Thursday, March 31, 2016

UNL Architecture Courses - Towerpalooza!


A series of spring technology courses at UNL have concluded this past month.  I taught two parallel courses in parametric modeling and computation for BIM for undergraduate and graduate architecture students. Both courses positioned Revit as the primary design platform:

  • Conceptual Design with Revit:  The first course was focused on conceptual family creation and parametric modeling workflows.  
  • Computational Design with Dynamo: The second course introduced Dynamo as a computational design tool that can be used to facilitate design exploration with BIM.

The mini-courses were taught over the span of three Saturday sessions with between 10 and 15 students. Both course assignments used a "tower" as the design prompt and it was interesting to compare and contrast the student results. The student products from the parametric family course tended to be more "free" in terms of geometric control with a higher level of development for different design components. The Dynamo course had a much higher barrier to entry for learning a 'new language' and the products were more formula-driven in terms of overall geometry.

Parametric Modeling with Revit
Student: Dexter Hansen

Student: Anna O'Neill

Student: Abdulrahman Nahas

Computational Design with Dynamo

Student: Michelle Lindgren


Student: Kristen Schulte

Student: Caitlin Tangeman