Digital Architectural Design Research Articles

A Comprehensive Model of Teaching Digital Design in Architecture that Incorporates Sustainability

Digital technology and its use in architecture support the construction industry in transitioning to more sustainable building development. Digital technology is widely taught in architecture programs in China, but there are few consistent strategies for combining digital architectural design with traditional architectural design in architectural education. Consequently, sustainable design concepts are not included in digital architectural design courses, and thus architectural education is not concerned with sustainable development. In this paper, we focus on the teaching of digital design in architecture and investigate how digital architectural design teaching can incorporate sustainability. Data from 15 universities were qualitatively analyzed, leading to the development of four models of teaching digital architectural design. Development of the models revealed that there are three increasing levels in digital architectural design teaching and that there is a close relationship between the teaching level and the transfer of architectural knowledge. This recognition led to the development of a single comprehensive model of digital architectural design teaching that is universally applicable. This research increases our understanding of digital architectural design teaching in architecture programs and strengthens the multi-level connections between digital architectural design teaching and designing and constructing sustainable built objects.

Systems Architecture Design Pattern Catalogfor Developing Digital Twins.

A digital twin is a digital replica of a physical entity to which it is remotely connected. A digital twin can provide a rich representation of the corresponding physical entity and enables sophisticated control for various purposes. Although the concept of the digital twin is largely known, designing digital twins based systems has not yet been fully explored. In practice, digital twins can be applied in different ways leading to different architectural designs. To guide the architecture design process, we provide a pattern-oriented approach for architecting digital twin-based systems. To this end, we propose a catalog of digital twin architecture design patterns that can be reused in the broad context of systems engineering. The patterns support the various phases in the systems engineering life cycle process, and are described using a well-defined pattern documentation template. For illustrating the application of digital twin patterns, we adopt a multi-case study approach in the agriculture and food domain.

Understanding the hermeneutics of digital materiality in contemporary architectural modelling: a material engagement perspective

This article develops a framework for analysing how digital software and models become mediums for creative imagination in architectural design. To understand the hermeneutics of these relationships, we develop key concepts from Material Engagement Theory (MET) and Postphenomenology (PP). To push these frameworks into the realm of digital design, we develop the concept of Digital Materiality. Digital Materiality describes the way successive layers of mathematics, code, and software come to mediate enactive perception, and the possibilities of creative material engagement actualised in work with software. Just as molecular materials come to transform action with material objects, so digital materiality comes to enable and transform creative practices with computers. Digital architectural design form a new space for ongoing enactive discovery and creativity through manipulation of digital models and their underlying software environments. By shifting relationships within their digital models, architects can direct their attention, intention, and imagination towards widely different aspects of the model. Here, creative imagination becomes a fundamentally situated activity where mind emerges through dynamic interaction between a variety of embodied, material, and cultural domains.

Concerning digital design in architectural pedagogy

The emerging field of digital design in architecture has changed the way designers think and the way it should be taught. This paper looks at six design educational exercises which have adopted digital tools using various systems. Discussions are rooted in digital design cognition, digital design eco-system and pedagogy. This paper attempts to observe the change of ways of making within these themes using design cognition lens. It is proposed that digital design tool affordances is a pertinent concept to support this emerging field, both pedagogically and with regard to software development. It is also suggested that the digital eco-system framework need to include the dialogue between analogue and digital design tools.

Implementation of Dual Stage Multi-rate Filter

In this work, an effort is made towards the design and implementation of dual stage multi-rate digital filter architecture which is suitable for digital receivers and satellite applications with reduced VLSI cost function. The proposed dual stage decimation filter architecture consists of Higher Order Filter (HDF) as first section. To remove the droops created by the HDF section in the pass band and to get the smooth pass band frequency response characteristics, HDF filter is followed by a Corrector/Compensating Finite Impulse Response (FIR) filter network. The compensating FIR is designed using conventional Multiplier and Accumulator (MAC) unit. Initially, the filter architectures frequency response are obtained as per the given specifications using MATLAB. Then, Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) based performance metrics are captured and analyzed with respect to area, dynamic power dissipation, delay and power delay product. Based on the FPGA performance metrics, it is observed that the proposed dual stage filter leads to 22% of area saving and 9.5 % reduction in dynamic power dissipation. Mainly these filters are best suited for Digital Signal Processing applications in wireless receivers.

Thinking- Skins

Thinking- Skins

Radical cross-disciplinarity: laying the foundations for new material practices

Robotic steering of fabrication allows us to work with a new level of material address that challenges principles of standardisation and presents a rethinking of material systems. Over the last 15 years, the field of digital architectural design has developed increasingly sophisticated means of interfacing complex robotic fabrication systems with a wide array of material systems. This has led to the optimisation and individualisation of existing industrial practice, the automation and reinterpretation of manual crafts techniques and the constitution of new material techniques. However, while this inquisitive ingenuity has focussed on the rethinking of the material practices of architecture, with it lies a fundamental reconceptualisation of its practices of representation. This paper discusses the increasingly complex conceptual and practical methods that we are evolving to able to work intelligently with designed materials, their specification, prediction of behaviour and ability to steer fabrication processes at multiple scales. With examples from CITA’s practice, the paper asks what the foundational changes that are occurring as part of this paradigmatic change to our material practice are.

Digital platform architecture design based on JavaEE

With the comprehensive popularization of electronic technology and the internet, more and more people prefer to use smart phones, tablets and other intelligent terminal devices to read digital information on apps or Web pages, which makes the traditional publishing industry to transform to digital service. Based on the platform of JavaEE, this project provides architecture design for the transformation of rail transit publishing house to digital publishing service, integrates the traditional publishing industry resource base, and brings great help to the utilization, optimization and management of knowledge resource base.

Conclusion and Future Recommendation

Interactive Architecture should embody the features of “Information”, “Improvisation”, and “Integration” in order to generate sufficient “Intelligence” to embody the authentic kernel of “Organic Architecture”. In the domain of Interactive Architecture, it is quite easy to become trapped in discussions predominantly focused on technical discourses. This is what can be observed in most of the published materials on Interactive Architecture available in the market today. These publications draw too much attentions in the manner of how to make technical systems, instead of focusing on why to make it. Partly, this may be because it is necessary to understand hands-on technical issues, however, there should certainly be more informative material to fertilize design thinking of Interactive Bio-Architecture. Some other publications in the same genre fall into a collection of on-going case studies in the domain of Interactive Architecture without properly arranging them into an organized systemic discourse. Unlike such publications, this research attempts to become a pioneering exploration attempting to address Interactive architecture as the convergence of three areas: Computation, Embodiment (Body), and Biology. From the computational point of view, the research outlined the historic trajectory of computational applications in digital architecture design or CAAD (computer aided architectural design) and its evolution from data storage, rendering representation, towards sophisticated physical computing. From embodiment(body) perspective, a wide range of issues from diverse fields of metrology, philosophy, media studies, interactive art, VR and motion tracking technology have been elaborated upon in order to discover intimate relationships and connections between (cyber)space and (cyborgs)human. In the section of Biology, the discussion ranged from the so-called organic architecture design that remains at the stage of mimicking organic shapes, to extracting and translating the fundamental premises of morphogenesis from Evolutionary-Development Biology (Evo-Devo) in order to propose computationally assisted body-like interactive Bio-architectures. By leading the arguments slightly more towards the humanities, cultural, and social or even biological aspects, it aims to broaden the research scope of Interactive Bio-Architecture to reverse its stereotypical associations of being extremely technical and engineering oriented. This research thus concludes by providing critical emphasis on topics such as Information, Improvisation, Integration, and Intelligence, which are reflective of the fundamental essence of the inter-disciplinary research elaborated in each chapter of the thesis.

Defining a Novel Meaning of the New Organic Architecture

Starting an overall investigation by categorizing current bio-inspired architectural design developments into “Material”, “Morphological”, and “Behavioral” to explore a novel definition of the “New Generation Organic Architecture”. At present, people are confronting the unprecedented unification of machine and biology which has been revealed by the means of advancing industrial processes towards the organic model. In his remarkable publication, “Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, and the Economic World” (Kelly, 1995), Kevin Kelly makes an interesting observation that “Machines are becoming biological and the biological is becoming engineered”. In other words, the clear boundary of machine vs biology is blurring through current technological developments. In “Out of Control”, Kevin Kelly has further made several explicit points to support his views, that Industry will inevitably adopt bio-inspired methods: It takes less material to do the same job better. The complexity of built things now reaches biological complexity. Nature will not move, so it must be accommodated. The natural world itself—genes and life forms—can be engineered (and patented) just like industrial systems. All the crucial points described above can be easily observed in the architectural industry as well. Each statement corresponds with material optimization, multidisciplinary technologies, evolutionary processes, and genetic engineering which are all involved in current digital architectural design developments. After years of evolution, the developments of “Organic Architecture” have been now separated into various research focuses which are distant from the original idea coined by the well-known American architect, Frank Lloyd Wright. A group of followers still insist on maintaining Wright’s original idea to develop buildings which are green and sustainable, they fit or even blend into the surrounding environment as a whole. But since the power of personal computers and sophisticated modeling software has become relatively easy to access and is employed in all aspects of architectural design, various experiments have been conducted in the last decade, which try to outline a number of new definitions pertaining to “what are the essential ideas/principles of ‘Organic Architecture’?”. Nature has undoubtedly always been the greatest inspiration for the manmade industry, technology, and architecture. This development has only escalated with the assistance from computational technology over the last few decades. The thesis will preview the pros and cons of current design developments under the big umbrella of digital organic/bio-inspired architecture. This discussion will be categorized into three major divisions: “Morphological”, “Material”, and “Behavioral” owing to the different focus of computational applications within each one of them.

Compact digital implementation of a non‐coherent IR‐UWB transmitter and receiver

Non-coherent impulse-radio ultra-wideband (IR-UWB) transceivers are attractive candidates for applications where the silicon area and power consumption are relatively limited. This study presents the compact digital architecture design and implementation of a non-coherent IR-UWB transmitter and receiver based on the energy detection scheme, including the synchroniser module. The software models of the designed transceiver are simulated and verified in both floating-point and fixed-point numerical representations. The synthesisable Verilog description of the transmitter and receiver architectures is simulated and verified against their fixed-point simulation model. The transmitter and receiver are implemented in the authors custom-developed field-programmable gate array (FPGA) board. The bit error rate performance of the transmitter and receiver is measured in real-time on the FPGA, utilising an accurate on-chip Gaussian noise generator. The characteristics and implementation results of the transmitter and receiver architecture on the FPGA are presented. An application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) architecture of the IR-UWB transceiver is estimated to occupy 0.0227 mm 2 and dissipate 760 mW from a 1.0 V supply while operating at 82 MHz in a standard 32 nm complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor technology.

Design and leakage assessment of side channel attack resistant binary edwards Elliptic Curve digital signature algorithm architectures

Considering that Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) implementations need to be efficient, flexible and Side Channel Attack (SCA) resistant, in this paper, a design approach and architecture for ECDSA and the underlined scalar multiplication operation is proposed for GF(2k), satisfying the above three directives. To achieve that, in the paper, Binary Edwards Curves (BECs) are adopted as an alternative to traditional Weierstrass Elliptic Curves (ECs) for GF(2k) since they offer intrinsic SCA resistance against simple attacks due to their uniformity, operation regularity and completeness. To achieve high performance and flexibility, we propose a hardware/software ECDSA codesign approach where scalar multiplication is implemented in hardware and integrated in the ECDSA functionality through appropriate drivers of an ECDSA software stack. To increase BEC scalar multiplier performance and introduce SCA resistance we adopt and expand a parallelism design strategy/methodology where GF(2k) operations of a scalar multiplier round for both point operations performed in this round are reordered and assigned into parallelism layer in order to be executed concurrently. Within this strategy we include hardware and software based SCA countermeasures that rely on masking/randomization and hiding. While scalar randomization is realized by the ECDSA software stack in an easy way, in order to achieve resistance using hardware means, we propose and introduce in every scalar multiplier round, within the parallelism layers, projective coordinates randomization of all the round’s output points. So, in our approach, considering that with the proposed parallelism plan in every scalar multiplier round BEC point operations are performed in parallel and that the round’s output points are randomized with a different number in each round, we manage to achieve maximum SCA resistance. To validate this resistance, we introduce and realize a leakage assessment process on BEC scalar multipliers for the first time in research literature. This process is based on real measurements collected from a controlled SAKURA X environment with a GF(2233) based scalar multiplier implementation. Using Welch’s t-test we investigate possible information leakage of the multiplier’s input point and scalar and after an extended analysis we find trivial leakage. Finally, we validate the ECDSA architecture and its scalar multiplier efficiency by implementing it on a Zynq 7000 series FPGA Avnet Zedboard and collecting very promising, well balanced, results on speed and hardware resources in comparison with other works.

A UVM simulation environment for the study, optimization and verification of HL-LHC digital pixel readout chips

The operating conditions of the High Luminosity upgrade of the Large Hadron Collider are very demanding for the design of next generation hybrid pixel readout chips in terms of particle rate, radiation level and data bandwidth. To this purpose, the RD53 Collaboration has developed for the ATLAS and CMS experiments a dedicated simulation and verification environment using industry-consolidated tools and methodologies, such as SystemVerilog and the Universal Verification Methodology (UVM). This paper presents how the so-called VEPIX53 environment has first guided the design of digital architectures, optimized for processing and buffering very high particle rates, and secondly how it has been reused for the functional verification of the first large scale demonstrator chip designed by the collaboration, which has recently been submitted.

HyperCell: A Bio-inspired Design Framework for Real-time Interactive Architectures

This pioneering research focuses on Biomimetic Interactive Architecture using “Computation”, “Embodiment”, and “Biology” to generate an intimate embodied convergence to propose a novel rule-based design framework for creating organic architectures composed of swarm-based intelligent components. Furthermore, the research boldly claims that Interactive Architecture should emerge as the next truly Organic Architecture. As the world and society are dynamically changing, especially in this digital era, the research dares to challenge the Utilitas, Firmitas, and Venustas of the traditional architectural Weltanschauung, and rejects them by adopting the novel notion that architecture should be dynamic, fluid, and interactive. This project reflects a trajectory from the 1960’s with the advent of the avant-garde architectural design group, Archigram, and its numerous intriguing and pioneering visionary projects. Archigram’s non-standard, mobile, and interactive projects profoundly influenced a new generation of architects to explore the connection between technology and their architectural projects. This research continues this trend of exploring novel design thinking and the framework of Interactive Architecture by discovering the interrelationship amongst three major topics: “Computation”, “Embodiment”, and “Biology”. The project aims to elucidate pioneering research combining these three topics in one discourse: “Bio-inspired digital architectural design”.

Conclusion and Future Recommendation

Interactive Architecture should embody the features of “Information”, “Improvisation”, and “Integration” in order to generate sufficient “Intelligence” to embody the authentic kernel of “Organic Architecture”. In the domain of Interactive Architecture, it is quite easy to become trapped in discussions predominantly focused on technical discourses. This is what can be observed in most of the published materials on Interactive Architecture available in the market today. These publications draw too much attentions in the manner of how to make technical systems, instead of focusing on why to make it. Partly, this may be because it is necessary to understand hands-on technical issues, however, there should certainly be more informative material to fertilize design thinking of Interactive Bio-Architecture. Some other publications in the same genre fall into a collection of on-going case studies in the domain of Interactive Architecture without properly arranging them into an organized systemic discourse. Unlike such publications, this research attempts to become a pioneering exploration attempting to address Interactive architecture as the convergence of three areas: Computation, Embodiment (Body), and Biology. From the computational point of view, the research outlined the historic trajectory of computational applications in digital architecture design or CAAD (computer aided architectural design) and its evolution from data storage, rendering representation, towards sophisticated physical computing. From embodiment(body) perspective, a wide range of issues from diverse fields of metrology, philosophy, media studies, interactive art, VR and motion tracking technology have been elaborated upon in order to discover intimate relationships and connections between (cyber)space and (cyborgs)human. In the section of Biology, the discussion ranged from the so-called organic architecture design that remains at the stage of mimicking organic shapes, to extracting and translating the fundamental premises of morphogenesis from Evolutionary-Development Biology (Evo-Devo) in order to propose computationally assisted body-like interactive Bio-architectures. By leading the arguments slightly more towards the humanities, cultural, and social or even biological aspects, it aims to broaden the research scope of Interactive Bio-Architecture to reverse its stereotypical associations of being extremely technical and engineering oriented. This research thus concludes by providing critical emphasis on topics such as Information, Improvisation, Integration, and Intelligence, which are reflective of the fundamental essence of the inter-disciplinary research elaborated in each chapter of the thesis.

HyperCell: A Bio-inspired Design Framework for Real-time Interactive Architectures

HyperCell: A Bio-inspired Design Framework for Real-time Interactive Architectures

Defining a Novel Meaning of the New Organic Architecture

Starting an overall investigation by categorizing current bio-inspired architectural design developments into “Material”, “Morphological”, and “Behavioral” to explore a novel definition of the “New Generation Organic Architecture”. At present, people are confronting the unprecedented unification of machine and biology which has been revealed by the means of advancing industrial processes towards the organic model. In his remarkable publication, “Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, and the Economic World” (Kelly, 1995), Kevin Kelly makes an interesting observation that “Machines are becoming biological and the biological is becoming engineered”. In other words, the clear boundary of machine vs biology is blurring through current technological developments. In “Out of Control”, Kevin Kelly has further made several explicit points to support his views, that Industry will inevitably adopt bio-inspired methods: It takes less material to do the same job better. The complexity of built things now reaches biological complexity. Nature will not move, so it must be accommodated. The natural world itself—genes and life forms—can be engineered (and patented) just like industrial systems. All the crucial points described above can be easily observed in the architectural industry as well. Each statement corresponds with material optimization, multidisciplinary technologies, evolutionary processes, and genetic engineering which are all involved in current digital architectural design developments. After years of evolution, the developments of “Organic Architecture” have been now separated into various research focuses which are distant from the original idea coined by the well-known American architect, Frank Lloyd Wright. A group of followers still insist on maintaining Wright’s original idea to develop buildings which are green and sustainable, they fit or even blend into the surrounding environment as a whole. But since the power of personal computers and sophisticated modeling software has become relatively easy to access and is employed in all aspects of architectural design, various experiments have been conducted in the last decade, which try to outline a number of new definitions pertaining to “what are the essential ideas/principles of ‘Organic Architecture’?”. Nature has undoubtedly always been the greatest inspiration for the manmade industry, technology, and architecture. This development has only escalated with the assistance from computational technology over the last few decades. The thesis will preview the pros and cons of current design developments under the big umbrella of digital organic/bio-inspired architecture. This discussion will be categorized into three major divisions: “Morphological”, “Material”, and “Behavioral” owing to the different focus of computational applications within each one of them.

From representational to parametric and algorithmic interactions: A panorama of Digital Architectural Design teaching in Latin America

This study focuses on the context of graphic representation technologies and digital design on Architectural teaching in Latin America. From categories proposed by Oxman and Kotnik and through a mapping study framed by a systematic review in CumInCAD database, it is presented a panorama of the state-of-art of the digital design on Architectural teaching in the region, between 2006 and 2015. The results suggest a context of coexistence of representational interaction and parametric interaction, as well as a transition from one to another and the emergence of the first experiments in algorithmic interaction. As this mapping shows an ongoing movement toward Digital Architectural Design in Latin America in the last decade, and points out its dynamics in space in time, it could contribute to strengthen a crowdthinking network on this issue in the region and with other continents.

Establishment of a Digital Knowledge Conversion Architecture Design Learning with High User Acceptance

The purpose of this study is to design a knowledge conversion and management digital learning system for architecture design learning, helping students to share, extract, use and create their design knowledge through web-based interactive activities based on socialization, internalization, combination and externalization process in addition to learning in the “design studio” at school. In addition, the technology acceptance model3 is used in this study to measure how students accept the system developed in this study by analyzing the user behavioral and environmental factors that can affect their use of the system. The results of questionnaire surveys based on TAM3 indicate that this digital learning environment based on knowledge management can effectively reduce the challenge of “ill-defined design problems” for students and help to promote better learning results. Therefore, it can be concluded that the knowledge transfer learning system developed in this study is very helpful for learning of architecture design.

A study on graduate level education in architecture: Case of Turkey

Today, there are 41 universities offering graduate education programs in architecture. Those programs cover a number of different topics including architectural conservation and restoration, architectural restoration, architectural design, informatics in architectural design, architectural planning and design, architecture history, architectural history and theory, architecture and built environment, digital design in architecture and production. The council of higher education presents that 2978 master theses submitted and approved by Council of higher education. In this study, the master theses submitted to the graduate programs have been investigated. Matrix has been developed regarding o the sex, language, topics, universities. The types of graduate school are natural science and social science. The results of the study show that the number of female students is higher than the male students. The number of theses in Turkish is increasing. The increasing number of theses investigating build technology builds physics and building and construction and computational design is of importance. It is possible to determine that the current and popular topics of Turkish graduate programs in Architecture are in parallel with the prevailing agenda of World architecture.
 Key Words: theses in architecture, graduate level education, architectural education.