EvoMass + GH_Wind An agile wind-driven building massing design optimization framework

Abstract

The complex interactive relationship between wind flow and building design poses a great challenge in architectural design. Recent research has been conducted to combine Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and computational design optimization to solve the problem. However, due to the time-consuming simulation process and the assertion-oriented computational optimization application, such CFD-based design optimization frameworks are not easy to integrate with architects' early-stage design exploration. To address these issues, this paper proposes an agile wind-driven building massing design optimization framework incorporating EvoMass and GH_Wind in the Rhino-Grasshopper environment. EvoMass is an integrated evolutionary building massing design tool, and GH_Wind is a simulation tool embedded with a Fast Fluid Dynamics (FFD) solver. Combining these two tools allows for fast wind-driven design optimization, thereby enabling architects to apply it to early-stage design exploration. To demonstrate its efficacy, a case study is presented to illustrate how the proposed design optimization framework can provide architects with useful design information and, thereby, facilitate more performance-informed design for early-stage architectural design.