Introduction
This website has been made on account of the course SAR design with
CAD lectured at the Eindhoven University of Technology TU/e. It shows
the results of six weeks of lectures and instructions. Feel free to
navigate to the results of the different exercises on the left.From the website of the course:
The course focuses on methods and computer
applications that support those multi-disciplinary architectural design and
urban planning processes. Attention is drawn towards design theory, design
methods, and design management, in relation with information and
communication technologies, such as CAD. The SAR method (Foundation for
Architectural Research) is used as a means for designing on different
abstraction levels. Multi-criteria evaluation is applied as a means to
evaluate designs. In het course implementations in practice is addressed as
well as the current developments on industrialised building.
Reflection
As a prominent member of the SAR is also one of the founders of our faculty, the SAR
methodology is something still resonating on the walls of our faculty
building way after it's start in the mid 60's.
Other courses mention it briefly, but the picture I had of it was
quite blurry. The aspects of the methodology on which the course emphasises are
the use of grids, the separation of infill and support and the
systematic ordering of variants through taxonomies.
On all three of these the arrival of CAD systems has had a great impact:
with the use of CAD systems grids are drawn instantly, different layers (
i.e. support and infill ) are matched within mouse clicks, and designs are
instantly copied and linked to create taxonomies.The taxonomies make the exercises of this course really come to life. Not only is it the starting point of a subjective discussion, but it allows for an objective evaluation of the criteria proposed.
The evaluation of the designs by means of the REN-manager I found a little misleading: while the either positive, negative or neutral end result gave the impression to be very objective and formalised, I found the underlying criteria subjective and they weren't always as applicable to the design as one would want, which lead to guessing which option was closest or just filling in the option which would result in a neutral score.
In fact were all the exercises fun to do, either because of the interaction with classmates, the interaction with software which I never used before or the insight it gave me in a more analytical design methodology.
A quick note about the website: it's best viewed on a high resolution screen of at least 1280x1024, as those TU/e laptops just seem to get bigger and bigger anyway. For zooming in on the images JavaScript has to be enabled.
Thomas Krijnen
0590144