Overview + Objectives

“I’d like to think that we are now entering a third, more mature phase in our relationship to digital technology.  Thanks in part to a new generation of architects who have been educated entirely within the digital regime, and on the other hand to the first generation of digitally trained architects who have continued to evolve their thinking, the computer is beginning to have a practical impact, beyond the formal or the metaphorical.”   – Stan Allen, If…then… Architectural Speculations 

Design communication pervades the way design is used systematically to understand human experience from the bottom-up.  This course will teach design communication methods for each student’s design intent in three parts: I. Unit Diagrams; II. Analog Parametric Design; and III. Digital Parametric Design.  Students will bridge analog and digital media to explore systematic approaches to measure existing and proposed environmental conditions. This method of systems thinking allows students to use digital media to understand human and natural conditions not as singularities but as a more powerful parametric approaches.  The course will introduce ideas in a lecture format, meet for one hour in computer lab settings and provide opportunities for individual learning in the design studio setting.

James Corner, Time, Material, Place Diagram UO Urban Interactions Lab, UIxD

Course Objectives

Students will use design communication to explore the following architecture objectives:

I. Diagramming:  Drawing relationships as a generative design tool  

• • Diagramming object/environment affect

  • 3D to 2D workflow, modeling to drawing

  • Single idea “d” diagrams: ink drawings and digital hard-lined

  • Collage Diagrams: vectoral space, materials/textures, time

  • Time-Based Diagrams

  • 4th degree generative diagrams

  • Simple volume surface modeling for use in diagramming precedents

  • Abstracting plan and section from volumetric models

II. Analog Parametric Modeling:

• • History of tiling types as used in patterning

  • Two-dimensional tiling exercises, including transformative step-by-step diagrams of operations

  • Three-dimensional tiling exercises, considering volumetric implications and scale

  • Lighting and mapping, consideration of affect and human interface

III. Digital Parametric Modeling:

• • Analysis of studio design intent, generative diagrams, and material affect to create a parametric wall system and optionally for a plan/section organizational system for the studio project

  • Considering mapping data sets into the parametric system to inform a single operation such as a material assembly with consideration of affects to human experience

*. Presentation Methods: 

• • Studio board layout and other communication methods will be studied using case-study examples and diagrams to support the final studio presentation

  • Design Communication II final as an exploratory digital fabrication connecting virtual and physical media tested in a 1:1 mockup of material affect.