DesignSpace - Details

Assistive Intelligence for Spatial Design

 

The Project [DesignSpace] develops computational techniques and tools that may be used as a basis of providing assistive design intelligence within a conventional spatial and architectural design workflow. Such a workflow typically involves an iterative refinement cycle consisting of the modelling - evaluation - (re)modelling phases. Such capability in spatial design is essential to reduce design malfunction (e.g., errors, functional failures) by iterative design validation and verification, and also to ensure that functional requirements of a design are met when the design is deployed in reality; we are especially interested in the relationship between structural form and function and its formal interpretation within the assistance system.

Our long-term goal in this project is to develop a methodology that is able to detect requirement inconsistencies in the preliminary CAAD design and communicate them back to the designer. This also includes the ability to perform diagnosis, and the derivation of alternate recommendations that do not violate the explicit and implied requirement constraints of the designer or architect. Initial studies have investigated this for some specific cases such as the design of the new generation of smart environments and building-automation systems, and specialized environments such as museums.

The System DSim. The project involves several different components, principle among them being: conceptual modelling, reasoning about design requirements formulated as sets of constraints over some spatial domain, and design simulation/visualization capabilities.

We ensure industry compliance by using real CAAD data that conforms to the Building Information Model (BIM) and Industry Foundation Classes (IFC). In this context, ongoing efforts are directed at developing a spatial data access framework that supports IFC import, and the ability to derive a high-level multi-perspective and multi-modal representation of a structured spatial environment (from a CAAD model). Many of the core capabilities are prototyped within one practical tool, which we refer to as DSim – Live Your Design.