Improving Design using Autonomous Spatial and Structural Generators

Abstract

During a building design process, a structural designer transforms a spatial design into a structural design and this structural system can be improved by optimisation methods or expert views of other structural designers. The improved structural system allows the architect a new spatial design, which can be transformed or altered again by the architect. This design cycle can be repeated several times and is defined as interaction of spatial and structural design. Case studies are used to demonstrate that this interaction occurs in practice and is needed to improve building quality. This paper presents a program with more or less autonomous spatial and structural generators. Each generator will facilitate one direction in the interaction process. Then using both consecutively leads to a design method that provides interaction between spatial and structural design. For the spatial generator, named “room positioning with structural constraints” a space allocation technique is used including constraints that handle structural boundary conditions. A zone generator based on pattern recognition and shape grammars handle the structural design. A Prolog-2 program was developed to demonstrate the application of the two proposed generators. “Zone generation” is performed per building storey and thus represents a horizontal two-dimensional procedure. Similarly “room positioning with structural constraints” is a planar vertical operation. In future these procedures can be made three-dimensional.