BE Magazine Volume 5, Issue 2 - (Page 41) TECH NOTES Thirst for Higher Learning University of Arkansas offers first-in-region computational design workshop I magine skyscrapers that spiral into clouds and office towers that harvest breezes and daylight to cut energy costs. The University of Arkansas School of Architecture recently demonstrated to design professionals and students how to make these ideas concrete in a workshop titled “TransFORM Architecture” on the University of Arkansas campus in early April. The workshop offered participants handson experience with GenerativeComponents, Bentley’s new software tool that enables architects and engineers to experiment with innovative forms, materials, and assemblies. GenerativeComponents facilitates innovation by supporting the quick exploration of a broad range of design alternatives, which can then be analyzed for energy efficiency. “We want to help architects understand that they have the ability to manipulate software to make what they want,” said Bentley Vice President Brad Workman, who holds the School of Architecture’s Twenty-First Century Chair in Integrated Practice. “Computational design enables architects to torque, twist, and mold buildings, testing all along to see how much they can warp form while retaining sound structure.” Expert users of GenerativeComponents and other high-end parametric design systems led the workshop, including Marty Thompson Ventulett, Stainback & Associates Doscher, IT director at Morphosis, an architecture firm led by Pritzker Architecture Prize winner Thom Mayne, and Volker Mueller, formerly design technology manager with NBBJ architecture firm and recently named research director for computational design at Bentley. The workshop, open to architects, designers, researchers, students, and faculty members, was free but was limited to participants who submitted design ideas that they wished to explore. Cosponsored by Bentley, “TransFORM Architecture” was modeled on the SmartGeometry workshops that have taken place in cities such as London, Toronto, and Munich and on east and west coast campuses in the United States. “There have been computational design workshops at Georgia Tech, MIT, and UCLA—none of them anywhere close to this part of the country,” Workman said. The SmartGeometry Group is committed to the belief that CAD should lend itself to capturing, expressing, and enriching the geometric relationships that form the foundation of architecture. The group is dedicated to educating the construction professions in the new skills required to effectively use advanced design systems such as GenerativeComponents. The directors of the SmartGeometry Group include Lars Hesselgren of Kohn Pederson Fox Associates, Hugh Whitehead of Foster + Partners, and J. Parrish of ArupSport. About GenerativeComponents GenerativeComponents enables architects and engineers to pursue designs and achieve results that were virtually unthinkable before now. Empowered by computational methods, designers can direct their creativity to deliver inspired sustainable buildings that are freer in form and use innovative materials and assemblies. GenerativeComponents facilitates this by allowing the quick exploration of a broad range of what-if alternatives for even the most complex buildings. This unique generative design software captures and exploits the critical relationships between design intent and geometry. Designs can be refined by either dynamically modeling and directly manipulating geometry, by applying rules and capturing relationships among building elements, or by defining complex building forms and systems through concisely expressed algorithms. GenerativeComponents is integrated with building information modeling, analysis, and simulation software, providing feedback on building materials, assemblies, systems performance, and environmental conditions. This integration also ensures that intent becomes reality by enabling designs to accurately and efficiently flow through to detailed production and fabrication. Volume 5, Issue 2 | BE MAGAZINE 41 Thompson Ventulett, Stainback & Associates http://www.bentley.com/gc http://www.smartgeometry2008.com/ http://www.smartgeometry2008.com/
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