USC ARCH 517: Description

Performance-Driven Design using Grasshopper

Instructed by Nathan Miller

Since the advent of the ‘computation movement’ in architecture, designers have leveraged the power of advanced digital tools for a wide range of purposes. While many investigations have trended towards the search for new and exciting forms, advanced digital tools have also served as a means for enabling the designer to create performance-driven architecture. The digital tool, in the later case, becomes a means for exploring design ideas through the implementation of precise project parameters. The designer is tasked with creating a robust ‘algorithm’ which is used to choreograph a range of design criteria related to topics such as programmatic requirements, material properties, environmental analysis, and fabrication methodology. The implementation of the digital tool to this effect requires that the designer be inventive and methodical; creative and rigorous.

The Grasshopper Seminar is designed to expose participants to the world of parametric and generative techniques with an emphasis on performance-driven design. The seminar will build the participant’s competency in the use of the Grasshopper Plug-In for Rhino by introducing the students to the key concepts of the interface. Students will be walked through step-by-step examples and assigned a series of weekly assignments to assess their progress in being able to solve design problems with the Grasshopper plug-in

The final project will task the student with creating a ‘performance-driven’ algorithm where they will encode their own unique parameters and criteria. They will then document and publish their Grasshopper algorithm as part of this wiki.

Unless otherwise stated, the content of this page is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License