Floor Plan Research Articles

Artificial intelligence empowering museum space layout design: Insights from China.

The floor plan layout of museum exhibition spaces is the skeleton network of the museum, which determines the internal circulation and spatial form of the museum. This paper studies the method and practice of using artificial intelligence technology to assist in the space design of exhibition halls in urban cultural museums. First, it introduces the limitations of traditional space design methods for exhibition halls in urban cultural museums and the superiority and application prospects of the CGAN (conditional generative adversarial network) model in space design. Second, the principle and training process of the CGAN model are explained in detail, and the experimental results and analysis are given. By learning 100 floor plans of exhibition halls of urban culture museums, the CGAN model can generate a new floor plan design for an exhibition hall, which provides a new idea and innovative method for this design task. Finally, the limitations and future research directions of the CGAN model in the space design of urban cultural museum exhibition halls are discussed. The study shows that using the CGAN model to learn the floor plans of exhibition halls of urban cultural museums can effectively improve the innovation and practicability of space design and has the following advantages: (1) It can quickly generate a large number of exhibition hall floor plans, shorten the design cycle, and improve design efficiency. (2) The generated floor plan designs of the exhibition hall are diverse and personalized, meeting the design requirements of different scenarios and needs. (3) The method promotes the deep integration of space design and artificial intelligence technology and provides new possibilities and ideas for space design. These conclusions provide new ideas and methods for the space design of exhibition halls of urban cultural museums and provide a reference and inspiration for space design and intelligent applications in other fields, such as office space design, home decoration space design, landscape space design, and historical arcade and building renovation design.

Advancements in Learning-Based Techniques for Automated Floor Plan Analysis on Raster Images: A Comparative Study

Automated floor plan analysis and recognition have long been focal points in computer science research. Recently, there has been a notable increase in the use of learning-based techniques to automatically reorganize floor plans from raster images. This advancement aims to extract valuable insights from architectural drawings, which are essential for understanding building layouts and their intended functions. These drawings often feature a variety of notations and constraints, and the lack of standardized notation leads to significant variability in both style and semantics across different floor plans. Addressing this challenge is a key focus of this review. This paper provides an extensive literature survey to tackle the issue of variability in floor plans. The review concentrates on methodologies that treat floor plans as raster images, with particular attention to learning-based approaches. By offering concise summaries of datasets, research scopes, and specific tasks, this review aims to guide future research and development in the fields of construction and design. The in-depth examination of automatic floor plan analysis and recognition methods presented here contributes to the evolving field of computer-assisted architectural understanding and design.

A scoping review of studies for senior nursing home planning in Japan—Trajectory of introducing private rooms and unit care system in nursing home

AbstractIn aging and aged countries, one of the main issues is to establish sufficient nursing homes for seniors. Japan, as one of the most rapidly aged countries, has been reforming nursing homes for the elderly since the 1990s and established a long‐term care insurance system. The purpose of this scoping review is to systematically map the evolution of researches for nursing homes in Japan since the 1990s, particularly with the post‐occupancy evaluation of the introduction of private rooms and small units. Forty‐three articles concerning privatization of rooms, shared spaces, and small unitization in nursing homes were extracted and analyzed. They were published between 1994 and 2021 in Journal of Architecture and Planning, AIJ Journal of Technology, JAABE, and JAR. The results revealed an evaluation of the privatized rooms mainly from the perspectives of residents' lives and care staffing, the effects and issues of the shared spaces introduced at the same time as private rooms, and the evaluation and issues on subsequent unit‐type floor plans. This study offers significant implications to Asian countries that will have aging and aged populations in the near future by summarizing Japan's experience in dealing with realistic and practical problems over the past 20 years.

MCTS with Refinement for Proposals Selection Games in Scene Understanding.

We propose a novel method applicable in many scene understanding problems that adapts the Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) algorithm, originally designed to learn to play games of high-state complexity. From a generated pool of proposals, our method jointly selects and optimizes proposals that minimize the objective term. In our first application for floor plan reconstruction from point clouds, our method selects and refines the room proposals, modelled as 2D polygons, by optimizing on an objective function combining the fitness as predicted by a deep network and regularizing terms on the room shapes. We also introduce a novel differentiable method for rendering the polygonal shapes of these proposals. Our evaluations on the recent and challenging Structured3D and Floor-SP datasets show significant improvements over the state-of-the-art both in speed and quality of reconstructions, without imposing hard constraints nor assumptions on the floor plan configurations. In our second application, we extend our approach to reconstruct general 3D room layouts from a color image and obtain accurate room layouts. We also show that our differentiable renderer can easily be extended for rendering 3D planar polygons and polygon embeddings. Our method shows high performance on the Matterport3D-Layout dataset, without introducing hard constraints on room layout configurations.

The energy-saving design of prefabricated farm house in the middle of Anhui Province

Masonry building has low construction requirements and it is widely used in agricultural houses in the middle of Anhui Province. However, the old farm houses have problems such as aging structure, high building energy consumption, irrational floor plan layout and poor living comfort. Nowadays, the structure of many farm houses has undergone major changes, among which the prefabricated farm houses have the advantages of high performance, short construction period and flexible construction, and the materials used and construction process conform to the principle of sustainable development. It is of great significance to carry out research on the construction of light steel prefabricated farm houses and its energy-saving optimization. Firstly, through field investigation and case analysis, the present situation of traditional farm houses in central Anhui was summarized. Secondly, the prefabricated energy-saving design of farm houses was optimized.

Comparative Study Dynamics Analysis of a Multi-story Building with and without a Floating Column

Parking spaces, lobby areas, terrace gardens, and other amenities are highly sought-after in densely populated urban regions. Although floating columns can be useful and an achievable choice, it is important to research their structural performance and cost-effectiveness in the event of substantial ground motion imposed on by an earthquake. A building’s overall dimensions, geometry, and shape all impact how it acts and acts when subjected to seismic loads. For this reason, it is necessary to assess how well floating column buildings perform in seismically vulnerable places in comparison to conventional buildings. In this work, the performance of structures with floating columns for seismic loading is observed using dynamic analytic techniques in accordance with IS 1893 (2005). This study analyses both the floating columns and the conventional building without floating columns. When compared to a regular building, the research reveals that the floating column buildings exhibit a very quick increase in base shear and story displacement. The horizontal displacements experienced by floating column buildings are proportionally larger due to an increase in the fundamental time period. If the lateral displacement exceeds the codespecified maximum limit, damage to structural and non-structural parts may result. Because of the discontinuity in the load distribution path, seismic base shear and overturning moment are also increasing in the case of buildings with floating columns. Additionally, while asymmetrically introducing floating columns, torsional irregularity has been produced but the modal mass participation ratio has decreased. While it is true that the use of floating columns in high-rise structures allows for continuous open floor plans, they are also dangerous and susceptible in seismically active locations

Quantification of Architects’ Expertise using Floor Plan Images of Detached Houses

Quantification of Architects’ Expertise using Floor Plan Images of Detached Houses

Structural assesment and numerical analysis of existing reinforced concrete frame structure

The subject of this study is the presentation of in-situ tests on the existing structure and structural analysis of the Faculty of Political Sciences building at the University of Zagreb which sustained damage in the series of earthquakes that hit Zagreb and Petrinja in 2020, as well as the structural strengthening efforts undertaken thereafter. The load-bearing structure of this mid-20th century building is a reinforced concrete frame system (column-beam). Filling between frames is masonry made of solid bricks. The floor structure is reinforced concrete ribbed slabs, characteristic of the construction period. Structure has a basement and six floors above ground. In-situ testing revealed that the compressive strength of concrete was at least 30.7 MPa, and tensile strength of steel reinforcement to that of B 240. It was determined that that the existing masonry walls did not have sufficient shear resistance due to the degradation of the bonding material. Numerical model was made considering the peak ground acceleration of ag/g = 0.249, and the importance factor of γI = 1.2. The analysis showed that the existing building complied with 19% ag/g of today’s applicable regulations for designing earthquake-resistant structures. The main strengthening included the installation of external steel trusses on both facades connected to the external column or facade frame, thus not affecting the existing floor plan. RC walls were added to side of main building volume in the transvers direction and to the staircase portion in both directions as additional bracing. Since the calculations assumed the behavior of the frame for the existing load-bearing structure of reinforced concrete beams and columns, the joints were additionally reinforced by wrapping them with CFRP fabric to enhance reinforcement, since these areas are very sensitive to seismic action.

Seismic retrofitting of an existing hospital with external steel brace

Earthquakes may cause serious damage to buildings and result in heavy losses to society, therefore, it is necessary to enhance the seismic capacity of existing buildings via structural retrofitting. The traditional retrofitting approaches are based on the component-level, but their improvement effect for the overall structure is not obvious. Until now, the seismic retrofitting technology can be generally divided into three types. The first is strength-improving type, the second is ductility-improving type, and the third is seismic dissipation/isolation type. Commonly a combination of these three types is used in retrofitting solutions. Most of them are focused on member based or component-level improvements of strength and/or ductility applied to poorly reinforced concrete walls or columns and masonry walls. Meanwhile, the weak element of the existing structure can be strengthened by external sub-structures as steel frames to make the overall structural capacity or stiffness more uniform. In addition, because the construction is an external operation, it can achieve non-disturbing retrofitting without affecting the normal use of the inner structure, which is of great practical significance and social benefits for lifeline projects such as schools and hospitals that cannot be interrupted. In the present case study, the efficiency of a seismic retrofitting with external steel frame of the university hospital Zurich (USZ) will be discussed. The original 3-story reinforced concrete building with a rectangular floor plan of 44m x 24m was built in 1966. Subsequently, in 1970, the building was extended by 4 floors with a composite steel structure. On the roof floor there is a helipad for emergencies. The stiffening steel structure was connected to the building with post-installed anchors. The first results of a response spectrum analysis showed major deficiencies in terms of horizontal and torsional stiffness, so that a strengthening measure became necessary. The results were verified by means of a push-over analysis, which showed that the measure applied was very effective. Finally, the structural design and the connection details to the existing concrete structure are shown.

Analysis of Smoke Control System Performance of High-Rise Multifamily Residential Buildings Using Transient Simulation

In Korea, the general floor plan structure of multifamily residential buildings is such that the vestibules of stairs and fire service-access elevators are typically used together. The lobby of the emergency elevator faces the vestibules of the fire service-access elevators. The smoke control system supplies air for pressurization, and the inlet air discharge device for the exhaust can be exempted from this system. In a 49-story multifamily residential buildings with this structure, the smoke control system is operated at an outside temperature of −10 ℃ and indoor temperature of 20 ℃, and the fire room door is open. The possibility of the vertical spread of smoke owing to changes in the open areas of windows and escape elevator doors was analyzed. When the windows are closed, the vertical spread of smoke through the emergency elevator shaft and staircase may occur under both upper and lower fire conditions of the neutral zone. In particular, the flow path through the emergency elevator door is the main vertical spread path in the case of a fire below the neutral zone.

Design of Integrated Electrical Installations with Solar Panel in Muhammadiyah Ibtidaiyah Madrasah Building in Jurangono, Gemantar Village, Mondokan-Sragen

The Muhammadiyah Mondokan Branch Manager has a business charity in the field of education at the Elementary School level or often known as MI Muhammadiyah (MIM). MIM Gemantar was founded in 1978 with a basic education level. In carrying out its activities, MIM Gemantar is under the auspices of the Ministry of Religion. Accredited B on November 9, 2017. MIM Gemantar has the most apprehensive building conditions compared to the other four MIMs in Mondokan. On Monday, according to the news from Jateng, inews.id, it was reported that the roof of MI Muhammadiyah Gemantar had collapsed, resulting in the head of the school office and 2 students being injured. The incident of the collapse of the classroom roof occurred during teaching and learning activities or KBM taking place on Monday, January 9 2023 around 08.15 WIB. For the past four months, students from three classes have been assigned to one room. The room whose roof collapsed was used by three classes due to the small number of students, namely grades II, IV and VI. The purpose of this research is to design an integrated electrical installation with solar panels in the MIM Gemantar building which will be renovated. This has several benefits, including as a form of utilizing renewable energy and also as a learning medium for 4th year students with the theme of renewable energy. The method of this activity is for the team to obtain a floor plan of the building to be built, then carry out a design which is as simple as the implementation process, it is easy to update capacity, draw a single line and plan a budget. Currently the MIM Gemantar Mondokan Sragen building has finished building 4 classrooms, so it still requires the construction of 2 more classrooms. The source of electricity for the electrical installation of the 4 classroom buildings all use electrical energy from PLN. In the future, if funds are available and the manager wants the installation of solar panels, then only add according to the design results of a single line electrical installation that is integrated with solar panels on-grid (can be done in stages of 200 Wp, 400 Wp, even up to 1,000 Wp). The capacity of solar panels does not have to match the planned capacity, meaning that this capacity can be carried out in stages according to the conditions of the funds provided.

영남지역 청동기시대 조·전기 주거형태의 변화와 특징

A research on Bronze age in S.Korea has made remarkable progress, but most of the
 achievements are confined on recording chronologically by pottery. It is so difficult to
 understand transition in housing type more than pottery because it is so conservative to
 change compared with pottery. Also it is changing by climate, environment, economic
 structure, development of technology, human preference and so on. The research method is
 order by fundamental concept of housing type of early Bronze age in S.Korea, case
 review, transition and feature in housing type and implication of archaeology.
 First of all, to set up typical housing feature of four types, and making a division for
 Misari, Garakdong, Kwansanri and Heunamri type. In sequence, to observe transition and
 feature of all housing type in Youngnam region especially the middle and upper streams
 of the Nakdonggang River, inland area, the southwestern area and south-east coast. The
 housing type of Misari demonstrate for transition of floor plan, number of fire pit and
 structure. The housing type of Garakdong demonstrate for becoming longer and
 disappearing of foundation stone. The housing type of Kwansanri also demonstrate for
 disappearing stone fire pit and standardizing of wooden column. On the other hand,
 housing type of Heunamri demonstrate for reduced fire pit and becoming re-smaller floor
 plan. And it turns to type of Gumdanri that is the latter part of Bronze age in the
 southeastern region. In conclusion, I analyzed for transition and feature in housing type as
 characteristics of early Bronze age in the Korean Peninsula also as universality of
 hunting-gathering society. In other words, the appearance of early Misari type is
 characteristics for deportation and settlement especially Korean Peninsula while type of
 Kwansanri is understood for universality by being expanded floor plan, division of fire
 range, structure transition, standardization of intercolumniation, that is also understood
 longhouse culture where living high latitude area. Popularly, in such society is understood
 as a complex incipient agriculture and hunting-gathering society. This research regard that
 society as universality of prehistoric culture of Korean Peninsula.
 And a pull-factor of transition in housing type occurs by complex causes such as population
 growth, development of technology, natural environment change, livelihood strategy and so on.

Artificial Intelligence and Applications in Structural and Material Engineering

The integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), and Deep Learning (DL) has become a vital tool attributed to Structural and Material Engineering and developed the way engineers approach design analysis and optimization. This paper explores the principal models of ML and DL, such as the generative adversarial network (GAN) and the artificial neural networks (ANN) and, and discusses their impacts on the applications of material design, structure damage detection (SDD), and archtecture design. It indicates that the high-quality of database is the essential key to training the model. Thus, the data preprocessing is required for expanding the data source and improving the quality of data. In material design process, ML and DL models reduce the time to predict the properties of construction materials, which makes SDD realistic as well. For architecture design, GAN is used to generate image data, such as drawing of the floor plan and this could be helpful to reduce the labor resources. However, some challenges of ML and DL are found while applying the algorithms to real-life applications. For example, sufficient data is needed to train the DL models and the ethic aspect is also a concern when thinking of AI.

Between Art Historical Representation and Didactic Functionality: The Cast Collection of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Antwerp

During the long nineteenth century, the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Antwerp – just like many other art schools in this period – assembled a collection of some 500 plaster casts after ancient and modern sculptures, which played an essential role in the education of young art students. The creation of such collections went in parallel with the blossoming of cast museums all over Europe, as well as the emergence of a large-scale exchange network set up to facilitate the international dissemination of plaster casts. However, in contrast to cast museums, which brought together masterpieces of classical Western sculpture in order to contribute to the aesthetic edification of the public, the cast collections of art academies had a more pragmatic and didactic function. This article focuses on cast collections at art academies, and how the formation and functioning of such collections related to broader educational concepts and practices at these schools. Taking the collection of plaster casts at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Antwerp as a case study, we will trace the various actors, methods and strategies employed to create the collection, uncover how the collection related to the artistic idea(l)s expressed in the educational programme of that institution, and discuss how and where it was located and displayed. Based on the rich archives of the academy, it examines a broad range of different sources, including purchase lists, inventories and correspondence concerning the formation of the collection, as well as floor plans, photographs and original drawings attesting to the location and use of the casts. It traces the provenance of the objects, analyzes the profiles of the individuals and institutions involved in creating the collection, and identifies to what extent and how creative repurposing played a role in the collection’s functioning. The article argues how cast collections formed by art academies – in addition to representing the art historical canon of a given place or period – are an important reflection of the didactic practices, aesthetic priorities and, above all, the creative encounters that distinguish these institutions from the purposes of the public (cast) museum.

Sinan the Architect’s Process of Creating Spatial Typology

The article explores the process of central planning development and dome-bearing systems analysis in mosques belonging to Classical Ottoman Architecture, focusing on the typological plan variations found in Sinan the Architect’s octagonal-based central domes. It is aimed to determine the spatial typology of these octagonal based central domes, as they play a crucial role in creating a central space in mosques. The typology studies focused on the load-bearing systems in central dome designs of eighteen surviving mosques designed by Sinan the Architect. The study method involves scanning scientific publications, state archives, and photographing mosques. Mosques ground floor plans, including their dome projections and sectional drawings, have been examined. Gathering all the data from analysing the transfer of the dome load enabled a categorisation of eighteen mosques that can be classified into two primary groups and three sub-groups within each group.

A knowledge framework for the design of built environment supportive of resilient internal logistics in hospitals

Internal logistics is crucial for hospitals, occurring within facilities that pose constraints and opportunities, demanding resilient performance (RP) to adapt to dynamic conditions and balance safety and efficiency pressures. However, the role of the built environment (BE) to support RP is not explicitly analysed in the hospital logistics literature, which is usually limited to discuss BE in terms of layout and routing issues. To address this gap, this study presents a knowledge framework of BE supportive of RP in internal hospital logistics. The framework was developed based on a study in a large teaching hospital, encompassing 11 service flows of people and supplies between an intensive care unit and other units. Data collection was based on 38 interviews, documents such as floor plans, and observations of logistics activities. Seven BE design principles developed in a previous study, concerned with RP in general but not focused on logistics, were adopted as initial themes for data analysis. Results of the thematic analysis gave rise to a knowledge framework composed of seven design prescriptions and 63 practical examples of BE supportive of RP in hospital internal logistics. The paper discusses how these prescriptions and examples are connected to resilience management. The framework is new in the context of internal hospital logistics and offers guidance to both BE and logistics designers.

Megadungeon: A Model for Media Complexity

The essay aims to propose the diagrammatic structure of the megadungeon as a metaphor to represent the complexity, interconnectedness, and multi-layered nature of the current media scenario, including its active branches such as new media art and Digital Humanities. The reference is drawn from the concept of the dungeon, which has been successfully introduced into the realm of role-playing games since the 1970s. Conventionally, a dungeon refers to a complex, multi-level maze of corridors, tunnels, rooms, and hidden chambers. The nature of dungeons is to be theoretically infinite floor plans that game designers have learned to produce algorithmically: when they cross a certain size threshold, they are known as megadungeons. In this article, I propose the megadungeon as a productive topological model that intersects different sociotechnical aspects of digital media, drawing on shared characteristics such as a layered structure, labyrinthine exploration, game-derived grammar, and an affinity with computational domain. Additionally, the essay proposes comparisons with similar representation models that challenge outdated cartographic metaphors and addresses specific connections between new media and the concepts of verticality and stratification

The impact of architecturally qualified data in deep learning methods for the automatic generation of social housing layouts

The objective of this work is to explore the impact of the data in the automatic generation of social housing layouts with different deep learning models. The design of Social Housing is a subfield of architecture that necessitates, from the architect, a high degree of precision in refining layouts to effectively address both the programmatic requirements and the aspiration to attain the utmost architectural quality to guarantee inhabitants comfort. This dual challenge stands to gain significantly from the incorporation of data-driven generative processes bolstered by machine learning techniques in general and deep learning ones in particular. The most widely used dataset for data-driven layout generation with deep learning methods is RPLAN, a generic floor plan dataset available online. Although it contains a significant amount of plans, it lacks any information about the architectural quality criteria used for the selection of the data. We conducted an initial analysis of the architectural consistency and key quality features of RPLAN. Upon finding several issues that raise doubts about its suitability for training social housing generation models, we proceeded to create PUBLICPLAN, a new dataset based on proposals submitted and evaluated in public architecture competitions in Spain over the past three years. It comprises 2446 distinct layouts extracted from 1279 proposals in Catalonia and the Balearic Islands. All of these layouts demonstrate high architectural standards. Then, we retrained the three most advanced existing models for generating interior plans using PUBLICPLAN and compared their performance to the same models trained with different subsets of RPLAN. Once the models were trained, we conducted several experiments comparing different models and data subsets and evaluating the impact of the quantity and quality of the data on the models' performance. Those experiments involved over two hundred architects and architecture students. We also examined the plausibility of the generated plans being synthetic with a survey asking to distinguish between human and machine generated layout plans. Our results showed that PUBLICPLAN had a significant impact compared to the alternatives with a similar number of cases. In the examination of the feasibility of human-generated plans, over 48.43% of architects and architecture students identified machine-generated plans as being of human origin. Moreover, in qualitative experiments conducted with an equivalent dataset, our qualified dataset PUBLICPLAN demonstrated a significantly superior human rating (72.13%) when evaluated by human assessors, as compared to models trained with RPLAN. This highlights the importance of using qualified datasets in deep learning for the generation of social housing layouts. We also identified challenges and priorities in the research field, both in the deep learning process and architectural design practices.

Natural Ventilation and Indoor Air Quality in Domestic School Building: CFD Simulation and Improvement Strategies

Natural ventilation is a process of replenishing used air from the interior environment with fresh outer air without the use of mechanical equipment. This project aims to investigate the feasibility and performance of implementing natural ventilation in dilapidated classroom designs of actual geometry. Computer models of an existing classroom were created using SOLIDWORKS based on real-scale building floor plans, while the same software was applied to compute flow simulation studies to visualise the airflow pattern, temperature distribution, relative humidity, and the thermal comfort level of occupants in the classrooms. Estimated climate parameters were input in the simulation process to illustrate better the effect of hot and humid climate conditions in Malaysia towards the thermal comfort level of occupants. In this project, a visualised wind tunnel was created to simulate the prevailing wind source that supplies wind to the designed classroom, and the airflow pattern across the designed building was analysed. From the initial simulation results, it was discovered that the airflow into the classroom is uneven, whereby some locations in the building are experiencing extremely low wind breeze, which eventually affects the comfort level of occupants in the room. On the other hand, an internal analysis focusing on the interior comfortability of the classrooms was applied to examine the thermal comfort condition while using the naturally ventilated classrooms. Recommendation optimisation approaches such as the louvre angle and introduction of a windcatcher was presented in this project to improve the natural ventilation performance of the designed classroom.

The Gothic temple, its heritage and the architectural presence of the altar in the second half of the 20th century

The article defines the role played by the architecture of a Gothic temple in the aspect of the synthesis of the cultural and liturgical image when it concerns the form of the cathedral’s facade, its floor plan culminated with the eastern choir and metaphysics where the light processed by stained glass in contact with the frame (stone skeleton) structure brings a symbiotic, symbolic image. The above-mentioned synthesis was interpreted specifically after the Council of Trent (1545-1563) by the demolition of the rood screens closing the Gothic choir in front of the nave of the lay faithful. The liturgical renewal with a visually open choir introduced the main altar at its culmination, obligatorily connected to the tabernacle, and additionally elevated by a retable. The article describes the interior of the Gothic choir after the Council of Trent, liturgically up to date with the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). Then, it describes the renewed image of the Gothic choir after another, modern, liturgical renewal. By specifying a new presence of the altar and tabernacle after the Second Vatican Council in the church (currently defined as the domus ecclesiae), the article elucidates the validity of the architecture of the Gothic interior when it exists in accordance with the post-conciliar regulations and serves the purpose of building the community of faith.