Mark Burry

Parametric Design and Structural Optimisation for Early Design Exploration

The investigation presented in this paper focuses on the following questions: How can engineering and architectural expertise, assisted by a process of digital optimisation, promote structural awareness regarding design alterations in the conceptual design stages? Can building geometry be set up computationally to render it sensitive to structural input? Which software tools are required to foster this interaction and what kind of decision support is needed to allow both architects and structural engineers to interact concurrently in this optimisation process? The authors of this paper form a team of researchers and practitioners from architectural and structural engineering background who combine their efforts to address the issue of interconnecting design intelligence across disciplines and advancing revised work methodologies in practice assisted by academic research. The research has shown that an integrated transfer of design information between architectural and structural designers in the early stages is beneficial to the collaboration if experts from both professions agree on common goals and define suitability rules that guide optimisation processes from the very beginning. To enable this, software tools are required that provide ad hoc decision support to create a wider array of informed design alternatives from which to choose.

EMG based voice recognition

Besides its clinical applications, various researchers have shown that EMG can be utilised in areas such as computer human interface and in developing intelligent prosthetic devices. The paper presents results from a preliminary study. The work describes the outcome in using an artificial neural network (ANN) to recognise and classify human speech based on EMG. The EMG signals were acquired from three articulatory facial muscles. Three subjects were selected and participated in the experiments. Preliminarily, five English vowels were used as recognition variables. The root mean square (RMS) values of the EMG signals were estimated and used as a set of features to feed the ANN. The findings indicate that such a system may have the capacity to recognise and classify speech signals with an accuracy of up to 88%.

Rapid prototyping, CAD/CAM and human factors

Abstract CAD/CAM techniques for rapid prototyping, profile cutting, and form sculpting/routing/moulding are well-advanced for the vehicle and manufacturing industries. Although their migration to the building sector is readily achievable as a substitution for much of traditional construction, there are factors that work against this. Apart from the singular ‘one-off’ nature of most architectural projects that limits ready exploitation of techniques derived in the main for mass-manufacture, there remains the problem of apprenticeship, and how to maintain a healthy lineage of skills for work otherwise less readily taken-up using automated manufacturing procedures. Continuing construction for Gaudis Sagrada Familia Church in Barcelona has provided a fertile test-bed for integrating rapid prototyping and CAD/CAM production where appropriate. Nevertheless, human factors such as maintaining the status quo with regard to apprenticeship and maintaining the skill lineage have provided some healthy insights into both the risks as well as the opportunities for greater involvement with CAD/CAM, and in particular, rapid prototyping in the building construction sector. This paper reports on and discusses the findings of case studies from the Sagrada Familia Church project.

Understanding visual scripts: Improving collaboration through modular programming

Modularisation is a well-known method of reducing code complexity, yet architects are unlikely to modularise their visual scripts. In this paper the impact that modules used in visual scripts have on the architectural design process is investigated with regard to legibility, collaboration, reuse and design modification. Through a series of thinking-aloud interviews, and through the collaborative design and construction of the parametric Dermoid pavilion, modules are found to impact the culture of collaborative design in architecture through relatively minor alterations to how architects organise visual scripts.

Advantages of Bi-Directional Evolutionary Structural Optimization (BESO) Over Evolutionary Structural Optimization (ESO)

The evolutionary structural optimization (ESO) method evolves a structure from the full design domain towards an optimum by gradually removing inefficient material. The bi-directional ESO (BESO) may start from any initial design and evolve a structure to an optimum by adding and removing material simultaneously. In this paper, a detailed comparison between ESO and BESO has been carried out for stiffness optimization problems. Both 2D and 3D examples shows that the BESO method possesses many advantages over the ESO method such as computational efficiency, robustness of the method and manufacturability of the final topology.

Energy-Oriented Design Tools for Collaboration in the Cloud

Emerging from the challenge to reduce energy consumption in buildings is the need for energy simulation to be used more effectively to support integrated decision making in early design. As a critical response to a Green Star case study, we present DEEPA, a parametric modeling framework that enables architects and engineers to work at the same semantic level to generate shared models for energy simulation. A cloud-based toolkit provides web and data services for parametric design software that automate the process of simulating and tracking design alternatives, by linking building geometry more directly to analysis inputs. Data, semantics, models and simulation results can be shared on the fly. This allows the complex relationships between architecture, building services and energy consumption to be explored in an integrated manner, and decisions to be made collaboratively.

Modelling hyperboloid sound scattering: The challenge of simulating, fabricating and measuring

The Responsive Acoustic Surfaces workshop project described here sought new understandings about the interaction between geometry and sound in the arena of sound scattering. This paper reports on the challenges associated with modelling, simulating, fabricating and measuring this phenomenon using both physical and digital models at three distinct scales. The results suggest hyperboloid geometry, while difficult to fabricate, facilitates sound scattering.

Dynamical structural modeling: A collaborative design exploration

This study is based on a generative performative modeling approach that engages architects and structural engineers in close dialogue. We focus on knowledge shared between engineers and architects to apply the Finite Element Analysis based structural design technique Evolutionary Structural Optimization [ESO] as a way to understand or corroborate the performance factors that are significant in determining architectural form. ESO is very close conceptually to the dynamical system of matter and forces of growth itself. It has parallels both mathematical and metaphorical with natural evolution and morphogenesis so it has been poignant to apply the approach to a formal architectural case study in which the generative influence of these processes is inherent.

Digitally Sponsored Convergence of Design Education, Research and Practice

This paper looks at examples of successful transdisciplinary design projects that oblige a departure from the typical assertion of sub-discipline distinctions. In doing so a case is made for a new convergence between architectural design education, research and practice. A case for post digital design will also be made, defined here as the comprehensive assimilation of the computer within traditional modes of design practice, offering a more natural and productive state of affairs than the exclusively digital office promulgated especially during the previous decade. The paper concludes with a demonstration of transdisciplinary design teaching and practice, offering a post digital design framework that require radical new approaches to education and practice. It is contended here that only when CAAD research is undertaken conjointly within teaching and practice can the links be properly formed between the two.

Tangible interfaces to explain Gaudi´'s use of ruled-surface geometries Interactive systems design for haptic, nonverbal learning

This paper summarises the development of a machine-readable model series for explaining Gaudis use of ruled-surface geometry in the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, Spain. The first part discusses the modeling methods underlying the columns of the cathedral and the techniques required to translate them into built structures. The second part discusses the design and development of a tangible machine-readable model to explain column-modeling methods interactively in educational contexts such as art exhibitions. It is designed to explain the principles underlying the column design by means of physical interaction without using mathematical terms or language.