Forming:
Architectural design of the key building types
Reflection Hans
The course was very intense and fast paced. The chosen topic was and remains very relevant. The
included lectures were often very beneficial, in few cases superficial. The brick workshop was very
entertaining and provided a better understanding of the adobe material. For more valuable results at the
subsequent brick testing the organisation of the workshop could have been more stringent. The support
of the docents was often helpful and in cases highly enjoyable. The midterm presentation proved vital to
check that the project was going into the right correction. The topic of the hammam was appreciated by
all team members with the special focus on the muqarnas and stoa a special challenge for the more
experienced team members. The team work was smooth. In summary the course was interesting and
motivating to learn more about computational design.
Reflection Nikoleta
Project:
The development of the project was challenging. The triangular grid resulted to interesting space configuration. The most difficult part was to transform the project from 2D to 3D, in this phase the triangular grid created extra complexity in defining basic elements in the 3D Geometry and to complex scripts were developed,, wich our laptops had difficulties to process. By internalizing the data the processing demands got reduces but not enough. The most difficult part was the overall ceiling. Three different way were tried to create this geometry and in the end dynamic relaxation was chosen the best one. However, this geometry has many potentials to be developed further.
Course:
The curse was structured with deliverables for almost every week. However the guidance from the tutors was not in time or was missing many times. In the configuration phase in the 1st week everything was unclear what we should do. We were informed about the importance of a proper tesselation in dynamic relaxation two days before midterm. After midterm in the challenge of transforming the 2D in 3D extra challenges were added and in the end there was no time to organize the project for the final presentation. During the consultation all the tutors were passing by separately. In these days we were explaining the project 3 to 4 times in the different tutors and the feedbacks were not aligning in the same direction in basic things because the tutors were not informed about the tutors. Consulting with all the tutors at the shame time would have brought better results.
Reflection Hamidreza
Project:
The hammam project was very interesting. In this project beside knowing about construction with adobe we learned many things about how people did waterproofing, ventilation and heating in the adobe building. Using triangular grid was very challenging and it changed my bias toward symmetrical adobe buildings which I used to see in my country.
The combination of using this grid, building a 3d form from it, and the muqarnas helped me to grasp the difference between geometry and topology and the benefits of the topological approach in design.
Reflection Max
Project:
The triangular grid was challenging and interesting to solve. However : After working with an diagrid last semester and this semester with and triangular grid, I will try to avoid them for a certain time. A rectangular grid is easier to handle and offer good solutions as well. The construction is possible but a bit too complicated for my taste, especially when we consider the unskilled labor. We believe it is possible but I think a more basic construction would be more suitable. But since we tried to achieve adobe 2.0 and not a standard solution I think that the production could be further simplified with more time.
Course:
The course required us to have a steep learning curve. I would have preferred getting the course brief earlier. That way i could have prepared myself better already during the summer vacation. The tutorings where inspiring and offered multiple different perspectives how to solve certain problems. This way we could decide what suits us the best. The teaching approach was pushing us towards ur limits and resulted in a good project. I enjoyed working with my team members on this course.
Reflection Rick
Project:
I must say, I really liked the project, the triangular grid and the complexity of it. I like to push towards the boundaries and to there where my comfort zone stops. But in this project i think we did a great job, especially with the topic of the Hammam. I'm almost convinced that a lot of choices we made are very logical and can easily compete with rectangular grids.
There are a lot of benefits of it, although it brought us some complex mindset. I liked how everything played out and think we can be proud of it.
Course:
The course has a lot of very hard assets and require a lot of focus and insight. I loved that the teachers didn't push us back and that we were able to develop our own thing, something I see sometimes missing in TU. I learned a lot from the teachers, how they spoke to us. Also the amount of teachers and the different ones was interesting. A critique was sometimes the weird directions that were given, that didn't seem to make things easier (e.g. implementing combined Grasshopper scripts and the tesselations a day before midterms). Also I liked my team and a big shout-out to Hamid and his tea :)
Reflection Noah
Looking back on earthy there are a few things that come to mind about the course. The first one being that I was lucky to be part of a great group, where everyone did what they could. Not all of us had the much prior knowledge about grasshopper and programming but everyone made an effort to better themselves. In my case this meant that I tried to understand python and I’m slowly getting an idea of how to work with it, but I’m not at the point where I can make a script that I more useful then a couple of grasshopper components. I can however say with certainty that I improved my grasshopper skills, I learned how to work with Karamba and got a better understanding of how to work with the data structures in grasshopper. The second thing that comes to mind is are the lectures and tutoring, because there was such a large amount of knowledge that had to be transferred to us students it sometimes became very hard to follow and comprehend the what was being taught. Some lectures lasting for multiple hours without breaks did not help. During counselling the given feedback was mostly helpful and it can be a good thing to be pushed to take a step further in the design and really thinking about the logic behind it but being pushed to improve the design while one already feels the pressure of what has to be done still can be very stress inducing. All in all I believe that earthy has a lot of potential to be a great course but there needs to be more clarity about what the final result should be, a design or a method. Where everything up until the midterm points towards creating a method, but afterwards it was more about if you could implement this and or that to the design.