An Evolutionary Model for Style Representation Emergence in Design

This thesis is concerned with the development of an evolutionary process model for style representation emergence in design. It explores issues involved in the interpretation of style, the concept and process of style representation emergence, an evolutionary approach based on genetic engineering, and its computational implementation. Style is a complex phenomenon in design. Interpreting and formulating design style is a difficult task. This thesis proposes a language model which interprets style space utilising hierarchical levels that map onto syntax and semantics. The style space is then formulated using a genetic description. Current studies have discussed shape semantics emergence in design, but none has been proposed for the emergence of style representation. This thesis provides the concept of style representation emergence with the emphasis on the interpretative aspect of style as well as the emergence process. It explores the emergence process of style representation through an evolutionary approach. Simulation of biological evolution appears to be very useful for design problems. This thesis develops style representation emergence through evolutionary simulation based on genetic engineering. A hierarchical evolutionary process encompassing competition as well as discovery and an evolutionary combination is proposed and developed. A computational representation of style can then be derived by the computer system through the use of this evolutionary process. This model of style representation emergence is applied to traditional Chinese architecture. An evolutionary system is implemented and presented with some examples of traditional Chinese architectural facades. The results from the implementation of the system are analysed and the utility of this model is investigated. The implementation is developed in a Unix environment using the C language. The AutoCAD package is used for the graphic representation.