Part 1
Figure 1. Original building design options
I created two custom nodes within Dynamo to determine some economic metrics as well as some sustainability metrics for this building. The first metric focuses on the value of rental space per square footage as the building increases in height. The higher the building, the higher the rents due to the better views and amenities offered in the building. The sustainability metric focus on two two inputs. The first is the ground floor area, or building footprint, subtracted from the total allotted space (450x300). This demonstrates the potential for green space on the ground floor. The other metric is roof area dedicated for PV which is 80% of the total roof area. This shows how much solar can be placed on the roof. Further information on how these nodes are weighted will be explained later.
Figure 2. Overview of entire Dynamo logic - most is recycled from Module 5.
The inputs that are being manipulated for this assignment are the bottom radius and top radius as they have the greatest effect on the economics and sustainability of the building. For example, as the roof size increases the amount of solar available also increases as well as the most expensive rentable floor.
Figure 3. Close up of left side/inputs for the Dynamo logic
Figure 4. Close up of the right side/outputs for the Dynamo logic
Figure 5. Custom node logic for the geometry and key metrics of the building
The first new node added for this module was the value of rental space by square footage. This was calculated by determining the lowest square footage value and the highest square footage value and increasing linearly as the floors increased.
Figure 6. Rental costs by floor area custom node
The next node added was the area of the space not occupied by the building. This was calculated by finding the area of the bottom radius and then subtracting it from the total land area (300x450). This shows how much potential for greenscapes versus hardscapes there is on this property.
Figure 7. Base floor area custom node
The final node added was the area of the roof being used by solar panels. This was calculated by finding the area of the roof and multiplying it by 80%. This reduction was applied due to the need for other space on the roof besides solar panels and gives a good estimation for the potential size of the solar system.
Figure 8. Roof area custom node
Part 2
Figure 9. Best option (left) and worst option (right) based on information provided by the results
When considering how to consolidate and create a single-objective optimization scheme the first thought that came to mind was creating a comparison value between 0 and 1. To achieve this, I found the max value for each metric result. This then acted as the denominator for every other value which provided a scale of 0-1. The metric with the max value received a score of 1 while the lowest value received something below 1.
For the sustainability factors - green space and solar roof space - I decided to weight them evenly by multiplying their values by 0.5 and adding them together. The economic factor - rental costs by floor area - was left as its own standalone metric. These metrics were then combined to determine a final metric to select the highest performing building. A weighting of 0.25 was given to the sustainability factors and a weighting of 0.75 was given to the economic factors. This makes sense in practice as more often than not the economic factors will outweigh the sustainable ones. Although, sustainability is becoming more and more important everyday.
The results showed that economics played a huge role as the three largest buildings had the highest final index rating. They also had the largest top radius which provides the greatest opportunity for solar. I think my final index accurately selects the best option as it has ranks highest in two categories - solar and cost. It would be interesting to further explore the relationship between the economic gains versus sustainable losses of a larger bottom floor.
Figure 10. Results table generated in Excel with the gradient in red showing the top three choices, the darker the better.