Workshop: Parametric Urbanism with Grasshopper,
Instructor: Andy Payne (Lift Architects) and Andrew Kudless (Matsys/CCA MEDIAlab)
Date: February 13-14, 2010 (10am – 5pm)
Location: California College of the Arts, Graduate Center, San Francisco Campus
Eligibility: Open to all design students and professionals
Cost: $100 for students, $200 for professionals.
Prerequisite: Working knowledge of Rhino
Register Now! SOLD OUT!

Description: This workshop will focus on the generative modeling of urban design logics using the Grasshopper plugin for Rhino 4.0. From the early work of firms such as MVRDV to the more recent investigations by Zaha Hadid, a parametric approach to urban design has allowed designers to condense complex hierarchies of design data into solutions that exhibit highly differentiated patterns of urban form. The workshop will cover several techniques that attempt to integrate common urban design parameters dealing with massing, program, and density into one associative model allowing the designer to quickly and accurately test multiple design scenarios. The first day of the workshop will introduce many of the central topics and techniques of parametric urbanism while the second day will focus on the implementation of these techniques in a large, complex urban masterplan.

Andrew Payne received his Masters of Architecture from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation in May of 2005. Prior to that, he studied architecture at Clemson University where he earned a Bachelors of Science degree in 2002. Andrew was recently awarded Runner Up in the 2009 Metropolis Magazine Next Gen Competition for his heat sensitive energy independent ventilation system titled, The Air Flower. Andrew has worked for architectural firms such as Richard Meier & Partners and Skidmore Owings & Merrill in New York and San Francisco; as well as working as an urban designer for the Civic Design Center in Charleston, SC. Academically, Andrew has taught courses in the undergraduate architecture department at the Pratt Institute, as well as serving as a studio mentor and teaching assistant in several 3D Max and Macromedia Flash courses at Columbia’s GSAPP. He currently works and lives in San Francisco, California.

Andrew Kudless is an architect based in San Francisco where he is an assistant professor at the California College of the Arts. Andrew has taught design studios, workshops, and seminars at The Ohio State University, the Architectural Association (London), Yale University, and Rice University. In 2005 Andrew was the Howard E. LeFevre Fellow for Emerging Practitioners at OSU. He earned a Master of Arts with distinction from the Architectural Association’s Emergent Technologies and Design graduate program and a Master of Architecture with honors from the Tulane University School of Architecture. In 2004 he was the recipient of a Design Merit Award in the Far Eastern International Digital Architecture Design (FEIDAD) competition and in 1998 he was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to research architectural design and urbanism in the Kansai region of Japan. He has worked as a designer for Allied Works Architecture in Portland and New York and as a digital design, modeling, and fabrication consultant for Expedition Engineering in London. Andrew’s work has been exhibited in the US, England, France, Japan and China.

Software/Hardware: A trial version of Rhino can be downloaded here and the most recent WIP version of Grasshopper can be downloaded here. All workshop attendees should bring their own laptop with the workshop software pre-installed.