73 | Futurity
The path toward Simulation-based Architectural design Rhys Goldstein, Principal Research Scientist, Autodesk Research Kean Walmsley, Platform Architect & Evangelist, Autodesk Research Divyae Mittal (Student, M.Sc in Building Technology, Faculty of Architecture, TU Delft)
The role of the designer will go through radical changes in the future. Yet the primary goal will stay the same: to make the built environment good for people. Architects will still want to make buildings and cities visually pleasing and easy to navigate. They will still strive to make individual workplaces productive and free of unnecessary distractions. They will still try to make social areas vibrant but not excessively crowded. Objectives like these will mostly remain the same. How designers pursue these objectives, on the other hand, will change.
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Introduction
the tradeoffs between one design and another, hopefully
In the future, a large selection of computational analyses
preventing the most user-unfriendly designs from being
will be readily available to evaluate designs based on
built. The same technology will allow designers to consider
various measures of human experience. Computers will
a far greater diversity of options than is currently possible,
help designers answer questions such as the following.
which should lead to better environments and improved
How will people experience a built environment? How
wellbeing. New space analysis tools are already starting
will they travel from one place to another? What will they
to change the design process. Yet these tools only scratch
see? What will they hear? How much daylight will they
the surface of what is to come. As the analysis of human
be exposed to at various times of the day? Will they be
experience begins to incorporate the time dimension and
comfortable? Will they be healthy? Will they have privacy
systems modeling approaches, architectural design will
when appropriate? Will they feel socially engaged when
become a largely simulation-based discipline. Here we’ll
appropriate? Computer-generated insights pertaining to
explore this transition by looking at a few projects led by
human experience will increase architects’ awareness of
Delft University and Autodesk Research.
