Parametrics in Practice: A Grasshopper Portfolio

Parametrics In Practice Grasshopper Portfolio Chris Norcross

Preface This portfolio was specially made to demonstrate my skills using Grasshopper as a design tool. All of this work is from my thesis project that I worked on in the Spring of 2020; my thesis focused on redesigning my university’s architecture building while exploring topics of how program and pedagogy are related, especially in the case of the program being a studio.

There was much to work on with this project, so I used Grasshopper to help me accomplish more than I could without it. Grasshopper helped me quickly produce various design prototypes to work with. I set up my scripts to help me later on when I knew I would have to change and update parts of the project. I also used Grasshopper to save me time by automating repetitive processes.

Overall I can confidently say that Grasshopper is the most helpful design tool at my disposal.

I always enjoy using it to solve problems and create interesting designs.

Full Project Book Form Generation Animation Walkthrough Video

Contents

Project Intro

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Galapagos Lighting Study

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Mathematical Window Gradient 10 Parametric Vaulted Waffle Slab 12 Voronoi Studio 16 Voronoi Threshold Mullions

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Construction Materials Study 22 Tapered Window Generation 24 Additional Drawings 30

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Intro: Problem Statement The architecture building at Roger Williams University has undergone various changes since it’s completion in 1987, with the last change being the 2003 addition. It has been seventeen years since that addition and it is time for a new addition that addresses the current issues the building is facing.

The school’s architecture program has seen substantial growth in recent years; as a result of this growth, the building is starting to feel cramped. Each year the library’s collection has grown and needs more space; new technologies have been added to the woodshop and the model making room, but room to work and introduce new technology in the future is limited.

The studio designed in 1987 followed the notion that the class of first-year students would start large and dwindle each year as students change majors or transfer to other schools.

Today this notion of dwindling class size is flawed, far fewer students are transferring or changing majors, leading to the studio reaching its capacity for students and desks.

The 2003 addition created new studio spaces for the school’s new graduate program, by extending the building’s campus facing East facade, spaces for grad studios and more faculty offices were formed. This provided more room, but in doing so it separated the undergrad and grad students, which is not beneficial for studio culture. The separation is accentuated by the intact original East facade which limits the connections between the 1987 building and the 2003 addition to just two points.

The studio could benefit from more interconnections with other parts of the building as well.

The current connection between the faculty offices and studio is indirect; a direct connection could cultivate a design discourse between students and more faculty and surpass what is achieved in studio courses. For some students, the library is not associated with the design process despite its extensive collection of resources; a stronger relationship between the studio and library could encourage students to better integrate research into their design processes.

The library also suffers from a weak connection between its first and second floors. For someone who can not use the stairs in the library, they must go to the main library desk to ask a librarian to open a locked door on the second floor, then they must go halfway across the building to use the elevator and then go back halfway across the building to get into the second floor of the library.

The undergrad and grad studios both have the same spatial qualities throughout. In the 1987 studio, ducts and structural elements were left exposed and carefully arranged to display for students how these systems worked. In the 2003 addition, the studio also exhibits systems, but in a more densely packed format. Between the two studio spaces, there is no deviation from this technical demonstration, this is not exactly an issue, but a missed opportunity to passively illustrate more architectural qualities for students to learn from.

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Intro: Project Statement Through addressing the issues that the architecture building currently faces, I will explore how design principles from the existing build can guide the design of new spaces, how the existing building can be transformed to accept new spaces, and how program and pedagogy react to one another. This project’s program can be seen as three predominant parts; the studio addition, the library expansion, and the robotics lab, with each having distinct qualities for students to learn from.

To alleviate the cramped space in the studio, it makes sense to expand the studio. While expanding the studio, I intend to bring the undergrad and grad students together to one side of the building. With this expansion, I will introduce more architectural qualities for the students to learn from, such as the influence of courtyards and natural light on space or the reuse of existing features and principals.

To establish an enriched interconnectedness throughout the building, new ways to move from space to space will be created. The relationship between the library and the studio will be strengthened by direct access to the library. Connecting both sides of the building will be explored through the transformation of the core of the building and relocating some of the faculty offices to be in closer proximity to the studio.

To improve the resources of the building, some old spaces will receive additions and some new spaces will be added. The library will benefit from further space to better accommodate its ever-increasing collection and the inclusion of an elevator will make the second floor much more accessible for all students.

A new space to be added is a robotics lab, where students can create full scale models and work with emerging technologies. Whereas the model making room and woodshop are great for working on small and medium scale projects respectively, the robotics lab will expand students’ work to large scale possibilities. With the robotics comes the capability for students to experiment with processes like 3D printed concrete, precision milled formwork, or parametric stacking of bricks to create complex forms.

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Galapagos Lighting Study Following the mid crit, I decided to combine my two concepts into one; taking the main studio space with the skylights and courtyards from the stacked concept and the thesis studio space from the pedagogy concept. I reshaped the thesis studio to have one large central courtyard, surrounded by pyramidal forms. At first, I generated these pyramids through a Grasshopper script, which resulted in the pyramids all being the same height. Having experienced how harsh direct sunlight can be during studio hours, I decided to use the height of the pyramids to shade the thesis studio. I created another Grasshopper script that used Galapagos to adjust the pyramids’ heights which maximized the shaded area on the glazing between the studio and courtyard.

Less Pyramids

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More Pyramids

Galapagos Lighting Study Script

Coordinate values for Galapagos to test.

Internal shaded area for Galapagos to evaluate.

Test iterations. Orange lines and spheres being the attractors to determine height of pyramids.

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Mathematical Window Gradient Of the fenestration options I had previously came up with, I was not satisfied with any of them, some were too bland and others reminded me of bars over a prison window, which is a connotation I did not want to be associated with this building. I came up with the qualities the windows needed: lots of opportunities for views and daylight, avoid repetitive horizontal and vertical lines, and bring the size of the wall to a human scale.

My first step to generate these new windows was to work at the level of a singular structural bay. I divided the bay evenly along its height into six rectangles. I reduced the height of the bottom rectangle to a seventh of its original height while maintaining the position of its bottom edge. With the second rectangle from the bottom, I reduced its height to two-sevenths of its original height while maintaining the position of its bottom edge. This process was repeated with the third rectangle reduced by three-sevenths, the fourth by four-sevenths, the fifth by five-sevenths, and the sixth by six-sevenths. The last step after adjusting the heights of the rectangles is to divide them evenly along their lengths into four rectangles with a six inch gap between them.

The resulting windows from this procedure create a gradient from low opacity to high opacity up the height of the bay and meet my criteria for the windows. To add a bit more variety to the facade I adjusted the procedure with every other bay to be divided into eight rectangles instead of seven and did not reduce the height of the bottom rectangle.

Window Gradient Script

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Dividing a bay into eight sections and calculating the height of the windows.

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Parametric Vaulted Waffle Slab The next portion of this project that I wanted to concentrate on was the structure supporting the upper studio. I started this step with a few design intentions for this structure: the structure should be supported by columns and load-bearing walls that correspond to the locations of the original columns and walls and the structure should be an expressive and educational part of the space, not hidden behind sheets of gypsum. I originally designed the upper studio using units made up of two cells from the structural grid, so checked to make sure that all of the units had enough support points and made changes where necessary. No two units were the same due to the varied spacing of the structural grid and differences in supports, so each unit would be different. The structure that I chose to use is a concrete hybrid of catenary vaulting and waffle slabs, the precedent for this design came from published research and prototypes

by Block Research Group and Experimental Building Technologies at the ETH Zurich.

The undersides of the units were arched to form catenary vaults and cantilevers to reduce mass at the points farthest from support points. I used a Grasshopper script to define a grid of points on each unit, these grids were deformed by being pulled towards the closest support point. At each grid point, a round irregular shape is drawn following the deformation of the point grid. The round shapes are then extruded to form coffers in the vaulting and the space between them then acts as structural ribs.

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Upper Studio Area

Load Distribution

Reflected Slab Plan

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Vaulted Waffle Slab Script

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Adjusting the arrangement of the waffle grid according to the slab unit’s support points.

Script for one slab unit.

Applying the waffle grid to the slab unit’s vaulting.

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Voronoi Studio For this iteration, I wanted to bring back the individuality and strangeness that the thesis studio had in earlier versions. The new footprint I used in the preceding design was a step in the right direction for establishing the thesis studio’s individuality from the main studio space.

To strengthen the individuality further, I detached the studio from the rest of the building by shifting it Southwest, and the gap formed by this shift was enclosed with glass.

I designed a new roof for the studio that reintroduced the pyramidal forms that were generated through a Grasshopper script. The script began by placing nine arbitrary points within the studio’s footprint, these points were used to form Voronoi cells. These cells were extruded into pyramids whose heights and colors were determined by the point’s X and Y coordinates; lower coordinates resulting in a taller pyramid, the X coordinate making a pyramid more or less green and the Y coordinate doing the same with red.

One pyramid was removed to create a courtyard and an adjacent cell was left open on the second floor to form a vertical connection between both levels. The structure supporting the second floor reflects the geometry of the Voronoi cells and uses the same colors as the pyramids.

To further improve this space, the next steps for me to take were working on windows and refining how the roof meets the walls.

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Voronoi Studio Script

Populating a boundary curve with points and forming Voronoi cells.

Creating an oculus for the courtyard.

Offseting and extruding the Voronoi cells to make the second floor structure.

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Forming the outer surfaces for the second floor.

Extruding the Voronoi cells to form a pyramidal roof.

Extracting the X & Y values of the Voronoi cells’ center points to determine the green and red values of the roof pyramids.

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Voronoi Threshold Mullions Inputs: Mullion Dimensions

Variables: Voronoi Cell Count Work Plane Plane Normal Vector

Voronoi Mullion Generation

Inputs: Reference Surfaces

Populate Surfaces with Points

Create Voronoi Cells

Offset Voronoi Cells

Loft to Form Mullions

Extract X and Y Values of Points

Color MullionsUsing X and Y Values to Determine Red and Green Tones

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Voronoi Cell Color Solver

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Construction Materials Study The next area I addressed in the project was the materiality and construction method of the thesis studio. After researching precedents that had similar forms and qualities, I settled on concrete as the material to use. In this first pass at the assembly and enclosure, I had a double structure with inner walls supporting the second floor and outer walls supporting the roof.

The purpose of having the double structure was to allow for a continuous layer of insulation inside the structure while maintaining a monolithic external appearance. The Interior finish used inside the studio was thin glass fiber reinforced concrete panels, which can be pigmented to match the colors of the roof pyramids. To achieve the color of the pyramids I was exploring a few options; such as dyeing the structural concrete, terrazzo finishes, and pigmented GFRC panels. I later refined this assembly to not require a double structure while maintaining the monolithic exterior structure.

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Slab & Foundation

Inner Structural Wall

Rigid Insulation

Outer Structural Wall

Floor Structure

Outer Structural Wall

Roof Structure

Rigid Insulation

Interior Finishes

Skylights

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Tapered Window Generation Before proceeding into a redesign of the thesis windows I took a step back to look at precedents and consider the needs of the space more intensely. I looked to Le Corbusier and Ronchamp again to examine the tapered windows that softly light the space. I noticed that using tapered windows could be adjusted to make the interior space more or less private.

With this idea of the windows guided by the level of privacy within, I got to work laying out the three programs housed in the thesis studio; studio spaces, review spaces, and faculty offices. The studio spaces are the most public, the offices are the most private, and the review spaces must have windows high enough to not impede pinning up drawings.

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Standing at convergence of window tapers

Standing behind window convergence point

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Tapered Window Generation To form the windows I started by dividing the outer walls into smaller surfaces that were delineated by their adjoining programs. I then categorized these surfaces by program and created a Grasshopper script that populated the surfaces with points proportionally to their area. I added variety to the surfaces depending on which program they corresponded to; the office surfaces stayed the same, studio surfaces had the points pulled towards the center of the surface by a factor of a fifth of each points’ distance from the center, and the review space surfaces disregarded any points more than two feet from the top of the surface. The script then found the distance from the nearest point for every point, this distance was divided by three to give the radius of a circle around each point, and a square was circumscribed around each circle to create the window openings.

To generate the taper of each window, the shape of the window openings were extruded and tapered to a point at the center point of their corresponding surfaces. The center points were moved inward, perpendicular to their surfaces, by a certain distance depending on the program. The windows for offices tapered to a center point five feet from the wall to maximize privacy, windows for the studio spaces tapered to a center point thirty feet from the wall to emphasize the public characteristics of the studio, and windows for review spaces tapered to a center point ten feet from the wall for a privacy level in between the offices and the studio.

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Roof Plan

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Office

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Courtyard

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Second Floor

Review

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Office First Floor

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Courtyard

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Tapered Window Script

Red-Review Space

Green-Faculty Offices

Blue-Studio Define Points

Define Points and Pull Towards Center of Surface

Find Distance to Closest Point

Define Circles With Radii a Third of that Distance

Create Squares Tangential to the Circles

Trim Sq Overlapin

quares ng Surface

Window Programmatic Properties: Red-Review Space-Elevated Windows Green-Faculty Offices-Increased Privacy Blue-Studio-Average Privacy

Find Centroid of Surface

Move Point 5’ Inward Extrude Window Perpendicularly Opening, Tapering to the Point

Move Point 30’ Inward Perpendicularly

Trim Tapers and Define Thickness

Additional Drawings

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Form Generation

Define Footprint

Separate from Main Studio

Divide Into Voronoi Cells

Define Courtyard

Stretch Footprint

Populate with Points

Determine Green & Red Values

Add Green & Red Values to Voronoi Cells

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Additional Drawings

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Roof Plan

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Office

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Courtyard

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Second Floor

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Office First Floor

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Courtyard

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Additional Drawings

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Roof Plan

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Additional Drawings

First Floor

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Second Floor

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Additional Drawings

Section A

Section F

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Additional Drawings

Thesis Studio, Rendered Western Elevation

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Additional Drawings

Thesis Studio, Rendered Southern Elevation

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Additional Drawings Z Channel for Fastening GFRC Panels to Main Structure 2’ O.C.

Thesis Studio, Detailed Section A

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Monolithic Concrete Structural Shell Rigid Insulation 3/4� Colored GFRC Panel

Annodized Aluminum Window Jamb Aluminum Color to Match Color of GFRC Panels

Insulated S.O.G. Continuous Insulation Under Slab & Inside Foundation Wall Foundation Wall Use Typ. R.I. Frost Depth for Footing Depth Gravel Drainage Bed

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Additional Drawings A

Thesis Studio, Detailed Plan

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Additional Drawings

Thesis Studio, Detailed Southern Elevation

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