Ruben Verstraeten

Toward a visual approach in the exploration of shape grammars

Abstract The concept of shape grammars has often been proposed to improve or support creative design processes. Shape grammar implementations have the potential to both automate parts of the design process and allow exploration of design alternatives. In many of the existing implementations, the main focus is either on capturing the rationale of a particular existing grammar or on allowing designers to develop a new grammar. However, little attention is typically given to the actual representation of the design space that can be explored in the interface of the implementation. With such representation, a shape grammar implementation could properly support designers who are still in the process of designing and may not yet have a clear shape grammar in mind. In this article, an approach and a proof-of-concept software system is proposed for a shape grammar implementation that provides a visual and interactive way to support design space exploration in a creative design process. We describe the method by which this software system can be used and focus on how designers can interact with the exploration process. In particular, we point out how the proposed approach realizes several important amplification strategies to support design space exploration.

A graph-theoretic implementation of the Rabo-de-Bacalhau transformation grammar

Abstract Shape grammars are rule-based formalisms for the specification of shape languages. Most of the existing shape grammars are developed on paper and have not been implemented computationally thus far. Nevertheless, the computer implementation of shape grammar is an important research question, not only to automate design analysis and generation, but also to extend the impact of shape grammars toward design practice and computer-aided design tools. In this paper, we investigate the implementation of shape grammars on a computer system, using a graph-theoretic representation. In particular, we describe and evaluate the implementation of the existing Rabo-de-Bacalhau transformation grammar. A practical step-by-step approach is presented, together with a discussion of important findings noticed during the implementation and evaluation. The proposed approach is shown to be both feasible and valuable in several aspects: we show how the attempt to implement a grammar on a computer system leads to a deeper understanding of that grammar, and might result in the further development of the grammar; we show how the proposed approach is embedded within a commercial computer-aided design environment to make the shape grammar formalism more accessible to students and practitioners, thereby increasing the impact of grammars on design practice; and the proposed step-by-step implementation approach has shown to be feasible for the implementation of the Rabo-de-Bacalhau transformation grammar, but can also be generalized using different ontologies for the implementation.

Semantics-Based Design

In today’s architecture, engineering and construction industry, there has been a vast evolution in the usage of information and communication technology (ICT) for the description and management of construction and/or architectural design projects. During the past years this led to the elaboration of the building information modelling (BIM) technique, which makes it possible to describe building information directly linked to the corresponding elements of the building. One of the major advantages in this BIM approach is the possibility to use this building information for calculation, simulation and analysis in related, more dedicated ICT applications (i.e. energy performance simulation, cost calculation, construction planning, etc.). This influence of ICT is mainly concentrated in the final construction-related design phase and prevails less in the first, preliminary design phase. However, a lot of advantages could be emerging when ICT techniques would be used in the first design stage as well. Therefore, this article proposes the development of an approach similar to BIM, namely an architectural information modelling (AIM) approach, which describes more theoretical, historical and designrelated building knowledge instead of the explicit and components-based descriptions inside BIM. This will result in a new, conceptual, integrated framework for architectural information modelling. In this framework, it will be possible to start and elaborate an architectural design project in a preliminary design phase, using conceptual and more abstract terms (e.g. taxonomy, typology, theory, etc.) to build up a central architectural information model. Several possible advantages of this AIM approach for application in architectural design practice and in building documentation for virtual heritage application will be elaborated during further research.