorithm, with almost 3.7 billion years of user testing, it is hard not to see many Genetic Algorithm nails sticking out all over the place. On any other year I [...]
t has been a strange week. It started in Copenhagen with me teaching students how to build wooden reciprocal frame domes. I was preparing to leave Copenhagen and spend some time in London so that I could, amongst other things, gate crash the launch of Patrik Schumacher’s new book The Autopoiesis of Architecture. But as I was packing my [...]
illiam Mitchell sits between architect, science fiction writer, and perpetual optimist. The world needs more people like him – if only to combat the ecological pessimists, and baby-boomer guilt. His enthusiasm for the future of architecture helped spawn the MIT Media Lab, and gave rise to some particularly entertaining books (ME++ and The City of Bits, among others). Like anyone who predicts [...]
have been neglecting this blog lately, but it is for a good cause. My time has been spent setting up a new website: parametricmodel.com, which is basically Wikipedia for parametric model components. The site is straight from my Ph.D. research where I an currently looking at reuse within parametric models. It is quite striking how [...]
his is not going to be the most objective review of Jane Burry and Mark Burry‘s latest book, The New Mathematics of Architecture (Amazon), because I produced over 50 of the book’s illustrations, but hopefully this also allows me to offer some insight into the production. The book itself has been under production for almost seven years. [...]
he past week was filled with software launches. For me the most curious of these launches is Dassault’s DraftSight, a clone of AutoCAD (free to download here). Dassault are better known for CATIA and Solidworks, two high end, 3d parametric modeling programs that champion file to factory manufacturing. Previously Dassault half-heartedly had a go at 2d modeling with [...]
y far the biggest villain in all of parametric design is Patrik Schumacher. Normally I would not give him the time of day, but since my previous post was such a fan-boy writeup of one of the heroes of parametric design, Robert Woodbury, it seems only fair to deal to Schumacher today. It also seems [...]
obert Woodbury was studying parametric design before it even had a name – in 1990 Woodbury called it variational geometry and it was only later that ‘parametric design’ stuck. Many of the early pioneers of parametric design have gone on to do other things – or nothing at all – but Woodbury has defined his [...]
few months ago, Ben Sitler created a guide for making Grasshopper components where, tucked in the bottom, are instructions for viewing the Grasshopper source code. Download the .Net Reflector from RedGate, point it towards the Grasshopper dll, and there it all is. Dissecting Grasshopper like this is against section 3.2.1 of the Grasshopper terms of service, [...]
have spent the past month revising this project, and have come to the conclusion: I suck at parametric design. I set off with intentions of making the entire model parametric, but four weeks later I am left with a shambolic set of simi-parametric tools linked together with long manual processes and discarded ambition for the complex parts of the [...]
Why and when to optimise Grasshopper n general optimising Grasshopper is a waste of time; the optimisation will take longer than any time you gain from using it. You spend far longer constructing Grasshopper definitions compared to using them so I would favor any change that makes a definition optimally readable over a change that [...]
his semester I have been teaching two papers at RMIT that have involved getting students up to speed with Grasshopper. There are already some excellent tutorials on how Grasshopper works – my favorite is Zubin M Khabazi’s Generative Grasshopper Tutorials – Lift Architects and Woo Jae also have some helpful advice. However, there seems to be little advice [...]
hile over in Copenhagen I was able to attend a PhD symposium held between CITA, SIAL and the Bartlett. There was 17 PhD students presenting their research (full list of speakers and topics), and two trends stuck: New materialism During a question and answer session, Mark Burry pointed out that materials are back in the zeitgeist. I suspect this [...]
have just returned from the CITA workshop in Copenhagen. One of the problems we were tackling was how to distribute elements onto a unevenly doublely curved surface. I decided to explore whether the surface could be generated from elements of the same size. The most natural solution is to draw the elements in two dimensions and try to [...]
have joined Twitter @nzarchitecture as a way to share the links that do not quite warrant a 1000 word a blog post here. Initially I was resistant to the idea that 140 characters could add anything other than noise to the discourse, however, from inbound links to this blog, I have come to see the aggregate effect of the [...]
omputational architecture got off to a pretty bizarre start in the 1960s. Pick up a copy of Cross’s The Automated Architect (1976) to see what I mean: study after study of methods to optimize designs to reduce the distance occupants walked. Even by today’s standards, the distance occupants walk seems a pretty strange measure of [...]
ust finished a tool to visualise directed graphs in processing. It uses the bezier curve & box combination from Grasshopper, but since the visualisation is not a development tool, the nodes the free to float into place. I created it to expose the underlying schema of a parametric tool we are developing but it could be modified to display any [...]
n general I am not a fan of ‘theorists’ or anything else from the 80s. The exception is Neil Leach. I can still remember the first time I read The Anaesthics of Architecture, cover to cover under the afternoon sun, the whole text resonating. In the domain of digital architecture, even though it does not [...]
n the 12th of December, 2009, Niel Leach gathered some of the most prominent digital intellectuals to talk parametric urbanism at Intensive Fields. It sounded amazing but was a bit too far for a day trip. Fortunately for those who could not make it, the University of Southern California has put all the discussions on their youtube page. The following is the first lecture [...]
This easter, a look at some of the latest developments in Rhino, ubiMash, and Generative Components.
rior to the 1980’s it was not obvious that computer simulation would drive architectural change. As Sherry Turkle explains in Simulation and its Discontents, this was a time of batch processing before the development of the immersive environment of computer simulation. Simulation and its Discontents follows the introduction of computer simulation at MIT, exposing the [...]
ecently I have been producing parametric models for Antoni Gaudí’s Sagrada Família; in Excel. When I agreed to use Excel to produce the models, I signed on certain I would fail, such was the unlikeliness of Excel succeeding in producing parametric architecture. While I cannot say much about the project, I should say that we were only [...]
nce when studying computer science I had to present a computer program to my lecturer, in his office. The computer in his office was dual-screen but all he had open was six text based terminal windows (like the DOS command line on Windows). He looked on expectantly, waiting for me to demonstrate my program by typing commands [...]
he Voussoir Cloud Installation by IwamotoScott Architecture carries on Gaudí and Otto’s tradition of using hanging chain models as form finding tools. A chain will naturally hang in pure tension, and inverting this shape produces an arch in pure compression. Producing a design in compression without any torsion or shear forces allowed Gaudí to build without flying buttresses, [...]
nother question I frequently get is what software do I use &/ what software should someone learn. The following is a summary of parametric software you can use. Graph based When we talk about parametric software, we tend to think of graph based tools. The two major ones being Generative Components and Grasshopper. Both of [...]
have just started my PhD and have begun reading all those 1990′s books on how to do a PhD. Filled with useful advice like: when searching for a girlfriend, make sure she has transferable skills so that when you get employed overseas she can easily move with you; and start your research by phoning people in your [...]
hot in 1962, this video of Ivan Sutherland’s Sketchpad is almost 50 years old. It shows Sutherland (just 25 year old) demoing his PhD project, a project that wins him the Turner prize (the Nobel prize of computer science). The program is running on the TX-2 – the last computer in America ‘to have its own [...]
A-periodic tiles are sets of 3-8 tiles that are specially shaped so that no matter what way they are joined they produce a pattern that never repeats. It seems counterintuitive to have a small set of regular shapes that can only make irregular shapes when joined. There is probably a mathematical proof for this but I have been [...]
raphemes is a spring based design tool developed by Sawapan. The interface – like the program – is unconventional, playful and esoteric. Steve Jobs would have a fit seeing something so non-standard running on an Apple computer, thankfully it only runs on Windows. Despite its unconventional nature, it is quite easy to grasp with a [...]
aliper Studio’s Genetic Staircase translates obscure computer code into an accessible metaphor. The literal correlation between a genome and the metal woven between the coiled stairs, produces an easy to understand diagram of a genetic algorithm. It is not the first time a genetic algorithm has been used to design (see my past post on [...]
rchiKludge is a project by Pablo Carranza that explores the automated design of architecture. Completed in 2004, the project is not technically innovative, but it is a simple and rare example of a genetic algorithm being used in the design of architecture. The genetic algorithm used by ArchiKludge belongs to a family of algorithm known [...]
learnt to programme using Flash. Today Flash is a bloated monster of a programme that wants to be Illustrator, iMovie and xCode all at once (its downfall is worthy of another post). Even though I no longer use Flash, learning it was not a waste of time since once you learn one programming language, you know [...]
often get emails from people wanting to progress beyond CAD but unsure of where to start. So I started this blog. It seems appropriate to begin with the three books that have guided me and may be a source of inspiration for others. An Evolutionary Architecture – John Frazer – 1995 This book is remarkable. Written [...]