Mac’s Profile
My Courses
Introduction to Computation and Fabrication
This course is an introduction to digital fabrication. It will explore the qualities of materials such as wood, concrete, and plastics in the context of computational design and digital fabrication thinking and techniques. Projects will provide students with experience in the use of a variety of tools, equipment, concepts, and emerging digitally-driven technologies, including parametric rule-based design, subtractive fabrication, assembly techniques, and iterative design processes
Intermediate Computation and Fabrication, Spring 2014
This course, the second in the digital fabrication certificate sequence (following ARCH3590), focuses on the development of parametric tools and digital prototyping techniques. Beginning from the study of precedents of modern architectural fabricationāboth digital and non-digitalā the course will develop a comprehensive understanding of exemplary construction and tectonic systems, as well as allowing students to develop a proficiency in applying this knowledge in constructing associative/parametric digital models that utilize tools to generate alternative variations of these systems. An integral part of the course involves the study of parametric modeling in Rhino 3D, Grasshopper, and SolidWorks, with dedicated workshops on geometry and linear algebra for 3D modeling. The output of the course will be a digitally modeled and fabricated paneling systems. Students will come away from the course with digital and material models, and documentation of the structural characteristics of the materials and fabrication techniques used.
ARCH4710UrbanDesign, Fall 2013
This design course will cover a range of urban and architectural design issues. Students will explore both the theoretical and pragmatic aspects of design applied in an urban environment. As an advanced design class, this course will incorporate previous studio and lecture coursework to tie together topics of urban planning, architectural design, environmental sustainability and historic preservation.
My Projects
The Closing the Loop Project explores how recent technological advances in the AEC industry have increased the potential of faƧade performance. In this project we are implementing an interdisciplinary student initiative, where various courses collaborate on portions of the design process of faƧade 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.
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