Original Building Form
The original building form is a twisting tower with a triangular convex profile inspired by the Shanghai Tower.
Evaluation
I used 3 parameters to evaluate the building: space efficiency, solar insolation, and sight clearance.
Space Efficiency
Space efficiency is calculated as (gross floor area)/(gross surface area). It is an indicator of how efficiently the building spaces can be used and operated, as a higher space efficiency means there’s more floor area to use and less energy loss through building envelope per unit floor area.
Solar Insolation
The solar insolation is based on a single-day solar study. The building’s total solar insolation is an indicator for its potential to deploy BIPV (building-integrated photovoltaics) on the envelope, thus the higher the better. The solar insolation analysis is conducted through a custom node.
Sight Clearance
The sight clearance is expressed as the fraction of the building surface that has unobstructed lines of sight for 1000+ ft. There are several box-shaped members in the model that represent buildings nearby. The lines of sight analysis is conducted through a custom node.
Combined Score
After computing the 3 evaluators above, I combined them all into a single score for each design alternative, just so I can optimize a single objective. The method is as follows:
- For each evaluator:
- Divide the list of values for all designs by the list’s first value, in order to get a “relative score” for each design;
- Multiply the relative scores for all designs by a weighting factor, to get a “weighted relative score”;
- For each design alternative:
- Add up the “weighted relative scores” from different evaluators to get a single score;
- Divide the list of single scores by the maximum score in the list, to get a relative single score that’s no greater than 1 (the maximum score will be 1).
The higher the score, the better (since it means higher space efficiency, higher BIPV potential, and clearer sight).
The Dynamo logic for evaluation is as follows.
Note: I placed a weighting factor of 2 for space efficiency, since it’s directly related to costs. Other evaluators have a weight of 1.
Final Building Form
The final building form is the design alternative with the highest combined score (a score of 1, with top height = 1000 and mid radius = 80). It is considered “the best” because, as previously mentioned, a higher score means a higher space efficiency, a higher solar insolation (BIPV potential), and a higher fraction of clear sight.
In addition, the building is covered with responsive panels to sun directness. The side facing the sun has thicker vertical grid lines (wider panel edges) and has a red color. The side facing away from the sun has thinner vertical grid lines (thinner panel edges) and has a green color.
The responsive panels are created with a custom node.
The Dynamo logic for creating the final building form is as follows.
Complete Dynamo Logic
