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Interactive Urban Synthesis

Computational Methods for Fast Prototyping of Urban Design Proposals

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Computer-Aided Architectural Design. Future Trajectories (CAADFutures 2017)

Part of the book series: Communications in Computer and Information Science ((CCIS,volume 724))

Abstract

In this paper, we present a method for generating fast conceptual urban design prototypes. We synthesize spatial configurations for street networks, parcels and building volumes. Therefore, we address the problem of implementing custom data structures for these configurations and how the generation process can be controlled and parameterized. We exemplify our method by the development of new components for Grasshopper/Rhino3D and their application in the scope of selected case studies. By means of these components, we show use case applications of the synthesis algorithms. In the conclusion, we reflect on the advantages of being able to generate fast urban design prototypes, but we also discuss the disadvantages of the concept and the usage of Grasshopper as a user interface.

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Acknowledgement

The research presented in this paper was partially conducted at the Future Cities Laboratory at the Singapore-ETH Centre, which was established collaboratively between ETH Zurich and Singapore’s National Research Foundation (FI 370074016) under its Campus for Research Excellence and Technological Enterprise program. Some methods presented in the paper were developed as part of the research project ESUM: Analyzing trade-offs between the energy and social performance of urban morphologies funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF, project number 100013L_149552).

There is a demo video for the generative process illustrated in Fig. 16 at https://vimeo.com/191807352 and https://vimeo.com/212540621. The process for generating the urban fabrics shown in Figs. 11, 12, 13 and 14 is shown in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELUKfsx89og&feature=youtu.be

The Rhino3D/Grasshopper components can be downloaded from the website of the Computational Planning Group: http://cplan-group.net/

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Energy, Austrian Institute of Technology, Graz, Austria

    Reinhard Koenig

  2. Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism, Bauhaus-University Weimar, Weimar, Germany

    Reinhard Koenig

  3. Department of Architecture ETH Zürich, Zurich, Switzerland

    Reinhard Koenig, Peter Buš & Chang Mei-Chih

  4. Future Cities Laboratory, Singapore-ETH Centre, Singapore, Singapore

    Yufan Miao & Katja Knecht

  5. Queen Mary University of London, London, UK

    Katja Knecht

Authors
  1. Reinhard Koenig
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  2. Yufan Miao
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  3. Katja Knecht
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  4. Peter Buš
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  5. Chang Mei-Chih
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Reinhard Koenig .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Istanbul Technical University, Istanbul, Turkey

    Gülen Çağdaş

  2. Istanbul Technical University, Istanbul, Turkey

    Mine Özkar

  3. Istanbul Technical University , Istanbul, Turkey

    Leman Figen Gül

  4. Istanbul Technical University , Istanbul, Turkey

    Ethem Gürer

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© 2017 Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

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Koenig, R., Miao, Y., Knecht, K., Buš, P., Mei-Chih, C. (2017). Interactive Urban Synthesis. In: Çağdaş, G., Özkar, M., Gül, L., Gürer, E. (eds) Computer-Aided Architectural Design. Future Trajectories. CAADFutures 2017. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 724. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-5197-5_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-5197-5_2

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore

  • Print ISBN: 978-981-10-5196-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-981-10-5197-5

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