Topology-Possibilities of application in architectural geometry

Abstract

This paper resulted from collaboration between two faculties of Belgrade University-Faculty of Mathematics, Department of Geometry, and the Faculty of Architecture, the Chair of Mathematics, Architectural Geometry and CAAD. In this case, the efforts of the two institutions have been focused on introducing topology as a quite complex and rarely covered topic, to a specific audience-the first year students of architecture. The paper gives an overview of a two-hours lecture and a workshop that has been carefully prepared and discussed by a multidisciplinary teaching team, illustrated with appropriate modelled and animated examples, photo-documented (in the workshop part), and video-recorded (a streaming video of this event is available). The Lecture and workshop followed by a series of two small "research by design" tasks for the students-the first to examine architectonics of discretized Möbius strip, and the second to model a spatial form varying the genus of a selected surface. In the conclusion part we give the selected examples of students' design work.