EXERCISES
Text: Leandro Madrazo
PRINCIPIA is the
introductory course to CAAD for architecture students in the ETH. The
course consists of one hour weekly lectures, plus a series of
exercises. The purpose of the lectures is to introduce to students the
basic concepts of computer-aided design, as well as to make them aware
of the different possibilities that this technology offers to today's
architects. The subject-matter of the exercises is the exploration of
FORM and SPACE by means of computer tools.
The exercises have been conceived to allow students to create design
work from the very beginning of the course. They are divided into two
parts: a first block consisting of four exercises, plus a final
exercise.
The first four exercises concentrate on diverse aspects of the paradigm of
types and instances. All the exercises conform to the same format:
there is a first composition or theme, followed by three different
variations.
The sequence and topics covered by each one of the first four exercises
are the following:
- 1. COMPOSITION IN THE PLANE.
The first exercise focuses on
two-dimensional composition. The notion of instantiation is introduced
and applied: a basic vocabulary of shapes is instantiated to create a
composition.
- 2. OBJECTS ON THE PLANE.
The purpose of this exercise is to create compositions
of extruded objects on the plane, based upon two different formal languages:
the language of prismatic shapes and the language of parallel planes. The concept
of substitution is introduced, as a design mechanism to create
variations from a given scheme.
- 3. HIERARCHICAL STRUCTURES.
The goal of the exercise is to capture
the internal structure of objects, using for that purpose layer structures
and compound objects.
- 4. LEVEL OF DETAIL.
This exercise concentrates on the idea of multiple
representations of an object. For a given a formal structure, individual
components can be replaced by others to give rise to other objects having
a higher or lower level of detail.
In the current semester, there are two options for the last exercise:
- 5a. MODELLING OF A FACADE, applying for that purpose the different concepts
and techniques that have been applied in previous exercises.
- 5b. VOID MODELLING, using solid modelling applications to generate
an interior space.