Effects of 3D zoning of spatial designs on the performance of structure systems

A particular application for informed building design concerns the intelligent synthesis of a structure system for a conceptual spatial design. As part of this synthesis, the positioning of structural elements is normally related to the surfaces of the spaces that form the spatial design. It is shown that if surfaces of zones are taken instead, with a zone being a group of complete or possibly incomplete spaces, structural performance of the space-based systems may be Pareto dominated by the zone-based systems. This indicates that zones are a useful concept to improve structural performance. Also, the variety of zoned designs for a single spatial design delivers, together with a single structural grammar, many variants for a structure system