Create Parametric Brick Walls

Create Parametric Brick Walls

Grasshopper Course

Watch the course tutorials here:

    What is the course about?

    In this course we will examine NURBS geometries (such as surfaces, polysurfaces and solids) in Grasshopper, and how we can manipulate them to create parametric brick walls. Brick walls are typically designed with rigid parameters (brick height, width & length, grout size, number of rows etc) which can easily be translated into parameters in Grasshopper.

    After building a simple brick wall, we will attempt to manipulate our geometry to create more complex patterns and shapes, whilst adhering to the parameters of the wall.

    We will rotate bricks using attractor algorithms, the image sampler toolkit in Grasshopper, and complex surfaces. The series will also examine the Winery Gantenbein project by Gramazio Kohler as a precent study.

    What will you learn in each video?

    This lesson will take a first look at some of the surface and solids tools available in Grasshopper, and how they might be analysed and evaluated.

    Using defined real-life parameters of a brick wall, this lesson will examine how to create a parametric brick wall in Grasshopper. Grasshopper and simulate this system using the Anemone plugin. 

    The ‘Winery Gantenbein’ precedent by Gramazio Kohler uses robotic fabrication to create a brick wall façade with rotating bricks that respond to a series of attractors and images. This lesson will examine how to rotate individual bricks gradually based on their distance to an attractor.

    This lesson aims to take the Gramazio Kohler precedent one step further by making use of Grasshopper’s Image Sample toolkit. The Image Sampler allows us to draw data out of any image input, and manipulate the data to re-create the image parametrically. We will use the image sampler data to imprint an image onto our brick wall.

    This lesson will examine how to apply the parameters of a brick wall across any NURBS surface geometry.

    What are the learning objectives for the course?

    Course image gallery:

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