Role of Digital Tools in Creating Generative Ornament Patterns in Contextual Architecture of Mashhad

Ornament as one of the most important features of building, has been fulfilling an undoubtable role in demonstrating the intentions of architects, but this issue was neglected in early modernism era, which define the ornament as crime and describe it as inhuman attitude. Later by creating disjunction between people and buildings in cities, architects focused on creating a link between buildings and surroundings and over time, each country (speciallythird world countries) based on their cultural values, try to obtain and make its own trend, toward modern architecture and as a result, ornament by demonstrating the visual culture of human, could attach people to the buildings and create contextual architecture. In Islamic countries like Iran, there are a lot of potentials in using the mathematical ornament patterns in modern buildings, to attach buildings to the context. Islamic patterns from the mathematical perspective, hascleverly combined the use of common geometric shapes such as circles, points and lines, with some geometricprinciples such as symmetry, similarity and transformation, namely translation, rotation, reflection and scaling. On theother hand by presenting software technology, the creation of mathematical patterns can be made easier and more generative. This paper will describe how Grasshopper1 could construct generative patterns by using some basic patterns which is existed in the historic part of Mashhad as one of the oldest city of Iran. The research method is based uponmodelling and experimenting geometric patterns with Computer-Aided Design (CAD) software, which allow their usersto interactively create, manipulate and explore geometric constructions using points, lines, circles and geometricprinciples. Activities involving architects to create Islamic art with CAD will help them to extend boundaries of architecture with mathematics as an art and this could be used as a method of contextual pattern creation, in architecture.