The Identifiable Spacial Designs Bred by the Architect and Apollo

SUN Chengyu, MArch.

Architecture Department, Tongji University, Shanghai, PR China.

email: apolloc@online.sh.cn

Abstract

The favor from Apollo to every human beings living in a crowded urban region is the warm and pleasant sunlight, which gives us all the beautiful things. As architects, we always want to provide people better living environment, while the developers always want more space to construct casting shadows on the others. In this paper, the author introduced a new design framework inspired from Professor Celestino Soddu's GA, in which the designs are the results of an interactive process between architects and a computer program with the code of the sun. We collected the environment’s information, then the program will give us a response, which are a set of 3D guiding models in special forms to stimulate our further creativity. The further the architect involved in this interactive process, the more sparkle of creativity will be stimulated. Then the balance between the citizens' rights and developers' profits are conducted synchronously behind the framework or the design process. And the final designs will present a strong complex identity of the sun's code and the personal taste of the designer.

1. The sunlight, a key issue to the preliminary spacial design in the crowded urban region

The image of the sunlight to human beings is always so pleasant, especially to the citizens living in a crowed urban region, that their living quality will be directly effected by when and how the sunlight throws into they rooms through their small windows [1]. If enough sunlight is staying on their veranda, the beautiful flowers could be a sparkle in their dull lives surrounded by the concrete forest. If enough sunlight is staying on their children's bed and playing yard, the health and smiling will always belong to them. There are too many benefits we could derive from the lovely sunlight that we thank to the god Apollo for his kindness to grant us it.

But in the cool reality, we found out that there is a contradiction upon the distribution of the sunlight between the citizens and the developers. And we architects, as the designers of the urban space, are responsible for it at the very beginning of the design stage.

1.1 The rights of the citizens including a good access to the sunlight through surrounding space

Architects always have clients who pay them for what they want. Can we earn all the benefits for them? The answer is NO, at least to me! Every architect should have his own view and responsibility upon the society he is living in. It is true that we should help the clients to realize their dreams. But I would like use the term "Transform". I prefer an architect to transform the demands of the client into a new part of the existing environment including social and physical ones. So besides listening to the clients, we have to concerning the existing environment carefully.

In the sunlight issue, I will take an insight into the existing situations of the windows that relates to the everyday lives of the neighbors of my design. With my design I would like to bother their current lives in a minimal extent, although there is some floor area and other aspects I have to realize for the client. I have a view that if the new building is brutal, which brings the unhappiness to the neighbors, the fate of the owner and his building could not be fortunate.

Concerning the fact that the neighborhood is always innocent and powerless without organization, their basic rights to access to the sunlight have to be carefully considered by the only possible agent, who is the architect designing and transforming their lives.

1.2 The profits of the developers coming from the construction upon any existing space

In the other side, designers will find out that they are being push again and again towards the extreme of the use of space by the clients. Besides other demands from the clients, there is one main demand coming from the equation "space = profits". All the developers will try to get as much usable floor area as possible, which in the crowded urban region is limited greatly by the sunlight issue on the neighborhood. If in a city without a strong management from the government such as in Shanghai, the developers will get the extra rights to increase their construction volume through illegal means. Then there will be the only result that the neighbors will have to live in a shadow area in the future.

Anyway in Shanghai, we are strengthening our management to prevent such result coming upon the lives of our citizens nowadays. But the force is still there, which will drive any possible case to happen. As a natural strategy the designs in Shanghai is always higher in the north and lower in the south, in which the clients always expect to provide a good sunlight condition to their own potential customs, while casting big shadow outside of their site to the north neighborhood. In fact, such individual and selfish strategy does not work at all. With such an irresponsible solution, any developer will have the chance to leave his best sunlight buildings in the south to face the big shadow from another developer to the south of his site.

1.3 The real sunlight balance reconfigured by the spacial designer at the very beginning

As the stupid solution mentioned above, the government is about to understand that a self-regular spacial design at the very beginning will contribute to the efficient configure of valuable space resources in the crowded urban region, as well as the developers and the designers. Then such difficulty is passed to the architect, "How to have a good layout, by which the sunlight condition is good to both the site and the neighborhood?"

The difficulty here is how to measure the sunlight condition reasonably and according to it to distribute such a mysterious power. Every body knows that the sun is moving all the time, and it has different positions according to the different date and time, as well as where the site is located on the earth. Thanks to the scientists, we know how to calculate the position of the sun through a serious of complex functions. But it is impossible for only a human being, the architect, to consider it for thousands of windows of the neighborhood! It can be done only by the god, Apollo maybe!

Although the difficulty is there, we are trying to solve it. Because it is really very important to provide a good spacial design in the preliminary stage to be the both agents of neighborhood and clients to transform the existing into the new and the better, for which the architects are responsible.

2. A preliminary spacial design with a strong identity bred by the designer and the nature

It is Professor Celestino Soddu who introduced the GA into our sight field. It is a methodology of design, in which designer will give a meta-design by code deriving from observation or other means instead of giving an individual solution for every design task [2-3]. From such an advanced view about design, I felt the difficulty mentioned above might be solved by the code derived from the nature mechanism of the sun. Actually I tried to write codes in the computer to simulate the features of the sun in nature [4-5]. With the possibility of the interaction between the designer and the super processing machine, I find that we have never been so close to the nature or the god. Such coalition has brought the quality of the design and the capability of the designer onto a brand new level.

2.1 The strategy of the 3D guiding models supporting the designers on the sunlight issue

As an experiment, we investigated in a design framework concerning the sunlight issue, in which the computer will simulate the sun in nature to sculpt out a serious of 3d models, inside which designers could layout building blocks to gain a certain sunlight condition level for the neighborhood, then the computer could re-sculpt out another serious of 3d models to guide the designers further according to a predefined sunlight condition for the neighborhood. With such a strategy basing on the interaction between the architect and the computer-simulated natural sunlight environment, the difficult preliminary spacial design on the sunlight issue is processed behind the design framework. Although the designer will not notice such a difficult aspect of design is being conducted through such a design framework, the results of it is so identifiable because of the special framework, code and the working process embed in them.

2.2 The technologies in the realization

The whole program framework is relatively loose programmed with Visual Basic. We use the AutoCAD as the Graphics Interface. Because almost all of the designers in Shanghai work and exchange data on this Graphics Platform. The interactive interface is control by a VBA program [6], which is also responsible for the data exchanging with the core calculation program coded in VB.NET. In such a framework we could have different GI in the future only if the interface program could offer right data to the core program. And with the great capability of the VB.NET, we could develop up network or web-based computation, even more specialized GI through DirectX or OpenGL [7].

The most difficult part of such a system is the generation of a 3D model by different sun configuration of thousands of windows. Here we coded the environment into a DNA, in which the relative sun position determined by the time is coded into a gene on the DNA. With all the genes on the DNA defined, an individual model could be generated by a serious complex geometry functions.

In order to generate a set of models for further designer's operations, we should specify a relatively spacious volume or the maximum to leave enough space to the designers to full fill the other design aspects. To realize it, we used the genetic algorithms [8-9]. The species defined by the DNA above could take part in the evolution. Given an approximate target volume, generation after generation, the individuals will approach to it. Then a set of individual around the same target volume could be generated into a set of 3D models.

Figure 1. The Interface of the AutoCAD Plugin

Figure 2. The interface of the core computation program

2.3 The interactive process breeding up the identity

In the new design framework mentioned above, the interaction between the designer and the computer is a mechanism indeed for the unique identity of the generated spacial design solutions. The emphasis is now put onto how the designers make use of the generated 3D models in every step, and how the natural phenomenon of the sun is coded into the computer rather than how a designer conceive one creative alternative for a special site with all the mechanism mysteriously in his or her head. So the identity presented by the results contains two parts of features. One feature comes from the identity of the designer himself, to a certain extent, which should have some similarity as the identity in his non-computer-involved designs. The other feature comes from the code in the computer, which will show some identity of the programmer. Because of the coalition of the two parts, the identity presented through the final designs is interesting. On one hand, with different designers interacting with the program, the results will have different identities according to different person's own identity, which will distinguished from one another. On the other hand, all the designs by this system will have a common identity, which makes them differ from other designs not generated by this system, or let's say the designs without the special code on sun issue embed.

In one word, such design approach as GA offers a complex identity composed of the common from the code predefined and the personal from the involvement of the special designers!

Figure 3. The similarity of the both alternatives comes from the same code derived from the sun, while the difference comes from the different designers leaning to the different side of the balance (The left seeks more sunlight to the neighborhood. The right seeks more construction volume for the developer.)

3. Looking forward

There are many further researches on the way, such as how to speed up the response of the computer through network computation, how to ease the GI for the designers to test their ideas freely, how to take in account of the other design aspects to utilize the framework in real projects.

3.1 The fate of the 3D guiding models

As the circumstances in the real projects is concerned, the attitude of the designers will lead the framework to produce totally different results standing for benefits of the citizens or the developers. If designers lean the balance to the developers, such framework will be a terrible tool to help them to decrease the sunlight conditions of the neighborhood to the lowest limitation as fixed in the Government Construction Codes, while increasing the possible construction volume for the developers. That is the two sides of the coin, in which architects have to make money to support their lives from the developers on one hand, on the other hand they has to keep the public spacial game rules to protect the rights of the neighborhood on a certain extent.

At the same time, the government could also make use of this framework in another way. They could use it to search a proper construction volume for a special site as a control index to the developers. Then the spacial sequences of the urban, especially the crowded urban region could be in a good management.

Figure 4. With the help of the design framework, we could get the extreme alternative of the maximum construction volume easily. (Every window of the multi-story housing behind this high rising just reach the lowest standard of the sunlight code in Shanghai, more than one hour on Dec 22th annually.)

3.2 The ongoing real project

Fortunately, we are collaborate with a design firm on a high rise housing project, which is located to the north of our campus at around 10 minutes' walk. The neighborhood is a typical residential region. There are hundreds of families to concerning on the sunlight issue. It is also interesting that Professor Qian, our Dean, one of the best friends of the designer, is living just behind the site. So the sunlight issue is a very sensitive aspect in this project. As known as doing researches on this issue, I am invited to work with the designer. These days we are finishing collecting the environmental data about the windows' positions and the buildings' heights. And a 3D model is being constructed. The intensive interaction will be scheduled during this July.

I believe that the real application will improve the framework and new problems will be found out and solved as I wish.

References

[1]JIN Daqing, 1996, The Sunlight & Architectures, Beijing, Architectural Publisher of China.

[2]Celestino Soddu, 2002, Proceedings of 5th international conference GA, AleaDesign Publisher.

[3]Celestino Soddu, 2003, Proceedings of 6th international conference GA, AleaDesign Publisher.

[4]CENG Huanxia, 1997, The Applications of the Solar Energy, Beijing, Tsing Hua Publisher.

[5]FANG Rongsheng, 1985, The Technologies of the Solar Energy, Beijing, Agriculture Publisher of China.

[6]M. Cottingham, 2001, Mastering AutoCAD VBA, Publishing House of Electronics Industry.

[7]Bill Evjen, 2002, Visual Basic.NET Bible, Publishing House of Electronics Industry.

[8]LI Mingqiang, 2002, The Theories and Applications of the Genetic Algorithms, Ci Xue Publisher.

[9]WANG Xiaoping, 2002, The Realization of the Genetic Algorithms, Xian Jiao Da Publisher.