Meera Rao

Step 1 - Generative Design Framework

A very brief description of the design decisions from Step 1 following the Generative Design Framework.

  • Walkability of residential building
    • Design Variables
      • u,v coordinates of building
    • Evaluators
      • number of amenities within a certain radius from the building
      • public transportation access points within a certain radius from the building
    • Most Important Tradeoffs to Consider
      • Locating residential buildings near other amenities may increase noise and light pollution for the residents
  • Energy Efficiency
    • Design Variables
      • base, mid, and top radius
      • mid and top rotation
      • building shape
      • WWR
    • Evaluators
      • surface area to volume ratio
      • floor area to volume ratio
      • building cost
      • solar insolation
    • Most Important Tradeoffs to Consider
      • energy efficiency vs construction costs will be evaluated to maximize surface area to volume ratio while minimizing the building cost
  • Window Shading
    • Design Variables
      • number and size of window shading
      • material of shading devices
    • Evaluators
      • embodied carbon of shading device
      • energy saved from window shading
    • Most Important Tradeoffs to Consider
      • Adding window shadings help reduce the overall energy use, but the materials used can be carbon intensive, so there is a tradeoff between the two.

Step 2 - Generative Design Study

Objective

I ran a generative design study to determine the optimal building shape that would improve efficiency while also keeping costs low.

Model

I first created all my inputs in Dynamo which is shown below.

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The image on the left shows the inputs that can be studied, and the right shows the constant inputs.

Next, the building profiles were created based on the inputs.

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The profiles were then all lofted and solid and wall surfaces were created.

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The floor areas were then computed.

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Lastly, the construction cost was calculated.

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Design Variables

Although 6 inputs were listed, I only looked at the number of sides, middle rotation, and top rotation for this generative study.

Constants

The base, middle, and top radii were kept constant. Also, the building height, story height, and costs per floor were kept constant.

Evaluators

The total cost, surface area per volume, and floor area per volume were evaluated.

Tradeoffs

The goal was to minimize cost and surface area per volume while maximizing floor area per volume. There are tradeoffs between cost and floor area as the more floor area the higher the cost will be.

Step 3 - Generative Design Study Results

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Looking at the graph, we can see that the floor area per volume can be maximized at a lower cost. However, for the lower cost buildings, there is a larger surface area per volume. A tradeoff will have to be made between those two factors.

The next scatter plot shows how the number of sides of the building affects the surface area per volume ratio.

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It can be seen that the surface area per volume is minimized if the building shape has more sides. However, as expected, having a building with more sides will increase costs.

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There is no strong relationship between the number of sides and floor area per volume.

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Relationships were observed between the top and middle radius and the three evaluators; however, they did not seem to affect the results as much as the number of sides did. From exploring the results, it was determined that the biggest tradeoff occurs between the cost and surface area per volume. These factors are most greatly affected by the number of sides of the building. Since surface area per volume is generally a good measure of energy efficiency, we can see that potentially designing a building to have a more energy efficient shape would also cost more. However, it should be noted that this is a very simple model, and things like building material and WWR should be taken into account when assessing the energy efficiency of a building.

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