••• spatial analyses for urban environments

The aim of the project is to question the role of computer-aided design methods in urban development, to ask in which parts of the design process the use of the computer can be appropriate. While commonly the focus of most computer aided design sotware is on drawing layouts, that are defined by various analog methods, it does not give the designer any information about the quality of the design itself.



The developed tool assists the designer in an early step of the design process, where basic principles of the layout are defined. While the conditions of the design regarding light, spatial, geometrical and urbanistic context are displayed, it can be addapted in real-time.



Therefore three kinds of analysis methods are implemented in the tool so far:





Illumination solver (left: Sun gradient - green=morning, red=evening, right: Static sun)





Accessibility solver (left: by angle, right: by distance)





Spatial analysis solver

references/links:

Aedas, space syntax, kaisersrot

••• depth of field

Depth of field blur effect in Processing with OpenGL.



There are two different types of materials: spriteMaterial for sprites, such as points, labels, ... and lineMaterial. You define these materials in void setup() (in this case 11 different types of points and one line type). You can actually convert any texture (image + alpha map) into a sprite material, in this example, there is only points and text.




you can download the source code here

••• swarm simulation

Nature provides a various number of systems, that seem to be of immense complexicity and to act completely unpredictable. On the same time, these systems consist of elements, that follow comprehensible rules regarding to each other and to their environment.



The simulation of those system enables to explore their behaviour and potential regarding self organization and self optimization in design and architecture.



The boids (class boid - black points) move by these five rules:

• do not get to close to any of your neighbors


• try to swim in the same direction as the neighbors


• don't leave the sphere


• if you get lost: try to catch up with someone, who's around


• run away from the shark

The sharks (class shark - red points) move by two rules:

• swim in the direction, where the most boids are


• don't leave the sphere