Digital Urban Simulation : Documentation of the Teaching Results from the Autumn Semester 2015

Conclusions and future perspectives
The architectural design becomes more and more difficult as the design tasks evolve from the building
scale to the urban scale. The situation is made even more difficult by the ever increasing number of
norms, regulations and energetic, environments, political and economic factors that need to be taken
into account. The analogic design of the past generations is a method that became too slow for the
current speed of design and construction. Manpower becomes also gradually more expensive and
scarce. The digital and parametric design tools offer the architects and planners the possibility to
analyse and handle large numbers of design factors with minimal time investment. The rapid generation
of design variants with the help of optimization algorithms allows to quickly recognize the boundaries of
the design freedom and complex relationships between geometry and physical parameters.
The problem of digital analysis remains the scale. These tools are usually very good for small scales,
where data is processed fast and the accuracy of the results can be estimated by an experienced user.
However, once you go on urban scale things get very complicated, data need long time periods for
processing, the computational power required grows and the results are difficult to interpret.
In order to handle the complexities of the digital analysis on urban scale, a good and stable workflow
needs to be implemented in order to optimise resource requirements. Moreover, it is crucial to decide
on few and precisely formulated outputs that can be compared and evaluated by the user. Generating
large amounts of complex data only leads to more trouble than it actually could solve.
In our specific case we see multiple future perspectives for improving our analysis and designing
process. Besides optimising the input geometry and the resolution of analysis, we could think about
improving the optimization criteria and debate about what it really says and how meaningful it is for
design benchmarking. For example, setting as optimization criteria (PV / PV area), we could evaluate
the economic efficiency of the solar cells. By comparing the (radiation / envelope area) we could get an
indication about the thermal performance of the buildings (total gains / total losses).
Finally, the digital and parametric design tools open to the architects and planners numerous new design
possibilities and methods, but they still have the limitation of not being able to measure architectural
quality and “beauty”. In the end, there is still the need for experienced planners that know how to
handle these tools and apply them in a conscious way, avoiding to use them as tools of manipulating
decision makers.
New Methods in Urban Analysis and Simulation | Final project documentation
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