Towards Computer Assisted Crowd Aware Architectural Design

ABSTRACT

We present a preliminary exploration of an architectural optimization process towards a computational tool for designing environments (e.g., building floor plans). Using dynamic crowd simulators we derive the fitness of architectural layouts. The results of the simulation are used to provide feedback to a user in terms of crowd animation, aggregate statistics, and heat maps. Our approach automatically optimizes the placement of environment elements to maximize the flow of the crowd, while satisfying constraints that are imposed by the user (e.g., immovable walls or support bearing structures). We take steps towards user-in-the-loop optimization and design of an environment by applying an adaptive refinement approach to reduce the search space of the optimization. We perform a small scale user study to obtain early feedback on the performance and quality of our method in contrast with a manual approach.

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Index Terms

• Applied computing

  • Arts and humanities

• Computing methodologies

  • Artificial intelligence

    • Computer vision

      • Image and video acquisition

        • 3D imaging

  • Computer graphics

    • Animation

    • Graphics systems and interfaces