Computational Form

3 units

Form is an endlessly rich category of visual, architectural, and sculptural creation, capable of poetic surprise and unruly enigmas. Yet to realize ambitious and intricate architectural and sculptural forms, practitioners must command a combination of geometric, computational, and material concepts and techniques. This course is a forum to develop formal virtuosity through the medium of sheet material (rigid and pliable) and the methods of computational design. Using a combination of AI vibecoding (C# and Python), GenAI models, and procedural tools such as Houdini, and Grasshopper, we will interrogate the interplay between form, pattern, and material constraints in sheet material (paper, fabrics, wood, sheetmetal). In the process, students will be introduced to powerful geometric and computational concepts such as the multiscalar meshes, voxelizations, tetrahedralizations, discrete differential maps, and developable and warped surfaces. The course will open a library of techniques for describing and disciplining complex geometry that expand the student’s capacity to achieve ambitious forms that hover at the edge of possibility.