Closing the Loop
The Closing the Loop Project explores how recent technological advances in the AEC industry have increased the potential of façade performance. In this project we are implementing an interdisciplinary student initiative, where various courses collaborate on portions of the design process of façade panels, and through this process, fully close the design/analysis/fabrication/validation loop.
Data sets arising from digital models can now be shared synchronously between various disciplines as well as iteratively throughout the design process. These data exchanges are facilitated by the integration of natural programming languages into traditional modeling environments and a profusion of open source software development. The increased efficiency and corresponding cost- effectiveness of a collaborative, performance-based design process has led to a heightened call for this practice by clients and building industry legislators alike.
The pedagogical challenge of a collaborative approach is not only to teach the technical skills of computational design, like scripting and parametrics, but also instill a sensibility of how to begin an adaptive, intelligent digital model that will be efficient for downstream interoperability, moving from parametric modelers to BIM families, to energy analyses, and on to direct fabrication.
A new Center for Performative Design & Engineering, at NYCCT, created with National Science Foundation funding, brings together different disciplines involved in BIM (Building Information Modeling), Building Performance, and Fabrication, to teach new research methodologies and concepts through design, assembly, and testing. This project illustrates actionable responses to environmental inputs that feed into the fabrication of innovative developable and deployable surfaces.
