Abstract:

Paradigm shifts in industry are ubiquitous with accelerating frequency on account of technological shifts. This has resulted in an educational landscape that mandates not only agility and robustness in adapting and adopting current and projective tools but also the development of a framework for its sustainability. Within architectural practice and academia, powerful parametric tools, notably Grasshopper, have been the most recent development that has dramatically altered current and future praxis. They aid Architects in exploring innovative forms that represent their design intentions. They are able to compute and physically model iterations that would have traditionally taken more time to accomplish and were traditionally more complex to accomplish. In order to prepare students for industry expectations, introducing Parametric Tools in the Architecture curriculum has become necessary. Scripting technology, allows Architects to explore forms that are distinct. That said, best practices for implementing parametric tools in architectural education needs to be established. This paper explores the pedagogy and analyzes the results of this implementation.

The exercise is conducted with a sample of undergraduate architectural science students, all of which have not engaged with parametric tools in the past. First, the students were taught the Parametric Tool, Grasshopper, through tutorials and a design task. They were guided throughout the first phase of the exercise developing their initial intentions for their design tasks and inculcating basic knowledge of the software. The second phase of the study consisted of engaging in the iterative process of modeling with Grasshopper. In this phase, the participants were encouraged to state the benefits and drawbacks of this experience and how the pedagogy could be improved. The innovation of each design was determined when the process of using Grasshopper permitted the designer to explore design iterations that would not be not be uniquely modeled or explored without its use. Throughout these phases students demonstrated increased confidence in their design process and opted to model with Grasshopper in comparison to traditional modeling software.

Keywords:

Parametric modeling, software, disruptive design, pedagogy.