Writeup¶
Due: Thursday, May 1, 2025
The intent of the writeup is primarily for you to provide information and insight into your project, demonstrate your understanding of the solution you devised, and reflect on your results, whether successful or not. These are things that you should be comfortable telling me or anyone else.
Format¶
I’m not going to be strict on how you format your paper. It can be as formal or as informal as you like, but if you refer to, quote, or cite anything, you should have some sort of reference list with a way for me to easily identify what you’re citing. The Chicago Manual of Style is used throughout the School of Architecture, so if you’d like to practice CMOS, I’d suggest using that. But if you don’t, you could do something completely different.
You can choose to turn this into a paper that could be published, but at a bare minimum, you should have something you can refer back to if you want to talk to someone about your project. If you intend to talk about it in a portfolio review, you might want it to be more formal, but you don’t need to include the paper in your portfolio.
Content¶
At a minimum, your paper should include 4 things:
A description of your topic and your motivation for choosing it
A description of your research on existing precedents and related projects
An explanation of your implementation, and
A reflection on your results.
If you would like, you can include images or figures to support this content, but again, it’s up to you how formal you would like this paper to be. As long as you have these 4 items fully expressed, you’ll be fine.
A Note on Team Projects
If you’re working in a team, everyone should create their own writeup. All writing should be your own, but you can collaborate while writing. Additionally, as part of the reflection, include something about how your team divided the work, highlighting the contributions that you made.
Topic & Motivation¶
Weight: 2%
For this part, I want to know what your topic is and why you chose it. Is it related to another course you’re taking? Do you just find the topic interesting? Something entirely different?
Make sure you include information about the goals of the project. What did you want your implementation to be able to do? What milestones, if any, did you set for yourself?
Research¶
Weight: 2%
For this part, I want to see that you’ve tried to identify any precedents or related projects to your topic. What have other people done with this topic (or something similar)? If your project is unique and you can’t find anything quite like it, that’s a good thing to say too. Did you do any research on algorithms that could help you in your implementation?
I’m looking for inspiration and forethought here.
Implementation¶
Weight: 3%
For this part, you need to explain how your implementation works. Most importantly is any Python code you write and how it fits into place, but if there’s anything worth talking about anywhere else in your implementation, this is where you’ll talk about it. There’s no need to include pictures of your Grasshopper file here, unless you’d like to. If you used any open-source libraries or Grasshopper plugins in your implementation, here’s where you’ll mention it.
I want to see that you understand how your code works.
Reflection¶
Weight: 3%
This part is more personal. How do you feel about the results of your project? Are you happy with what you created, or do you wish you could have done more? Would you have done anything differently in hindsight? Are there any additional improvements you’d do if you had more time?
I want your opinion on your project and how it turned out.
A Note on Team Projects
If you’re working in a team, as part of the reflection, include something about how your team divided the work, highlighting the contributions that you made.