A "design process" includes many steps needed to design and construct a built environment. This includes everything from initial data-mining and schematic design all the way through to construction and post-occupancy evaluation. As built environments become more complex, building performance demands increase, and work schedules compress, project teams need to be more effective and efficient at every stage of this process.
This article reports on an ongoing academic and professional collaboration to develop and test computational, performance-based design methods, and to discover and develop design talent skilled in using them. We used the specific experiential, environmental, and economic challenges of mixed-use high-rise Living Building projects in Seattle as a context for exploration. We leveraged Perkins+Will’s Design... Read more »
Parametric analysis is an important method for design exploration in architectural practice. However, architects do not take full advantage of its capabilities because they lack systematic methods for rigorous implementation. Design Space Construction (DSC) is a parametric analysis framework aimed at making multidisciplinary design exploration more methodical. This article discusses three case studies that have... Read more »
This article discusses methods for integrating parametric design methods with building performance analysis procedures, suitable for whole building design. In this research, an ideal framework was developed and tested using existing software applications, including Building Information Modeling (BIM), non-BIM, parametric design and building performance analysis applications. Current software programs that can integrate some form of building performance simulation with... Read more »
City built-form guidelines act as durable constraints on building design decisions. Such guidelines directly impact energy, comfort and other performance conditions. Existing urban design and planning methods only consider a narrow range of potential design scenarios, with rudimentary performance criteria, resulting in suboptimal urban designs. Bibil is a software plugin for the Rhinoceros3D/Grasshopper3D CAD modeler... Read more »
As computational design space exploration methods become more common, designers need increasingly faster ways to accurately explore increasing vaster design spaces. Surrogate models, often constructed with Neural Networks (NN) are statistical approximations of domains that can return accurate enough answers at a fraction of the time needed to run simulation models. However, existing neural network... Read more »
FINAL_Latrobe Report_2017_opt Led by the Arid Lands Institute (ALI), the Drylands Resilience Initiative [DRI] brings together collaborators from design, science, and policy to envision and realize an abundant future in drylands. Our goal is to accelerate planning, design, and development that results in local, low-carbon water reserves in dry cities in the US West and around the world. With the support of the AIA College of Fellows 2015-2017 Latrobe Research Prize, DRI collaborators honed and tested Hazel, a powerful new digital design tool for optimizing the capture and reuse of stormwater.
Building in harmony with nature allows for the comfort and well-being of inhabitants of a home, building, neighborhood, or even a district. In this research, we studied the ways in which harmony is achieved in nature, and the ways in which it is achieved in existing building science. We propose a novel bridge between active and passive mechanical... Read more »
Perkins +Will's Process Lab taught a workshop in Design Space Construction at ACADIA in Ann Arbor Michigan.
Design exploration in architectural space planning is often constrained by tight deadlines and a need to apply necessary expertise at the right time. We hypothesize that a system that can computationally generate vast numbers of design options, respect project constraints, and analyze for client goals, can assist the design team and client to make better... Read more »
This article outlines the use of operational planning and simulation modeling as a lean tool within Perkins+Will, to determine the room utilization and staffing for a large trauma center, based on current and projected volumes and turnaround times. A specific area of focus was the Resuscitation Rooms and their location within the emergency department (ED). In its most... Read more »
Using analytic data as a driver to control the geometry of BIM elements is currently a promising method for parametric creation of design elements such as sun shades, which respond to environmental constraints such as incident solar radiation or solar angles. This can be done qualitatively, but evaluating multiple options with many variables is time... Read more »
