International Journal of Architectural Computing

Hybrid Virtual Environment 3D (Hyve-3D) is a system that allows architectural co-design inside Virtual Reality by a new model of interaction through a 3D cursor. It augments the concept of the cursor to better interact with three-dimensional virtual spaces, rethinking it as a drawing/control plane and viewpoints inside the virtual world. Handheld tablets intuitively manipulate 3D cursors. Users can simultaneously access their individual complementary views on the tablets as personal windows into the shared immersive display. They can concurrently sketch in three dimensions, transform, and manipulate three-dimensional objects using the tablets as tangible props and collectively navigate the scene using the tablet as a 3D trackpad. The system implementation and co-design assessments of different settings are presented.

Nowadays, urban planning and urban design are facing big changes in the use of different digital tools. Reaching out and engaging citizens and other stakeholders in urban design process are significant for good practice. Main problem discussed in this article is the lack of suitable tools/interfaces for instant collaboration between government, profession, and public. Article focuses on immersive environments, as full immersion could offer better notion of different proposals of urban design. As a case study, Immersive Terf is chosen; more exactly, article focuses on new approach and new development of tool Urban Redesign Terf. Deep immersive collaboration on design could free participant’s mind and increase level of freedom in design/planning process. Immersive environments have already been used in building information modeling (BIM) managment, but innovation part, presented here, are technological: significant changes in the software and walk-through big models, which is the base for urban design and urban planning process.

In the current computer-aided architectural design education, students do not necessarily need to be taught to use more digital tools, but need to be introduced to the possibilities of designing their own digital tools. Designing the original tools with the assistance of educational-use environment for computational fluid dynamics programming improves the capability of the students to estimate the flows around architectures based on the mathematical background and the actual program. The authors have developed Educational Library for Fluid as an educational-use environment for computational fluid dynamics programming and ran the workshop where the students majoring in computer-aided architectural design tried to design computational fluid dynamics tools with Educational Library for Fluid. In this article, the details of Educational Library for Fluid and the results of the workshop are being reported. In addition, the key points of computational fluid dynamics education that the authors learned through the experience of the workshop are shared.

This article focuses on the use of computational tools to provide dynamic assessment and optimized arrangements while planning and discussing interventions in urban areas. The objective is to address the use of algorithmic systems for generating and evaluating urban morphologies guided by Transit-Oriented Development principles. Transit-Oriented Development is an urban development model that considers geometric and measurable parameters for designing sustainable cities. It advocates compact mixed-use neighborhoods within walking distance to a variety of transportation options and amenities, seeking to result in optimized infrastructure provision and energy-efficient low-carbon districts. This article presents algorithmic experiments for the optimization of a rapid transit district, through its urban morphology and services’ location, providing an accurate Transit-Oriented Development modeling. The main findings of this study highlight that the combination of Transit-Oriented Development and algorithmic–parametric tools has the potential to significantly contribute to a process of responsible planning and, ultimately, to mitigate global warming.

Programming promotes creative freedom but might require considerable effort to learn. The Processing language was created to simplify this learning process. Due to its graphical capabilities, the language has become very popular among the electronic arts and design communities. Unfortunately, this popularity could not be extended to the architecture community, which relies on traditional heavyweight computer-aided design and building information modeling applications that cannot be programmed using Processing. As a result, it becomes difficult for architects to take advantage of Processing. To solve this problem, we propose an implementation of Processing that runs in the context of the most used computer-aided design tools in architecture. Our implementation allows Processing to generate two- or three-dimensional models that are directly usable for architectural work. To this end, we also propose extensions to the language, including three-dimensional modeling primitives that dramatically simplify the effort needed for developing large and complex architectural models with Processing.

After decades of improving the efficiency and economy of our existing building ecology, instruments of the Third Industrial Revolution are redefining the practice of architecture, both internally and externally. This article focuses on the employment of the Constrained Design Hysteresis methodology as a mediating strategy, in which computational tools for content creation and fabrication can merge in post-industrial societies to effectively reindustrialize the fields of architectural design manufacturing and building. Such reformation of the accepted norms of architectural building practice do not represent a regression of the profession to a pre-industrial mode of building craftsmanship, but an evolution into one that directly addresses various shortcomings of global industrialization, ranging from restrictions imposed by mass production to the creation of social class disparity. In this context, the application of computational tools and processes can both empower and liberate design individuals through the restructuring of the existing industrial manufacturing ecosystems.

Generative processes and generative design approaches are topics of continuing interest and debate within the realms of architectural design and related fields. While they are often held up as giving designers the opportunity (the freedom) to explore far greater numbers of options/alternatives than would otherwise be possible, questions also arise regarding the limitations of such approaches on the design spaces explored, in comparison with more conventional, human-centric design processes. This article addresses the controversy with a specific focus on parametric-associative modelling and genetic programming methods of generative design. These represent two established contenders within the pool of procedural design approaches gaining increasingly wide acceptance in architectural computational research, education and practice. The two methods are compared and contrasted to highlight important differences in freedoms and limitations they afford, with respect to each other and to ‘manual’ design. We conclude that these methods may be combined with an appropriate balance of automation and human intervention to obtain ‘optimal’ design freedom, and we suggest steps towards finding that balance.

This article considers how computational simulation can be used to amplify imagination and make its effects sharable, persuasive and activist. It argues that this is not only possible but important for the future of design and introduces the concept of living models as a device that can express the futuring potential of such simulations. Developing this argument, the article explores whether, by postponing top-down rationalisms in favour of a ‘methodological naiveté’, designers can gain the capacity to uncover and engage with the unusual participants of the complex dynamic assemblages they aim to change. When designers collaborate with the agencies of the living models they deploy, the outcomes prove useful for the exploration of alternative values and worldviews. Explorations of this kind are significant because human designs need to improve their integrations with existing complex systems and are innovative in their ambition to see creative agency in non-human actors. In a practical demonstration of such approaches, the experiments in generative computation presented in this article illustrate that design creativity occurs through humans but not entirely because of them.