Modular volumetric construction is an efficient process for buildings when spatial arrangements are repeated from one floor plate to another. Transportable dimensionally coordinated boxes or prisms can be factory produced, delivered on site and piled into shape. The difficulty in applying this industrialized process in more generalized terms evokes the enduring question: what kind of architecture is produced from stacking premade boxes ? Impressions of mundane, repetitive, cookie cutter designs have precluded architects’ adoption of modular construction except for one-off prototypes that have not proven viable or even credible in terms of manufacturing.
Managing architectural singularity in modular construction is at odds with its required reproducibility. Currently, new modelling and digital technologies are offering new potentials for redefining modular’s variability. Specifically with Artificial intelligence integrating streamlined design and building, project variations are studied within the framework of generating data informed iterations from dimensional and production parameters. The Gensler Research Institute has devised a generative design tool adapted to modular building. Applied, for now, to hotel design and architecture, which has the definitive advantage of using predefined plans for rooms and even common areas, the generative software uses a simplified box as a kernel to generate multiple plans from the same encoded database. Criteria includes building typology, height requirements, floor to site area restrictions, unit dimensions or corridor widths. All of which are deployed to define floor plans according to optimized relations. Reminiscent of Steven Holl’s publication Alphabet city in the 1980s, the generative tool uses letters T, H, I, L, C, O as basic aggregation layouts that are then adjusted to site shapes, zoning bylaws, orientation, and other contextual elements. By tuning elements with data informed sliders, it is possible to adjust their hierarchal relationships and evaluate multiple possibilities in real time.
Plans integrate elements like exit distances and shafts for elevators creating an optimized diagram for a repeating pattern. While efficient, this type of artificial intelligence applied to building design will probably not end the difficulty in getting architects’ adoption of modular methods but perhaps only make another forceful argument against it.
 |
| Generative design tool from Gensler Institute https://www.gensler.com/gri/generative-design-tool-for-modular-buildings |
No comments:
Post a Comment