MODULE 5

Part 1

For Part 1 of this assignment, I chose the One WTC as the parametric form that I would be modeling. I set the location to San Francisco, CA and turned on the sun path settings as well.

Figure 1. Screenshot of the One WTC with aspects manipulated by me

Starting in Dynamo I added the building form that I generated in Revit and included the variables I was manipulating which was the tower height as well as the key metrics that I wanted to have returned (gross volume, gross surface area, gross floor area). I then generated a range of height values to be tested and tested each case using the custom node. The results were then exported into Excel.

Figure 2. Dynamo workflow of entire process

The custom node took in the building form, the key metrics, and the variable being manipulated and updated the Revit model with each iteration of the variable being manipulated. In this case it was the height of the building from 600 - 750 at an interval of 20 feet. The values were then organized as outputs.

Figure 3. Custom node logic for evaluating a single variable in a building form

The results ranged from 600 to 700 feet within the project parameters of 1.2 million to 1.5 million total square feet.

Figure 4. Excel table of the data from manipulating the tower height variable in Revit/Dynamo

Part 2

For my structure in Part 2 I wanted to do a unique design that incorporated a variety of shapes that all melded together. I decided to go with a structure that started as a polygon and shifted into a square and then a triangle. This effect was very interesting as it almost gave the building a natural twisting motion without there being any added twist.

Figure 5. Image of building generated in Dynamo

Unlike Part 1, I decided to build this building form entirely in Dynamo. This process started by creating the geometry and key values which was then converted to a custom node - explained later. Then I had to decide which inputs would be flexed and which inputs would be constants. I chose to flex the middle and top radius as a percentage of the bottom radius. Then I created combinations of input values to test that were placed into a function for volume, surface area, and floor area to generate their gross values. This list was then organized into a data table and exported to Excel.

Figure 6. Dynamo workflow of entire process

The custom node includes the inputs for generating the building including the top, middle, and bottom radius as well as the middle and top twists and building story height. The buildings middle height and top height were hard coded along with the number of sides at the bottom, middle, and top. These surfaces were then extruded to create a solid and surface geometry to compute key metrics.

Figure 7. Custom node for generating building geometry and key metrics (left side).

The first measure that needed to be taken to compute the key metrics was to split the building into equal floors. this was done by creating rectangular planes - similar to mass floors - which split the building into 12 foot story heights. Each floors surface areas was then calculated based on the boundaries of the polygons. The key metrics for gross surface area was calculated based on the surface geometry and the gross volume was based on the solid geometry.

Figure 8. Custom node for generating building geometry and key metrics (right side).

By manipulating the middle radius between 105 and 128 and the top radius between 45 and 90 we found a variety of different results with 9 being within the 1.2 million and 1.5 million design specifications.

Figure 9. Excel table of the data from manipulating the middle and top radius variables in Revit/Dynamo

MODULE 6

Part 1

Metric 1

Luxury rental space

-square footage above x amount of floors

Metric 2

Green Space potential

-% of base area occupied by building structure