For 2 or More Units: Create Two New Evaluator Nodes

The two new metrics are:

Total cost of construction. This includes not just each mass floor’s floor area, but also the surrounding exterior surface area, to better capture the total cost.
Cumulative solar insolation, excluding West-facing sides and ground floor. In general, (West) afternoon sun should be avoided when designing for buildings. As it is not desirable to have solar insolation on west-facing sides of the building, this side was excluded from calculating total cumulative solar insolation (which should be maximized).

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Node Logic for Total Construction Cost

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Node Logic for Solar Insolation

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Point to Ponder: Do the new evaluation metrics that you’ve designed capture the meaningful differences between the building form alternatives? What other metrics would be useful to compute to help understand and make the case for which alternatives are truly better than others?

Yes, there is a noticeable difference between each building form alternative for each of the metrics. Other metrics to consider may have been considering lines of sight to desirable views such as the bay or the Burj Khalifa. A more detailed breakdown of daylight solar exposure may also be useful in determining the building orientation to maximize natural sunlight. Finally, minimizing the external surface area relative to internal floor area may be a useful metric for a more ‘efficient’ building.

For 3 or More Units: Develop a Single-Objective Optimization Scheme

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Point to Ponder: What overall strategy do you feel best captures the relationship between the evaluation metrics? Clearly articulating your design strategy is the key aspect of this task. Before you dive into implementing your scheme, briefly describe your thinking and strategy in a paragraph that outlines your thinking and approach.

For the metrics, all of them increased as inputs increased. However, the (a) total cost of construction and (b) surface area/floor area ratio, and (c) surface area/volume ratio are metrics that should be minimized. On the other hand, solar insolation is a metric that should be maximized.

Thus, when remapping the scores for metrics to be minimized, the lower the score, the closer the value should be to 1 (and away from 0). To do this, the formula used was -(((Value-Min)/(Max-Min))-1). On the other hand for metrics to be maximized, the higher the score, the closer to 1 it should be. For this, (Value-Min)/(Max-Min) was used.

For the weighting factors, total cost of construction is the most important (weightage factor of 3), followed by solar insolation (factor of 2) and then the remaining metrics (factor of 1). A cumulative score is then determined, and the alternative with the highest cumulative score will be the best alternative.

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Point to Ponder: What propelled the recommended alternative to the top of the list? Explain your reasoning -- include a brief analysis of why this alternative rose to the top of the list and why you consider it to be the best option. Are there important nuances or tradeoffs that got lost is the single evaluation?

The 2nd and 3rd best alternatives are highlighted in orange, with the ‘best’ one highlighted in yellow instead. This is based on having the highest cumulative single-optimization score.

For the ‘best’ alternative, the main factors that propelled it to the top are the surface area to floor area and volume ratios. Although it is only average in terms of cost of construction and solar insolation received, it is significantly more ‘efficient’ in those ratios than the other alternatives and thus scored the best.

One issue is that the weightage scores are relatively arbitrary - they may not fully capture how important each factor is relative to the others. It may be more effective to have multi-objective optimization, such that the maximum frontier for each metric can be identified while also being able to choose a factor that optimizes for various aspects.

Relatedly, focusing only on the single-optimization score elides why exactly an alternative scored highly. For example, two similarly scored buildings (like the 2nd and 3rd choice above) scored well for very different reasons; the 3rd choice actually maximized every value but was also the most expensive. Meanwhile, the 2nd best option performed generally well across the board. Thus, relying only on the score can be misleading and may not align with the desired goals.

For 4 Units: Visualize the Recommended Alternative

Generally, it seems that the location has good daylight potential and relatedly would be suitable for solar panels to harness solar energy.

One change may be to increase the size of the top surface radius to fit more solar panels, as it is very suitable for solar energy.

However, the building and area around it does not have the best wind coverage, which may suggest a need for air-conditioning (which is environmentally unfriendly) or extra efforts to direct wind towards particular areas in or around the building to increase comfort levels.

Daylight Potential

Wind

Module 6 - Jia-Yi Tham