Site planning automation of apartment complex through grid-based calculation in grasshopper

Abstract

Developing high-rise gated communities is a challenging task for architects and developers because of the conflict of interests. To find a balance between them, regulating minimum distances between buildings is a simple yet practical method. However, laying out many buildings while maintaining adequate spaces is time-consuming and resource-intensive for humans and computers. Architects arrange buildings one by one by a trial-and-error method. Computers prefer multi-variable equation solvers or agent systems to optimize buildings' positions. Computational optimization is faster, but it needs a starting point: human inputs such as building types, counts, and initial layout are critical to the successful result. Knowing the pros and cons of both, the method in the paper takes a hybrid approach by adopting humans' linear workflow and fast-forward it by exploiting computational horsepower. The result is fast and reliable, taking a few seconds to calculate a building layout of a fairly large project.