ARCH 436

Nature inspired with a simplistic view of experiencing architecture, a lifestyle.

The idea for this project was to utilize grasshopper for parametric design for a specific building’s façade. How can one shade with the use of natural material specifically with vines. Albeit grasshopper did not inspire the question, it was a tool used for me to question grasshopper as well as myself on its capabilities and to iterate. My main goal was to use this class in conjunction with Arch 351 a course geared to the evaluation of building performance and occupancy comfort. Such evaluations considered thermal, air velocity, heating and cooling loads, and more. Moreover was illumination and daylight factor where I found crucial for the use of Grasshopper.

The arch 351 course, give us challenges based on predefined parameters and building restrictions presented by a competition held for a building in New Delhi, India. With the building skeleton already set it is up to the discretion of the designer to utilize tools they know to perform building analysis upon a shading strategy they choose for the building. Inspired by the microscopic view of egg and the way in which it allows for the permeation of certain material and blocks out others created the idea I craved for my strategy. To simply state I am creating a façade that is composed of many vines that stretch across the face of the building to create a shading device. Why grasshopper? One the many reason I am working this out in grasshopper is because of Rhino’s ability to handle a lot of geometry, grasshopper’s ability to parametrically change objects creating for maximum allowance for iteration. Coupled with this is the DIVA plugin that both rhino and grasshopper have which is the evaluation software I choose to use to inform my façade making decisions. Then there is grasshopper’s great evolutionary solver that allows on to obtain the best answer the any questions they pose. Mine would be what arrangement of vines would allow for the most daylight diffuse penetration? With this I made use of my studies so far in the grasshopper rhino program.