I wanted to understand the trade-off between the cost and maximizing for 360 deg. views of the one WTC. So, I went ahead and imported the One WTC Parametric Tower from the 220C library. We will give ourselves a budget of $2.2B for this optimization.
Step 1:
First, I imported the One WTC - Twisting .rfa file and placed the mass as a component. Then, I set the height to 1350 ft and massed 100 floors at 13’ 6” height. I set the rotation constant at 45deg for all faces. We will not vary the rotation for any face.
The parameter that I wish to vary is the Top Flat Side Length from 1’ up to 200’. This varies the cut into the square shape at the top. 1’ resembles the Original One WTC while 200’ makes it a rectangular tower.
From a top view, you can clearly understand how the top profile shifts as we increase the Flat Side Length.
We can associate the value of “views” with how much surface area along the office spaces exists
So, as the flat side length increases, the perimeter (and hence, surface area) at the top floors increases. However, this comes at a cost as the square footage at the top floors also increases.
Hence, we will optimize between total surface area and total cost.
Now, we will set the location to San Francisco, CA.
Now, we will report the parameters for our One WTC.
Step 2:
Researching into costs for skyscrapers in NY, we will apply $600/SF for simplicity. In reality, there should be an exponential relationship between the the floor number and the cost per SF at that floor.
First, we select the parameters to flex. This will be the Tower Top Flat Side 1 and 2. Then, we add the outputs we want to report. This would be Gross Surface Area and Gross Floor Area. The cost is only a function of Gross Floor Area here. Then we use the Select Model element so that it can select the one WTC tower from Revit as an element input for our custom node.
Then, we link all the inputs into the BuildingForm custom node from the 220C library. This takes in the two flat side lengths as a pair of inputs. Here is the workflow for the custom node:
Furthermore, for symmetry, we want only pairs of (10,10), (20,20), (30,30) …….. (200,200). So, we create a list containing these doubles.
Finally, the BuildingForm function inputs as a function, while the list created above inputs as a list for Surface Area and Floor Area. The results are exported to Excel in the corresponding rows and columns as shown.
Excel Output shown:
So, within a budget of $2.2B, a flat side length of 40 ft will provide the maximum 360 views (surface area). This is what it would look like:
