If one investigates the information-flow of traditional architect - engineer collaboration over the last century one will most likely encounter a process where engineers are asked to join a design project at a certain stage to help realize the architect’s ideas. The shortfall of such a work-method is the relative disconnectedness between performance feedback and design morphology. Those architects and engineers who aim for more integrated design-practice are in search for ways that allow them to design more concurrently and to exchange information bi-directionally. Such a process requires a high level of skill, trust and confidence in those involved. It forces architects to let go of their role as sole-authors to admit outside involvement from consultants. It requires engineers to become more proactively engaged in the design process and it prompts them to consider the bigger picture of how their input affects the overall design, both technically and aesthetically.
The engineering firm Arup has been
fortunate to be involved in a series of exciting projects where the design team
has searched for a more integrated approach. Some recent examples of this
collaborative effort include the Watercube
project in Beijing, the Marina Bay
Pedestrian Bridge
in Singapore and the Melbourne Rectangular Stadium in Australia.
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| Figures 1 -3: Watercube, Marina Bay & Melbourne Rectangular Stadium project examples |
Computationally assisted building
analysis and simulation has revolutionized the work-methods of engineers and it
is impacting drastically on their capability to respond to design alterations
with according performance feedback. Depending on the type of analysis
required, some performance feedback can even be provided in real-time, thereby
closing the loop between morphological experimentation and
engineering-performance checks. New tools offer new possibilities for
collaboration, but they also force architects and engineers to reconsider the
planning and design methods they apply individually and in teams. Those design
partners who wish to collaborate closely need to put stronger emphasis on
defining the over-arching design drivers and the performance-parameters
associated to them at the outset of a project. More than that, a new method of
engagement is required to evaluate and trade-off multiple design options in a
short matter of time. Optioneering is such a method.
Experience gathered by Steve Downing
and me during our collaboration at Arup has shown that optioneering is
primarily a method for collaboration which does not necessarily depend on any
specific software. Optioneering logic implies a form of understanding between
collaborating parties who discuss the criteria space for a design of a specific
problem at the outset of their collaboration. In doing so, optioneering provides the design
team with a common ground to discuss the design and understand the effect of
changes on each other’s discipline. Architects and engineers can then address
and trade-off the criteria through a controlled set of alterations that yield
informed choices for decision-making.
Optioneering processes are
intrinsically tied to human decision making. Although the search for possible
solutions through optioneering benefits from automated processes for design
evaluation, the ultimate goal is to provide the design team with an array of
possible design options for collaborative prioritisation, selection, and
decision-making.
Figures 4 & 5: Diagrammatical representation of an Optioneering workflow, Potential optioneering Network
In order to
support optioneering, two techniques have proven to be particularly useful in
our research: Parametric Modeling and
Multi-criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA).
Parametric modelling tools help
designers to produce a quick turnaround of design options by allowing users to
generate multiple design alternatives (Geometry Cases) to keep a design in a
flexible, yet controlled state. MCDA tools for engineering design optimisation
solve complex trade-studies using optimization algorithms and Design of
Experiments (DoE). These tools are rather generic as they support many kinds of
MCDA and they do not necessarily focus on the building industry.
Dominik Holzer (AEC Connect) and
Steve Downing (Arup) published an extensive account about the Optioneering
process at Architectural Design,
Volume 80, Issue 4, pp. 60 - 63.AR, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ad.1107/abstract
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