Please enter the following info in the fields above:
- Your Name as the Card title
- The link to your Module 7 folder in our Autodesk Construction Cloud project
Please also type the first few letters of your first name into the Link to Student field, then hover over your name from the list of matching records and click the blue plus sign to link this entry to your Design Journal.
Then, share your Design Journal entry here (replacing these instructions) ... Click the text area below the headers and just start typing your response. There's no need to add new properties.
Please include:
I considered the case of a high-rise office building. As shown below, the Empire State Building is composed of larger floor areas on the base and goes smaller and smaller as it goes higher. The setbacks were mandated, which intended to allow sunlight to reach the streets. I wanted to explore the human comfort of such structure by simulating the building using simplified 3 blocks on top of each other.
Step 1 - Generative Design Framework
A very brief description of the design decisions from Step 1 following the Generative Design Framework.
- Maximize Acoustic Performance
- Design Variables
- Window Material
- Building Material: Concrete vs Wood
- Evaluators
- Decibel when a noise (CalTrain) passes by
- Material Cost
- Most Important Tradeoffs to Consider
- Acoustic Performance vs Cost
- Maximize Human Comfort (Natural Light, Common Area & Amenities, Ventilation, etc.)
- Design Variables
- Number of Windows (Ventilation)
- Common Area/Total Floor Area Ratio
- Length
- Width
- Height
- Evaluators
- Natural Light Floor Area (Assume 40ft from facade)
- Rentable Floor Area
- Amenities/Common Areas
- Surface Area to Floor Area Ratio
- Maintenance and Operations Cost
- Perimeter (Ventilation)
- Most Important Tradeoffs to Consider
- More rentable floor area vs Human Comfort
- Maximize Sustainability
- Design Variables
- Amount of sustainable material used
- Sustainable material Cost
- Evaluators
- Construction Cost
- Carbon Emission
- Maintenance and Operations Cost
- Most Important Tradeoffs to Consider
- Capital Cost vs Operations Cost
- Sustainable Practice vs Budget Constraints
Step 2 - Generative Design Study
I chose the second design decision, which is to maximize human comfort. I focused on common area, rentable area, space efficiency and total cost.
- Design Variables:
- Base width and length determines the floor area of the base cube.
- Block height 3 is the top block.
- Setback is by how much will the width and length of the upper block are less than the lower block. Setback 1 = Setback 2 in this case.
- Common Area ratio = gross common area / gross floor area
- Constants:
- The floor cost of each block are assume the same. For instance, if the base block composes of 3 floors, all 3 floors have the same cost. The same principle applies for surface cost.
- Evaluators:
- Maximize:
- Common Area for human comfort
- Rentable area for revenue
- Space Efficiency = Floor Area / Surface Area
- Minimize:
- Total Cost = Floor Cost + Surface Cost
- Tradeoffs:
- More common area and amenities versus more rentable area for more revenue.
- Higher building to have better views versus raised construction cost.
- Maximize human comfort versus minimize construction cost. Human comfort includes more natural light, more terrace, better ventilation system, heating system, better amenities, more elevators, etc. The common area is not leasable and increases the operating cost in the long term. More of the mentioned points will be considered in the next step.
- The geometry of 3 blocks are set up first.
- Formula setup:
- Floor area: the floor height is set to 10 feet. The gross floor area is calculated to evaluate the space efficiency later.
- Surface area: the wall area of the building. As it is a high rise office building, the majority of surface area are wall surface. Also, for later use, the windows are the major natural light source.
- Block cost: the cost consists of floor cost and surface cost.
- A more detailed description of the design decision from Step 2 that you decided to run a Generative Design Study with.
- Use the Generative Design Framework structure to explain how you’ve set up your Generative Design Study to keep it consistent.
Step 3 - Generative Design Study Results
- The screenshot of the Scatterplot or Parallel Coordinates Graph illustrating the tradeoff that you chose to model and study.
- Provide a brief explanation of what’s being shown in the Scatterplot or Parallel Coordinates Graph and how the tradeoff being illustrated would impact the design decision. What would you do with this info?
- An image of your Dynamo Study Graph (showing all your nodes and the connecting logic) -- You can use the File > Export Workspace As Image... command in Dynamo to save a PNG image to upload with your posting.
- The plot above is total cost vs rentable area. We would prefer a smaller total cost and larger rentable area. Thus, the lower right direction is preferred.
- We would also prefer a larger common area ratio for the seek of human comfort. Thus, blue is preferred.
- The space efficiency is the larger the better. The size of the points showing that the space efficiency is larger on the topper right.
Based on these understandings, the orange case next to the two red ones is efficient and thus selected and shown below. We can see that the top block height is minimized to 10 since the higher the more expensive cost it is. The common area ratio is also better than the other nearby cases, and 0.25 is a reasonable range. The space efficiency is relatively large as well.
