This thesis explores the intersection between computation and architectural design. The thesis first develops several computational design tools, specifically focussing on three problem domains: (1) speedy generation and modification of architectural schemes sharing a common typological language, (2) analysis of urban and neighbourhood conditions, and (3) performance modelling and prediction
. To test the tools, the thesis subsequently applies the tools to design several variations of a condominium tower in downtown Toronto. Despite some limitations, the computational toolkit proved powerful and flexible enough to generate viable condominium schemes under various sets of assumptions.

specialcollections@tulane.edu / 1 / Alyson Demskie

This thesis is concerned with the application of computation in the context of professional architectural practice and specifically towards defining complex buildings that are highly integrated with respect to design and engineering performance. The thesis represents applied research undertaken whilst in practice at Foster + Partners. It reviews the current state of the art of computational design techniques to quickly but flexibly model and analyse building options. The application of parametric design tools to active design projects is discussed with respect to real examples as well as methods to then link the geometric definitions to structural engineering analysis, to provide performance data in near real time. The practical interoperability between design software and engineering tools is also examined. The role of performance data in design decision making is analysed by comparing manual work-flows with methods assisted by computation. This extends to optimisation methods which by making use of design automation actively make design decisions to return optimised results. The challenges and drawbacks of using these methods effectively in real deign situations is discussed, especially the limitations of these methods with respect to incomplete problem definitions, and the design exploration resulting in modified performance requirements. To counter these issues a performance driven design work flow is proposed. This is a mixed initiative whereby designer centric understanding and decisions are computer assisted. Flexible meta-design descriptions that encapsulate the variability of the design space under consideration are explored and compared with existing optimisation approaches. Computation is used to produce and visualise the performance data from these large design spaces generated by parametric design descriptions and associated engineering analysis. Novel methods are introduced that define a design and performance space using cluster computing methods to speed up the generation of large numbers of options. The use of data visualisation is applied to design problems, showing how in real situations it can aid design orientation and decision making using the large amount of data produced. Strategies to enable these work-flows are discussed and implemented, focusing on re-appropriating existing web design paradigms using a modular approach concentrating on scalable data creation and information display.

Digitization and characterization of urban spaces are essential components as we move to an ever-growing ’always connected’ world. Accurate analysis of such digital urban spaces has become more important as we continue to get spatial and social context-aware feedback and recommendations in our daily activities. Modeling and reconstruction of urban environments have thus gained unprecedented importance in the last few years. Such analysis typically spans multiple disciplines, such as computer graphics, and computer vision as well as architecture, geoscience, and remote sensing. Reconstructing an urban environment usually requires an entire pipeline consisting of different tasks. In such a pipeline, data analysis plays a strong role in acquiring meaningful insights from the raw data. This dissertation primarily focuses on the analysis of various forms of urban data and proposes a set of techniques to extract useful information, which is then used for different applications. The first part of this dissertation presents a semi-automatic framework to analyze facade images to recover individual windows along with their functional configurations such as open or (partially) closed states. The main advantage of recovering both the repetition patterns of windows and their individual deformation parameters is to produce a factored facade representation. Such a factored representation enables a range of applications including interactive facade images, improved multi-view stereo reconstruction, facade-level change detection, and novel image editing possibilities. The second part of this dissertation demonstrates the importance of a layout configuration on its performance. As a specific application scenario, I investigate the interior layout of warehouses wherein the goal is to assign items to their storage locations while reducing flow congestion and enhancing the speed of order picking processes. The third part of the dissertation proposes a method to classify cities based on their functional behavior. Commonly used computational approaches concentrate on geometric descriptors, for both images and laser scans. Instead, I analyze street networks, both their topology (i.e., connectivity) and geometry (i.e., layout), in an attempt to understand the factors that play dominant roles in determining the characteristic of cities. A set of street network descriptors is proposed to capture the essence of city layouts and used, in a supervised setting, to classify and categorize various cities across the world. Each part of the dissertation shows the utility of the proposed methods through describing a variety of applications on different examples.

Today, designing in digital environment is far less limiting than the physical reality that the product will end up in - stresses and forces, physical material properties, manufacturing possibilities, economic considerations and etc. are to a large extent not present in digital design tools. With many of these being directly computable it would make sense to introduce these restrictions from the physical world to the digital design environment. By doing this with we could take account of the inevitable restrictions from the very initial design phases and considerations, hopefully enabling us to make better informed decisions and designs. / Idag, designar i digitala miljön är betydligt mindre begränsande än den fysiska verkligheten att produkten kommer att hamna i - spänningar och krafter, fysikaliska materialegenskaper, tillverkningsmöjligheter, ekonomiska överväganden och etc. är i stor utsträckning inte finns i digitala designverktyg. Med många av dessa är direkt beräkningsbar det skulle vara meningsfullt att införa dessa restriktioner från den fysiska världen till den digitala designmiljö. Genom att göra detta med vi kunde ta hänsyn till de oundvikliga begränsningar från mycket ursprungliga utformning och överväganden, förhoppningsvis gör det möjligt för oss att fatta bättre underbyggda beslut och designer.

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Nuestro conocimiento de las interacciones moleculares nos ha conducido hoy hacia una perspectiva ingenieril, donde diseños e implementaciones de sistemas artificiales de regulación intentan proporcionar instrucciones fundamentales para la reprogramación celular. Nosotros aquí abordamos el diseño de redes de genes como una forma de profundizar en la comprensión de las regulaciones naturales. También abordamos el problema de la diseñabilidad dada una genoteca de elementos compatibles. Con este fin, aplicamos métodos heuríticos de optimización que implementan rutinas para resolver problemas inversos, así como herramientas de análisis matemático para estudiar la dinámica de la expresión genética. Debido a que la ingeniería de redes de transcripción se ha basado principalmente en el ensamblaje de unos pocos elementos regulatorios usando principios de diseño racional, desarrollamos un marco de diseño computacional para explotar este enfoque. Modelos asociados a genotecas fueron examinados para descubrir el espacio genotípico asociado a un cierto fenotipo. Además, desarrollamos un procedimiento completamente automatizado para diseñar moleculas de ARN no codificante con capacidad regulatoria, basándonos en un modelo fisicoquímico y aprovechando la regulación alostérica. Los circuitos de ARN resultantes implementaban un mecanismo de control post-transcripcional para la expresión de proteínas que podía ser combinado con elementos transcripcionales. También aplicamos los métodos heurísticos para analizar la diseñabilidad de rutas metabólicas. Ciertamente, los métodos de diseño computacional pueden al mismo tiempo aprender de los mecanismos naturales con el fin de explotar sus principios fundamentales. Así, los estudios de estos sistemas nos permiten profundizar en la ingeniería genética. De relevancia, el control integral y las regulaciones incoherentes son estrategias generales que los organismos emplean y que aquí analizamos. / Rodrigo Tarrega, G. (2011). Computational design and designability of gene regulatory networks [Tesis doctoral]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/14179

Purpose: The purpose of the study is to identify needs in the AEC industry of Generative Design as a process methodology in design processes in the initial stage, since the design process has not developed in line with digitalization. The aim is to compare Generative design as a process methodology in design processes with established methodology to investigate the need for a changed design process as well as its challenges in the AEC industry. Method: The study is executed as a field study and is based on a method triangulation between literature search, document study and qualitative interviews with five individuals semi-structured form. The informants have good experience in the subject area. Findings: The findings are of different ambiguity in individual perspectives, but if seen in combination a clearer result is shown. The study achieves following findings; A need for change in the AEC industry's design process exists and a multidisciplinary approach is sought. Implementation of needs begins with a parallel process between current methodology and GD, one need not exclude the other. An increased programming knowledge of architects and engineers is required. A clear strategy for valuing requirements and design alternatives is required. Today's (2020) established process tends to move towards projects of high complexity being sub optimized which gives generic consequences for design, but GD have the potential to break the trend. Implications: The authors believe that the study’s set goals answer the questions of concern with high reliability and validity based on the study's coordination. Potential for further and in-depth studies are considered and that the collected empiricism to a wider extent than initially desired. Limitations: The subject area studied is predominantly of a contextual nature, which is partly reflected in the results. Because the result is based on a small selection of informants, it cannot be assumed that the same results had been obtained from the perspective of other professional groups. The results can be perceived as subjective due statements are based on personal opinions and preconceived opinions. The collected empiricism can provide a basis for a deeper analysis but the study’s scope of 15 hp was limiting. / Syfte: Syftet med arbetet är att kartlägga behovet i AEC-branschen av Generativ Designsom processmetodik i designprocessens initiala skeden eftersom designprocessen idaginte följt den digitala utveckling som snabbt går framåt. Målet är att utreda behovet aven förändrad designprocess samt dess utmaningar i AEC-branschen genom att jämföraGenerativ design som processmetodik i designprocessen med vedertagen metodik. Metod: En fallstudie av kvalitativ ansats med metodtriangulering mellanlitteratursökning, dokumentstudie och intervjuer med fem individer av semistruktureradform. Informanterna har god erfarenhet av ämnesområdet. Resultat: Resultaten är av varierande entydighet i enskilt perspektiv men ses resultateni kombination ges en tydligare resultatbild. Studien kommer fram till följande; Ettbehov av förändring i AEC-branschens designprocess existerar och etttvärfunktionellt arbetssätt eftertraktas. En implementering behöver inledas med enparallell process mellan nuvarande metodik och GD, det ena behöver inte utesluta denandra. En ökad programmeringskunskap hos arkitekter och ingenjörer krävs. En tydligstrategi för värdering av kravställningar och designalternativ krävs. Dagens (2020) vedertagna process tenderar att gå mot att projekt av högre komplexitetsgradsuboptimeras vilket ger generiska konsekvenser för utformandet men att GD harpotential att bryta denna trend. Konsekvenser: Författarna anser att studien besvarar uppsatt mål och frågeställningarmed hög reliabilitet och validitet utifrån studiens omfattning. Potential till vidare ochdjupgående studier anses finnas och att insamlad empiri är av högre omfattning än vadsom initialt planerades. Begränsningar: Ämnesområdet som studeras är till övervägande del av kontextuellkaraktär vilket delvis avspeglas på resultatet. Eftersom resultatet är baserat på ettmindre urval av informanter kan det inte utgås från att samma resultat hade erhållitsutifrån andra yrkesgruppers perspektiv. Resultaten kan uppfattas subjektiva eftersominformanternas uttalanden är baserade på personliga åsikter och förutfattade meningar.Den insamlade empirin kan utgöra en grund för en djupare och grundligare analys menarbetets omfattning på 15hp var begränsande.

Esta pesquisa objetiva investigar o design computacional, explorando a aplicação de ferramentas conceituais da computação no projeto e na produção de imagens dinâmicas e interativas. A realização desta pesquisa foi motivada por observações feitas pelo autor ao longo de sua experiência profissional, projetando e desenvolvendo interfaces digitais. Constatou-se que muitos profissionais, intitulados \"designers\", possuem pouco ou nenhum conhecimento das tecnologias envolvidas na implementação das interfaces que projetam. Por outro lado, esses mesmos profissionais se limitam a usar alguns poucos softwares comerciais (como por exemplo o Adobe Photoshop) enquanto ferramentas computacionais. Se o designer não conhece as tecnologias envolvidas no projeto (com suas possibilidades e suas limitações), pode acabar propondo soluções tecnicamente inviáveis ou inadequadas. E se o designer limita seu repertório de ferramentas, suas soluções podem ser concebidas mais em função dos recursos disponíveis nas ferramentas do que em função dos requisitos do projeto. Considerando que as ferramentas computacionais ocupam atualmente um papel central na produção, distribuição, e recepção de conteúdo, torna-se importante desenvolver uma postura crítica a respeito do uso da computação em design. E para tanto, faz-se necessário pesquisar as relações entre computação e design. Consultando autores das áreas de comunicação, cibernética, computação, artes, e design, buscou-se identificar os efeitos da computação na sociedade e no pensamento, sua aplicabilidade em outras áreas do conhecimento, e precedentes da arte e do design para uma abordagem computacional do design. Também foram consultados textos (em forma de depoimentos) de designers que trabalham com computação, nos quais relatam seus próprios processos de design. Além disso, foram realizadas entrevistas com 3 designers brasileiros, que ofereceram contribuições valiosas para aqueles que buscam compreender o design computacional de uma perspectiva brasileira. Esta dissertação pretende contribuir para uma maior compreensão das possibilidades e limitações da computação no design. / This research aims to study computational design, exploring the application of computing\'s conceptual tools in the design and the production of dynamic and interactive images. This research was motivated by reflections made by the author throughout his professional experience, designing and developing digital interfaces. It was found that many professionals, entitled \"designers\", have little or no knowledge of the technologies involved in the implementation of the interfaces they design. On the other hand, these same professionals limit themselves to use a few commercial softwares (for example, Adobe Photoshop) as computational tools. If the designer doesn\'t know the technologies involved in the design (with its possibilities and its limitations), he may end up proposing technically unfeasible or inappropriate solutions. If the designer limits his own tool set, his solutions may be conceived more as a function of the features available in the tools than the project\'s requirements. Considering that computational tools currently occupy a fundamental role in production, distribution, and reception of content, it becomes important to develop a critical stance regarding the use of computing in design. Therefore, it becomes necessary to study the relationships between computing and design. Consulting authors in the fields of communication, cybernetics, computing, arts, and design, we sought to identify the effects of computing in society and thinking, its applicability in other fields, and precedents from art and from design for a computational approach to design. Statements and articles from designers who work with computing, describing their own design processes, were also consulted. In addition, 3 interviews with Brazilian designers were conducted; the interviewees offered rich contributions for those who seek to understand computational design from a Brazilian standpoint. This dissertation aims to contribute to a larger comprehension of the possibilities and limitations of computing in design.