Below is the original building form and the recommended building form after evaluating 6 different alternatives and analyzing the varying parameters, including the construction cost and the number of non-obstructive lines-of-sight.
This is the original & recommended building form.
Line-of-sight analysis for the change in height parameters against the surrounding buildings. I chose these structures and locations based on similar structures found in Chicago known as Marina City. It consists of 2 circular high-rise structure that include everything a town would have inside: parking, grocery stores, movie theaters, dry cleaners, apartments, etc., right in the heart of downtown. Good viewing points are still necessary.
This is my Dynamo script where I have combined my input evaluations into 1 single custom node and produced 6 different outputs into my Excel spreadsheet: height parameters, construction cost, line-of-sight obstructions, gross floor area, gross volume, and gross surface area.
This single custome node not only calculates the floor area but all my scripts outputs as shown below.
This script builds upon the previous script from Module 5. The additions include custom and adjusted nodes for the construction cost and lines-of-sight.
Firstly, finding the number of sight-blocking views from the varying building heights.
I determined the surfaces of the building which are not exactly flat or angled, they are curved which extended some lines-of-sight out at an angle as expected from the building with a normal point node.
The 3 various buildings that mirror part of the Chicago skyline were selected as elements of obstruction and were broken down individually to determine how many lines hit each.
Secondly, finding the cost of construction of the varying building heights after adjusting the custom node.
The node was adjusted to fit my parameter neeeds. Since there was an error with the old pythoniron script, it would not run and required an input from the created custom node packages. The script was adjusted to fit my values, but names stayed the same, varying to an insignificant degree.
Lastly, after running my Dynamo script, the following values below were received and exported to my Excel file.
Optimization between these values above with regards to combination, comparison, and ranking were taken from the evaluators provided for the module. The building must not be taller than 750 feet and be within a site plan of 300 by 450 feet. It is required to produce a gross floor area of 1,200,000 to 1,500,000 square feet while the cost to construct increases linearly from $700 to $1500 with the height limits.
These were the main factors that must be met for the unique building design as shown in Module 5, barring the cost. After analysing the results produced the, I would rank the building at a height of 750 feet tall to be the top ranking and only choice of construction. While is boasts a larger cost than the next highest design, it is the only one that meets the gross floor area requirement in square feet; it also sees the most number of non-obstructed view lines that will be of the city.
In order to have more of a comparison, a redesign could be looked into. Increasing the bottom structure’s diameter and decreasing the top would ease the cost of construction. Doing just the first would increase the gross floor area and would lead to more combination options to rank and choose from. The building at height 750 feet is the top, and best, ranking choice for this specific design model; no other heights would be recommended as they don’t meet the essential requirements.