Generative Education: Thinking by Modeling/Modeling by thinking

Generative models change our way to think of architecture. We have tried to show to our students this changing of digital tools’ conceptualization, not only as a simplex extension of hand but rather a complex link between aesthetic and technique. The presented experience is part of the academic courses of “Drawing” and “Techniques of representation” held in the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Perugia (Italy). The aim was to challenge traditional paradigms: we have proposed to analyze ordinary objects, or groups of similar elements, and think by using models, with an holistic approach. We wanted to teach that an architectural project isn’t a particular artifact, but rather an idea structured by complex relations between parts and by certain transformations of parameters. We believe that if a designer understands that a common reality is so organized, he’ll be able to design architecture with the same approach. One of the most important concepts is that a variation of a parameter doesn’t destroy the model but only changes its aspect. Moreover, our capacity of pre-vision by drawing usually can’t explain every possibility. But by thinking in a “modeling way”, as Gaspar Monge pointed out in his descriptive geometry books, it is possible to go from “known to unknown”. Therefore the generative modeling is useful to understand the form and its morphogenesis, and in such-a-created model is possible find a tool of creativity and a source of inspiration. In particular, through the use of a generative software like Grasshopper for Rhinoceros, the results were models able to create different types of flowers, pastas, cheeses, pencils, marshmallows and so on, each category corresponding to just one algorithm. Afterward, we have explained that certain concepts of descriptive geometry could also be explained by generative modeling, showing a unitary morphogenesis of complex shapes and its application in descriptive geometry theorems. So we asked to think of architecture in such a way, with the result of a new vision of the project, like dynamic transformations of the shape of buildings, bridges, pavilions and so on. Variations of certain parameters that generate a renewed capacity of the architectural model.