Check out the seminar site for more details!  Significant financial support is available, so please contact us if you are interested.

Technology changes the way we understand our world. Computation gives us new ways to explore and understand the processes that create the natural world. These new tools and insights enable us to develop new strategies in art and design borrowing from natural structures like the network of leaf veins or the form of soap films

Through numeric and algorithmic techniques, computational design explores the creation of media through the creation of a process. Instead of designing a specific object, a process can be used interactively or generatively to create an infinite variety of outputs. Concretely, this involves writing computer programs to generate forms. Usually, this breaks down into two tasks: 1) choosing and creating the process (e.g. growth or subdivision), and 2) realizing the geometry and form (i.e. creating the curves, surfaces, color, etc.).

This seminar is a project-driven survey of techniques in computational design. Example techniques include particle systems, multi-agent systems, network analysis, and finite element methods. We will explore some applications of these techniques to a variety of topics, ranging from fluid motion to reaction diffusion patterns to tensile surfaces. We will also cover topics in form generation and the geometrical tools needed to realize forms, from basic operations on lines and planes to NURBS surfaces and data structures.

The goal is to develop a broad understanding of approaches to simulation problems and how to translate these approaches to the tasks of design. During this survey of techniques, participants will be working to develop their own computational project.

Depending on the projects developed and some circumstances to be determined, computer controlled fabrication equipment may be made available for prototyping participants' projects, and projects may have the opportunity for a gallery showing.

Examples in the class will mainly use the Processing programming environment.