Nature serves as an inspiration for many architects who translate its qualities through organizational strategies, biomimicry, evolutionary modeling, and patterns to name a few. In this course students will conduct research through a series of precedent studies where nature serves as an inspiration for the design. After these initial explorations, students will take what was learned collectively and apply this knowledge to research exploring “species or natural occurring systems native to the state of Kentucky.” 

Students will investigate and discover the organizational systems, the formal and spatial qualities, the patterns, and the relationships between these patterns regarding their function within the system. This research will lead to the development of our own individual naturally influenced patterns, but translated and transformed through a series of drawings, collages, or digital drawings.

Students will be required to participate in a Grasshopper workshop to introduce the logic of the software as this is a great tool to advance their pattern making explorations. In addition to Grasshopper’s generative potential, students will also be asked to incorporate text-to-image based Artificial Intelligence to further test and expand upon the possibilities of their patterns. The use of AI will be encouraged as both a means to iterative ideas but also as an area of research to expand one’s ability to work with this technology in preparation for their future career. These explorations/designs will lead to an object or series of objects whose surface + skin condition will be fabricated and worn at the scale of the human body where it becomes an ornament on one’s skin, representations of natural systems, and an outward representation of the individual’s identity. 

Students are expected to test their ideas through various models (3D printing or other forms of fabrication) as they improve their design strategies and work towards the final project. The final project will be to fabricate their explorations and to produce a series of visual graphic presentations and documentation of their process.

Pattern + Surface + Skin | Body Ornamentation

ARC 499-003/599-002
Wednesdays, 11:00 a.m. - 1:30 p.m. | GDB 215
Instructor: Regina Summers

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Prerequisite Skills: Proficient in Rhino 3D and Adobe Suite