Representing Floorplans for Interactive Evolutionary Design

Computer tools that provide support in the early explorative phase of architectural design are rare. In order to explore the solution space of a design problem, architects in general rely on the use of paper and pencil. We are developing a system which will assist the designer in the exploration of a particular design problem, focusing initially on 2D floorplans. The format chosen for this system is one in which the computer, in interaction with the designer, “evolvesi designs. A major obstacle associated with the use of an evolutionary approach is the adequate representation of a floorplan in a genome. We propose a tree-structure in which the nodes represent organising-principles that dictate how the leaves attached to it are organised. Figure 1 shows an example of a tree with four levels, the terminal nodes represent the elements to be placed. The first level no only represents an organising-principle, but also a contour, this contour is either fixed (e.g. dictated by the environment) or free to evolve. On either side of the tree-structure two interpretations of this tree are shown