A Case Study in Teaching Construction of Building Design Spaces

Abstract

Until recently, design teams were constrained by tools and schedule to only be able to generate a few alternatives, and analyze these from just a few perspectives. The rapid emergence of performance-based design, analysis, and optimization tools gives design teams the ability to construct and analyze far larger design spaces more quickly. This creates new opportunities and challenges in the ways we teach and design. Students and professionals now need to learn to formulate and execute design spaces in efficient and effective ways. This paper describes curriculum that was taught in a course “8803 Multidisciplinary Analysis and Optimization” taught by the authors at Schools of Architecture and Building Construction at Georgia Tech in spring 2013. We approach design as a multidisciplinary design space formulation and search process that seeks maximum value. To explore design spaces, student designers need to execute several iterative processes of problem formulation, generate alternative, analyze them, visualize trade space, and address decision-making. The paper first describes students design space exploration experiences, and concludes with our observations of the current challenges and opportunities.