TOWARDS AN INTEGRATED APPLICATION OF GENETIC ALGORITHM IN ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN

'This Thesis is dedicated to Laila, my beloved little daughter and to Laila, my deceased Mom whose generosity and spirituality continues to give me the strength to carry on throughout hard times'.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am deeply thankful to Paul S.Coates for his supportive discussions, insightful direction and ponderable comments throughout more than a year of study in UEL. I would also like to thank Emmanouil Zaroukas whose enthusiastic support and contribution have been essential for the development of this work. 

Dad, Mo', Yasmin and Monty for their undivided love and continuous support during the year.

ABSTRACT

Genetic algorithms have been increasingly utilized, currently with a dual application, within architectural design. Firstly, as a form-generative tool that embraces the concept of Emergence through the use of evolution and morphogenesis as a method of producing innovative forms. Secondly as a potent optimization tool for a well-defined building problem such as structural and thermal performance, due to its ability to solve multi-objective optimization problems. However, the use of ‘local’ Genetic Algorithms in architecture, where one or the other of the above identified uses are applied, has been subjugated to wide criticism. Additionally, concerns have been raised about GA’s capability to evolve forms of greater complexity due to the nature of simple Genotype-to-phenotype mapping embedded in traditional GA. It is my conviction that an integrated genetic algorithm paradigm can be accomplished through firstly, the coordination of GA’s dual operation of optimization and form generative properties, in other words, incorporating optimisation properties of GA into a form generative machine comprising a set of morphological processes. Secondly, by modifying the simple genotype-to-phenotype mapping in a way that borrows from nature to enhance GA’s capacity to evolve forms. 

Such a paradigm would represent a powerful generative - performative design methodology to be adopted in early design phases, permitting the emergence of architectural forms in a bottom-up process whilst addressing the notion of enhancing evolvability, which will in turn convey the aesthetic complexity of nature into architectural design. In addition it will assist architects in finding optimal solutions for performance problems associated with these emergent complex forms that surpass the architects’ ability to solve. In other words, architects will obtain a system that creates designs and takes into consideration their performance feedback, such a system will present the architect with various tested design possibilities that are steered by the exploration of form and performance satisfaction early in the design process. 

A previous work carried out on Genetic Algorithm will be expanded whereby a generative system will be embedded in the GA body plan through a set of conditional rule-based processes that vigorously respond to genetic information received arising through the genome’s decoding process. Here, genes translate into values and conditions for the morphological rules located in the system’s generative mechanism. The process of activating and idling these rules according to the inherited genetic materials will subsequently fluctuate the development of the phenotype, in which various design solutions could emerge. The evolutionary dynamics of mutation will be modified by mutating a specific number of genes selected at random rather than applying a global mutation rate for the genome which eventually will result in enhancing the system’s ‘evolvability’. 

The thesis will attempt to demonstrate that such a paradigm has validity by computing the incremental improvement of prescribed design performances and inspecting the system’s evolutionary sequences and the emerging levels of complexity. The phenotype in this examination is a high-rise building envelope guided by environmental and zoning code criteria.