JON STRAS, ARCHITECT

In addition to the Digital Design Leadership that I was a part of, this was a major research endeavor I was a part of at Gensler

In an effort to learn Grasshopper, a colleague and I took it upon ourselves to leverage our knowledge of the citizenM brand to develop a quick script that would allow us to evaluate new sites. The inputs for the tool are the established parameters of a volumetric modular hotel, hallway width, modular size, etc. Then with Galaposes, we were able to vary the position on the site and rotation, to be able to maximize key numbers, and therefore profits.

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From there, collaborating with some colleagues from Digital Design and the Seattle office, we took the next step to develop it from Grasshopper to Dynamo, except, instead of using a point and rotation based system, to utilize commonly used letters for building layouts to drive dynamo to generate volumetric modularized buildings. By focusing on the modules, we were able to broaden our scope from just a citizenM module, to any volumetric project. And by leveraging letters, were able to accomodate more sites.