Generating urban structures: A method for urban planning supported by multi-agent systems and cellular automata

This work is based on the concept that the structure of a city can be defined by six basic urban patterns. To enable more complex urban planning as a long-term objective I have developed a simulation method for generating these basic patterns and for combining them to form various structures. The generative process starts with the two-dimensional organisation of streets followed by the parceling of the remaining areas. An agent-based diffusion-contact model is the basis of these first two steps. Then, with the help of cellular automata, the sites for building on are defined and a three-dimensional building structure is derived. I illustrate the proposed method by showing how it can be applied to generate possible structures for an urban area in the city of Munich

Generative planning methods from a structuralist perspective

Nähert man sich der Frage nach den Zusammenhängen zwischen Strukturalismus und generativen algorithmischen Planungsmethoden, so ist zunächst zu klären, was man unter Strukturalismus in der Architektur versteht. Allerdings gibt es letztlich keinen verbindlichen terminologischen Rahmen, innerhalb dessen sich eine solche Klärung vollziehen könnte. Strukturalismus in der Architektur wird oftmals auf ein formales Phänomen und damit auf eine Stilfrage reduziert. Der vorliegende Text will sich nicht mit Stilen und Phänomenen strukturalistischer Architektur auseinandersetzen, sondern konzentriert sich auf die Betrachtung strukturalistischer Entwurfsmethoden und stellt Bezüge her zu algorithmischen Verfahren, wobei das Zusammenspiel zwischen regelgeleitetem und intuitivem Vorgehen beim Entwerfen herausgearbeitet wird.When considering the question of a relationship between structuralism and generative algorithmic planning methods, we first need to clarify what we mean by structuralism in architecture. There is, unfortunately, no clearly defined terminological framework to aid clarification. Structuralism in architecture is often regarded as formal phenomena and accordingly reduced to stylistic aspects. The following essay is not about the styles and manifestation of structuralism in architecture but instead concentrates on examining structuralist design methods and their relationship and relevance for algorithmic techniques, with particular emphasis on the interaction between rule-based and intuitive approaches in the design process

Acoustic Properties of Amorphous Solids at Very Low Temperatures: The Quest for Interacting Tunneling States

We discuss the strain dependence of the acoustic properties of amorphous metals in both normal and superconducting states, in the temperature range 0.1 mK $\le T \le 1$K. A crossover is found when the strain energy is of the order of the effective interaction energy between tunneling systems at the corresponding temperature. Our results provide clear evidence for the interaction between tunneling systems, whose energy is in quantitative agreement with theoretical expectations, and reveal that without the knowledge of the corresponding strain dependences, the measured temperature dependences below $\sim 50$mK of the acoustic properties of disordered solids are rather meaningless.Comment: 13 pages, 3 figure

Die Stadt der Agenten und Automaten

PLANUNGSUNTERSTÜTZUNG DURCH DIE ANALYSE RÄUMLICHER PROZESSE MITTELS COMPUTERSIMULATIONEN. Erst wenn man – zumindest im Prinzip – versteht, wie eine Stadt mit ihren komplexen, verwobenen Vorgängen im Wesentlichen funktioniert, ist eine sinnvolle Stadtplanung möglich. Denn jede Planung bedeutet einen Eingriff in den komplexen Organismus einer Stadt. Findet dieser Eingriff ohne Wissen über die Funktionsweise des Organismus statt, können auch die Auswirkungen nicht abgeschätzt werden. Dieser Beitrag stellt dar, wie urbane Prozesse mittels Computersimulationen unter Zuhilfenahme so genannter Multi-Agenten-Systeme und Zellulärer Automaten verstanden werden können. vo

Der Computer in der Entwurfsphase - Zehn Thesen zu seiner Nutzlosigkeit

At the end of the 1960s, architects at various universities world- wide began to explore the potential of computer technology for their profession. With the decline in prices for PCs in the 1990s and the development of various computer-aided architectural design systems (CAAD), the use of such systems in architectural and planning offices grew continuously. Because today no ar- chitectural office manages without a costly CAAD system and because intensive soſtware training has become an integral part of a university education, the question arises about what influence the various computer systems have had on the design process forming the core of architectural practice. The text at hand devel- ops ten theses about why there has been no success to this day in introducing computers such that new qualitative possibilities for design result. RESTRICTEDNES

CPlan: An Open Source Library for Computational Analysis and Synthesis

Some caad packages offer additional support for the optimization of spatial configurations, but the possibilities for applying optimization are usually limited either by the complexity of the data model or by the constraints of the underlying caad system. Since we missed a system that allows to experiment with optimization techniques for the synthesis of spatial configurations, we developed a collection of methods over the past years. This collection is now combined in the presented open source library for computational planning synthesis, called CPlan. The aim of the library is to provide an easy to use programming framework with a flat learning curve for people with basic programming knowledge. It offers an extensible structure that allows to add new customized parts for various purposes. In this paper the existing functionality of the CPlan library is described

Excitation energy of superdeformed bands in Relativistic Mean Field Theory

Constrained Relativistic Mean Field (RMF) calculations have been carried out to estimate excitation energies relative to the ground state for superdeformed bands in the mass regions A $\sim$ 190 and A $\sim$ 150. It is shown that RMF theory is able to successfully reproduce the recently measured superdeformed minima in Hg and Pb nuclei.Comment: 7 pages, LaTex, 3 p.s figures, Phys. Lett B. (to appear

Spatial Optimizations: Merging depthmapX , spatial graph networks and evolutionary design in Grasshopper

In the Space Syntax community, the standard tool for computing all kinds of spatial graph network measures is depthmapX (Turner, 2004; Varoudis, 2012). The process of evaluating many design variants of networks is relatively complicated, since they need to be drawn in a separated CAD system, exported and imported in depthmapX via dxf file format. This procedure disables a continuous integration into a design process. Furthermore, the standalone character of depthmapX makes it impossible to use its network centrality calculation for optimization processes. To overcome this limitations, we present in this paper the first steps of experimenting with a Grasshopper component (reference omitted until final version) that can access the functions of depthmapX and integrate them into Grasshopper/Rhino3D. Here the component is implemented in a way that it can be used directly for an evolutionary algorithm (EA) implemented in a Python scripting component in Grasshoppe

CPlan: An Open Source Library for Computational Analysis and Synthesis

Some caad packages offer additional support for the optimization of spatial configurations, but the possibilities for applying optimization are usually limited either by the complexity of the data model or by the constraints of the underlying caad system. Since we missed a system that allows to experiment with optimization techniques for the synthesis of spatial configurations, we developed a collection of methods over the past years. This collection is now combined in the presented open source library for computational planning synthesis, called CPlan. The aim of the library is to provide an easy to use programming framework with a flat learning curve for people with basic programming knowledge. It offers an extensible structure that allows to add new customized parts for various purposes. In this paper the existing functionality of the CPlan library is described

Computational Urban Planning: Using the Value Lab as Control Center

Urban planning involves many aspects and various disciplines, demanding an asynchronous planning approach. The level of complexity rises with each aspect to be considered and makes it difficult to find universally satisfactory solutions. To improve this situation we propose a new approach, which complement traditional design methods with a computational urban plan- ning method that can fulfil formalizable design requirements automatically. Based on this approach we present a design space exploration framework for complex urban planning projects. For a better understanding of the idea of design space exploration, we introduce the concept of a digital scout which guides planners through the design space and assists them in their creative explorations. The scout can support planners during manual design by informing them about potential im- pacts or by suggesting different solutions that fulfill predefined quality requirements. The planner can change flexibly between a manually controlled and a completely automated design process. The developed system is presented using an exemplary urban planning scenario on two levels from the street layout to the placement of building volumes. Based on Self-Organizing Maps we implemented a method which makes it possible to visualize the multi-dimensional solution space in an easily analysable and comprehensible form