{"id":23358,"date":"2023-11-19T13:26:34","date_gmt":"2023-11-19T21:26:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/essential.construction\/news\/designing-the-process-to-deliver-zero-carbon-construction-computational-design-in-practice\/"},"modified":"2023-11-19T13:26:36","modified_gmt":"2023-11-19T21:26:36","slug":"designing-the-process-to-deliver-zero-carbon-construction-computational-design-in-practice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/essential.construction\/news\/designing-the-process-to-deliver-zero-carbon-construction-computational-design-in-practice\/","title":{"rendered":"Designing the Process to Deliver Zero-Carbon Construction \u2013 Computational Design in Practice"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Computational Design is generating increasing interest in the construction industry as well as a certain amount of confusion. It is not parametric design; instead it takes parametric design to the next level. It is a set of methods that will define how we design structures over the next decades.<\/p>\n

With Computational Design, you don\u2019t design the building; you design the automated process to find the best building design.<\/p>\n

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To learn more about computational design, please refer to the chapter \u201cAdvanced Applications in Computational Design\u201d by the author with Paul Jeffries, Alex Christodoulou, Rick Titulaer, Paul Shepherd, Sean Lineham, Hannah Lazenby, Stephen Melville, and James Solly, as part of a Springer book\u00a0Industry 4.0 for the Built Environment<\/a>, edited by Marzia Bolpagni, Rui Gavina, and Diogo Rodrigo Ribeiro.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Why use Computational Design?<\/h2>\n

Computational Design is enabling us to create buildings that are far more efficient than we can manage using more traditional methods. Some architects are indeed using it to produce novel building forms, but its great advantage is in helping us towards efficient, zero-carbon construction.<\/p>\n

How do you use Computational Design?<\/h2>\n

In traditional building design, numerous decisions are made early in the process, such as structural type, column spacing, and floor-to-floor heights, either by experience or by tables in scheme design guides. The detailed design then makes the layout work, determining section sizes, reinforcement layouts, and details, though design development across the team can lead to costly changes to the scheme.<\/p>\n

With Parametric Design, the design is driven by algorithms controlled by the designers so that the team can explore values such as column spacing. Parametric Design also allows the use of more complex geometry so that, for example, the architect might define the facade using a spline surface. The engineer then sets up rules to offset this to allow for the cladding thickness, adds rules for maximum purlin spacing, and so on, automatically generating the structural layout.<\/p>\n

Computational Design is Parametric Design but with the assessment of the quality of the design calculated automatically, whether least weight, material usage, embodied carbon, or maximising sunlight. This quality assessment is fed back into the algorithms, automatically adjusting the input values until the quality is maximised.<\/p>\n

This \u201cquality\u201d of design is a set of criteria determined by the design team and can take many forms, as we will see below. This means that the team generates the final design by controlling the definition of the output required and the algorithms used to achieve it, enabling their Computational Design system to search for ideal, or at least, better design solutions than they might have the time or intuition to find using more traditional techniques.<\/p>\n

What results does Computational Design give?<\/h2>\n

You can apply Computational Design at any stage in a project, here are just a few examples.<\/p>\n

Transport for London Mass Land Viability Study<\/h3>\n