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Formal Descriptions of Material Manipulations

An Exploration with Cuts and Shadows

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Computer-Aided Architectural Design Futures. The Next City - New Technologies and the Future of the Built Environment (CAAD Futures 2015)

Part of the book series: Communications in Computer and Information Science ((CCIS,volume 527))

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Abstract

Shape computation in design is never purely limited to visual aspects and ideally includes material aspects as well. The physicality of designing introduces a wide range of variables for designers to tackle within the design process. We present a simple design exercise realised in four stages where we physically manipulate perforated cardboard sheets as a case to make material variables explicit in the computation. The emphasis is on representing sensory aspects rather than easily quantifiable properties more suitable for simulations. Our explorations demonstrate the use of visual rules to represent actions, variables and form as well as how to control the variables to create new results, both desired and surprising, in materially informed ways.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank George Stiny for early feedback at the Knitting, Cutting, and Material Computing workshop and the student participants of the workshop (Aslı Aydın, Begüm Hamzaoğlu, Benan Şahin, Ebru Ulu, Ege Özgirin, Ezgi Baştuğ, Hande Karakaş, Kaan Karabağlı, Oğuz Kurtuluş, Oytun Gür Günel, Özde Özdal, Yusuf Reşat Güner, Zeynep Kırım). All of the images are created by Benay Gürsoy.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Istanbul Bilgi University, Istanbul, Turkey

    Benay Gürsoy

  2. The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK

    Iestyn Jowers

  3. Istanbul Technical University, Istanbul, Turkey

    Mine Özkar

Authors
  1. Benay Gürsoy
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  2. Iestyn Jowers
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  3. Mine Özkar
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Benay Gürsoy .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Campinas, Campinas, São Paulo, Brazil

    Gabriela Celani

  2. University of São Paulo, São Carlos, São Paulo, Brazil

    David Moreno Sperling

  3. University of Campinas, Campinas, São Paulo, Brazil

    Juarez Moara Santos Franco

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Gürsoy, B., Jowers, I., Özkar, M. (2015). Formal Descriptions of Material Manipulations. In: Celani, G., Sperling, D., Franco, J. (eds) Computer-Aided Architectural Design Futures. The Next City - New Technologies and the Future of the Built Environment. CAAD Futures 2015. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 527. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-47386-3_24

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-47386-3_24

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-662-47385-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-662-47386-3

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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