Starting
The day began with a speech given by our director, Yan Gao. Followed by a presentation of the studio brief from the two studios. We had a tour around the facilities in the faculty, where we have laser cutting machines and CNC router.
We have 14 students for the first week, splitting into 2 studios, each having 3 sub-teams.
Technical Workshops
The focus of today is mainly about software. Participants are expected to learn the software and be able to use it in the later stage of the course. The first technical workshop happens in this afternoon with a basic introduction of parametric concepts and using Grasshopper.
The students definitely tried their best to hide their look of confusion. While the basics are pretty difficult for the beginners, it would be a good start for the days ahead. I guess many of them still didn’t feel the pressure on the Design Studio yet, it would be tomorrow morning’s session where they will be thinking about designing a furniture.
I hope the design studios tomorrow, will start generating some ideas for prototyping. Even with very basic scripts, it would be exciting to have your geometry in your hand.
The brief is about bars, designing an furniture scale object within the context of the famous bar area – Lan Kwai Fong in Hong Kong. I like the topic that it is extremely open ended with minimal constraint.