Computer Generative / Parametric Design

I have become interested in computer generative / parametric design and am talking to Sambit Datta, the new professor at Curtin, about starting lectures and workshops. It looks like it may become a component of the course in the future, but not for a few years. In the meantime I am trying to find out who is interested in this field and Sambit may be starting a forum / announcement board to organise lectures / workshops, start discussions and maybe run online tutorials. It looks like there are a few people who are quite interested so I'll post up any further developments. The grand idea is that we'll be able to start a community of people who want to learn this that will start at Curtin but will be open to postgrads and, well, anybody.

Let me know if you're interested!

I'll post up a few videos I've come across on YouTube that demonstrate some of the potentials. I'm only just discovering myself what is out there. So far I think I could categorise what I've found into these groups (there may be a bit of over-generalising here):
- generative form making - of the artistic, eye candy variety
- generative form making - calculated structure based on standard but variable input and dynamic parameters (rational and buildable, yet sexy at the same time)
- manufacturing and building a computer generated form
- biomimetic form - generation, building and testing
- environmental analysis - simulating environmental forces to understand the environmental performance of a building

Maybe this is a bit confusing, but it might make more sense after watching the videos that I'm talking about. The first couple of videos demonstrate Rhino and Grasshopper, which are the programs we will probably be using in a workshop, should it happen.

Here is a blog about Biomimetic Architecture and here is a site that lets you play with Voronoi patterning within Java applets - it's in German but you can use Google Translator.