Dayana Bulatbekova

For this assignment, I developed and evaluated a series of high-rise building form alternatives for a proposed project site in Dubai near Business Bay. I focused on exploring how building height (650–750 feet) and rotation angle (15°–90°) influence key performance metrics related to geometry and orientation. As part of analysis, I created two custom nodes in Dynamo:

1. Economic Performance Node

This node calculates two critical cost-related metrics:

• Estimated Construction Cost:

Computed using a height-based cost gradient, where the cost per square foot increases linearly from $500 at ground level to $1000 at 750 feet.

• Unit Cost:

Derived by dividing the estimated cost by the gross floor area to understand the cost-efficiency per usable square foot.

These metrics help identify forms that provide the most usable area for the lowest construction investment, a key consideration for developers.

1. Directivity Analysis Node:

This node evaluates how aligned the building surfaces are to desirable orientations, which affects:

1. Solar gain potential
2. Visual connectivity to local landmarks or views
3. Environmental responsiveness of the façade

This metric helps identify building rotations that improve solar access and contextual responsiveness

• Main Dynamo Function

• Evaluation Function (Includes 2 custom nodes)

• Geometric Metrics Node (custom node 1)

• Directivity Node (custom node 2)

Best three designs are :

The design with a height of 675 meters and a 45° rotation is the best choice because it offers an optimal balance between cost efficiency, spatial performance, and design practicality. It has a moderate estimated cost and a relatively low unit cost compared to taller alternatives, while maintaining a high EFAR and FAR, indicating excellent space utilization and density. This makes it an efficient option without the structural and financial complexities of taller buildings. Additionally, its directivity value suggests good environmental performance, and the 45° rotation provides a more dynamic and potentially site-responsive form. Overall, this design maximizes value while minimizing trade-offs.

Do the new evaluation metrics that you’ve designed capture the meaningful differences between the building form alternatives?

Economic metric can be an effective measure of a better design. Although directivity is a useful metric, in this case all the design had relatively similar geometry and hence the metric didn’t differ much. What other metrics would be useful to compute to help understand and make the case for which alternatives are truly better than others?

For a high rise building we can also conduct a wind and solar analysis to see what are the environmental factors affecting each design alternative.