Design as ­Exploration

There are an increasing number of optimal-design paradigms used in architectural design nowadays. In these paradigms, a design task is formulated, or partially formulated, as an optimization problem. Multi-Disciplinary Optimization and Multi-Objective Optimization, as two important optimal-design paradigms, have shown their great potential in improving the performances of complex buildings in recent decades. Nevertheless, current paradigms for ill‑defined conceptual architectural design still lack ways to ensure the achievement of a reliable optimization problem, which hinders reliable design solutions despite the use of advanced optimization algorithms.

To address this problem, it is necessary to shift the focus from Optimization Problem Solving to Optimization Problem Formulation. This research particularly focuses on knowledge‑supported, dynamic and interactive Optimization Problem Re-Formulation in order to construct a new Multi‑Objective and Multi-Disciplinary Optimization (MOMDO) method suitable for use in ill‑defined conceptual architectural design. The proposed method consists of two subtype methods: Non‑dynamic, Interactive Re-formulation method (Subtype-I) and Dynamic, Interactive Re‑formulation method (Subtype-II), which can be used to explore design space in a convergent and divergent manner respectively. To support the re-formulation, various kinds of information and knowledge need to be extracted by utilizing different computational techniques, such as advanced sampling algorithms, Self-Organizing Map, Hierarchical Clustering, Smoothing Spline Analysis of Variance, Two-Level Variable Structure and modular programming. Moreover, a software workflow that can provide these computational techniques is developed; it integrates McNeel’s Grasshopper, ESTECO's modeFRONTIER and simulation software tools Daysim, EnergyPlus and Karamba3D. With the support of this software workflow, the proposed method is demonstrated via two case studies concerning the conceptual design of indoor sports halls.