
Evolving Floorplans - prakashk
http://www.joelsimon.net/evo_floorplans.html
======
jmilloy
These kinds of tools are mostly about the input constraints, heuristics, and
weights. I'd love to see more about this with more practical constraints
(rectilinear rooms and hallways, minimum area for cafetaria/gym, etc) and
additional heuristics, such as window area in classrooms, number of
hallways/intersections for ease-of-navigation, and building costs beyond just
material use.

~~~
riebschlager
> building costs beyond just material use

Yep. The "optimized" floorplans would be an order of magnitude more expensive
to build than the original. I mean, drywall alone would take a lot more time
with all the cuts, mudding and sanding more joints. The thought of framing out
these walls makes my head hurt.

~~~
TeMPOraL
What about concrete 3D-printing?

(I'm not even sure if it's real or feasible; I just remember a bunch of pop
news articles with a video of a large CNC machine depositing concrete to
construct a building.)

~~~
jethro_tell
Concrete is manual 3D printing from 100+ years ago. =)

I've seen a concrete 3d printer, but it doesn't look like it would be
structural. i.e. not sure how you would print around full lengths of rebar?

~~~
theoh
You have to build formwork to construct with in-situ concrete, so there's
still carpentry (or equivalent) involved.

It's a good point that existing architectural concrete 3d printing creates
"mass concrete" not reinforced concrete, but mass concrete can be structural.

~~~
jethro_tell
What sort of structure would you use a concrete without a tensile support like
rebar or steel of some kind? How would that stand up in an earthquake?

~~~
burfog
Rebar makes earthquakes worse, as seen in California's freeway collapse. The
rebar depends on the concrete to prevent corrosion, but that is only good for
roughly 50 years. Rust causes expansion, which cases cracking. The outer
concrete falls away, leaving rebar to get crushed under the load. The obvious
fixes, like stainless steel rebar, have thermal expansion coefficients that
don't match concrete, so instead you get cracking even without corrosion.

Lots of Roman stuff is still standing in areas that get earthquakes. The
solution is to use a conservative design, with arches and thick walls. Domes
are good. We can improve on this with 3D printing, using a structure like
mammalian bone: solid near the surface, and spongy in the middle.

~~~
wjnqx
Would you be able to provide links to modern structures built with the methods
you're describing or research about them? Does this conservative design
resemble something like Gaudi's Sagrada Familia, or is that the wrong way to
think about it?

~~~
theoh
Here's one modern example: [https://pagethink.com/v/project-detail/Wiss-
Janney-Elstner-A...](https://pagethink.com/v/project-detail/Wiss-Janney-
Elstner-Associates-Office-Building/54/)

It really means massiveness and stability, in order to have an acceptable
margin of safety.

One aspect of the theory is the notion of a line of thrust:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_of_thrust](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_of_thrust)

Arch dams might be the only type of "contemporary" looking structure that is
habitually made in this way out of unreinforced concrete.

Although Gaudi was interested in structural optimization (using catenary
models), he is an outlier in terms of design. He didn't comprehensively
consider seismic aspects, though apparently he didn't do too badly:
[https://blog.sagradafamilia.org/en/divulgation/seismic-
activ...](https://blog.sagradafamilia.org/en/divulgation/seismic-activity-
sagrada-familia/)

~~~
tomcam
These links were eye-openers. Thanks

------
hammock
These types of exercises are useful not to find their solutions, but to reveal
the shortcomings of the model used to create them - and our thus our own
mental models!

Building design is older than humankind, and there's tens of millenia worth of
reasons why they are the way they are. But those reasons aren't always clear.
Essentially modern floor plan design is the output of a black-box machine
(human) learning algorithm.

The flawed output here, and the comments, help us point out what some of the
missing variables are: egress, airflow, construction cost, etc. Do enough of
this and you can get a vastly improved model.

~~~
googlemike
How can building design be older than humankind?

~~~
dsr_
Many of the social insects -- ants and termites and bees, especially -- build
"buildings" which have heterogenous rooms specialized for different purposes.

Genetic algorithms, indeed.

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tw1010
Sure, it looks cool. But there are so many other properties of a home that
aren't accounted for in this model (mostly aesthetic ones, like cozyness,
feelings of safety/comfort, how the plan interacts with light, etc). One day
we'll live in homes with automated floorplans, I'm sure of it. But it won't
happen (or at least, we won't be happy about living in such things) until the
day we figure out ways to deal with more dimensions than efficiency (who
knows, maybe crowdsourcing ratings of CGI rendered apartments will be the
answer, somehow it'll be solved).

~~~
ireland352
I was at a vehicle AI conference early this month discussing how AI will only
output based on the quality of its inputs. And the fear coming out of that
conference was if space wasn't correctly dedicated or allocated, the AI will
optimize the systems as much as it can to squeeze out every single ounce of
efficiency.

Qualitative items such as the ones listed are important for customer focused
environments, however, I'm not sure if AI can account for such factors.

This post is quite timely.

~~~
tw1010
Like I mentioned, I have high hopes modelling vaguer aspects of customer
preference can be incorporated by training a model on rendered generative
design (e.g. with data from amazon turk), which can then be used as maybe some
kind of penalization on the efficiency loss function, multiplied by a weight
to give us a choice in the efficiency-comfort tradeoff-space.

There are solutions that I think show potential out there. I don't think our
future AI designed world necessarily need to ignore difficult-to-quanitify
dimensions like aesthetics. (Though amazon turk is expensive, especially in
developer man-hours, so I can understand if that won't always be done.)

~~~
lawlessone
Could another parameter be how it crumples in a crash? I don't want my AI
supercar to transform into inescapable cage on impact.

------
eadmund
The author describes the results as 'irrational,' but I'd hardly agree with
the negative connotation of that word: I think that the generated floorplans
look _lovely_ , and I wish that I'd gone to school somewhere like that. Far
from irrational, I think it's quite rational to try to design buildings to be
pleasant to live in, not just easy to draw with a straightedge.

Also, the generated rooms look much like the sort of rooms one would build
with cob. A cob schoolhouse could be awesome.

~~~
ghein
The reward function was horrible!

You need good sightlines for the kids, room for desks, and need to ensure kids
aren't isolated in a corner. Plus light (not just to a small courtyard),
ability to escape in case of fire or other emergency!!!!!!! and for minimal
noise intrusion from other classrooms.

Minimal space and building material are just not the right constraints and
speak to absolute ignorance of the actual problem on the part of the designer.

~~~
setr
it seems like it speaks more to the disinterest in providing an actual
solution. The article is providing a possible route to finding a solution; not
giving it. I mean he literally only optimizes on three parameters: windows,
escape routes, and traffic usage.

He even clearly states his goals: The creative goal is to approach floor plan
design solely from the perspective of optimization and without regard for
convention, constructability, etc. The research goal is to see how a
combination of explicit, implicit and emergent methods allow floor plans of
high complexity to evolve.

Nowhere does he claim this is an implementable solution, or meant to be one...
just an interesting one, given a set of priorities.

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darkstar999
I thought classrooms required an emergency exit. The original layout is
probably specifically designed to give every room an exterior wall. Still,
very interesting project.

~~~
Cerium
The original layout looks quite reasonable. It seems to optimize giving
classrooms many windows for natural light and fresh air. Additionally the
layout mostly keeps noisy areas such as the gym and cafe away from classes.

------
zellyn
I love this. It makes me believe that our sci-fi future might be more in line
with the Timeless Way of Building than with cinderblock utilitarianism.

I too would love to see a 3D environment built from these, so we could get a
feel for them.

~~~
mkj
Did you miss the part about "light on two sides of every room"? These evolved
designs seem optimised for nothing that actually matters to human comfort.

~~~
zellyn
I took this as an initial exploration of genetic algorithms for architecture.
As such, the idea is more interesting than the specific parameters and weights
chosen here.

You'll notice as you scroll down that this article _does_ vary the parameters
and weights. For instance, the one that optimizes for windows tends to create
interior courtyards.

I could imagine adding parameters and weights for thresholds, areas for
crafts, light on two sides of rooms, rectilinearity, water shedding, etc. etc.
etc.

But I love the idea that what comes out the other end is wildly weird and yet
functional, and feels organic and nest-like rather than square.

~~~
sitkack
The resulting designs could be fed through a variety of simulators,
environmental, social, construction feasibility, etc.

One could also use a supervised classifier and have people rank the resulting
designs. They can know what they like, but not why.

~~~
xaedes
One could be cheap and use something like "The Sims" for evaluation and then
optimize building that are possible to build there.

You would probably get more realistic buildings due to the different
constraints on them.

I don't think the results should be taken to serious, but I imagine it serious
fun to see them. xD

------
yoz-y
I've been in a few apartments that had novelty floor plans without right
angles. All of them were terrible. Granted I have not been in one owned by
somebody rich or skilled enough to only have custom made furniture.

~~~
derefr
I’d be curious to see the effect on airflow, though. I’d gladly pay for custom
furniture if the design of the house meant never sitting in a cloud of my own
CO2 (without any need for fored-air ventilation like in
airplanes/submarines/bunkers.)

~~~
samstave
I think it would be really cool to be able to have a Feng Shui toggle on the
weights and measures of this layout algo...

------
hirundo
The Hogwarts floorplan improves on this, reorganizing in real time to the
needs of individual students and faculty. Any sufficiently advanced set of
genetic algorithms, sensors and moving partitions is indistinguishable from
magic.

------
foolfoolz
i am a product of american public school. in every school all the classrooms
(except portables) had a wall that was mostly windows. you can see thats also
true in the original school design. i’d rather have a ton of windows than
shorter distance to walk. you could feel the enclosed difference in portable
rooms

~~~
kickopotomus
He talks about windows if you scroll down.

~~~
foolfoolz
yea i saw the whole thing. the courtyards won’t feel the same. you’ll just
have one small wall opening up to it

------
tompccs
His genetic examples look like European cities compared to the actual floor
layouts, which are more like New World ones designed on a grid layout by
central planners.

Perhaps there's wisdom in allowing cities to grow organically/chaotically
after all.

~~~
JetSetWilly
There is, it has been proven that on average, if you select two points in
European cities the average distance by road, number of junctions etc is
smaller than two randomly selected points in a grid system.

It seems like a grid system is superior if you have no knowledge of the city,
but a "organic" european layout is functionally superior assuming people
always choose perfect routes.

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mrfusion
On a related note I’d love a way to optimize kitchen layout. What items to
store in cabinets and drawers to minimize dishwasher unloading time, optimize
cooking.

~~~
mprovost
You'd like the Frankfurt kitchen which was inspired by Taylor's time and
motion studies for industry. In 1926!

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankfurt_kitchen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankfurt_kitchen)

------
jccalhoun
I can see this kind of architecture being the next fad in architecture as a
kind of next step from the Gehry-style architecture. I can totally see someone
pr firm or tour guide bragging "our building was designed by a computer
algorithm to be optimized for our needs..."

~~~
minutillo
"...on the day it was designed. Of course, by the time construction was
completed there had been 2 re-orgs and a pivot so now we're just making the
best of things"

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lawlessone
Those floor plans creep me out and i don't know why.

~~~
ballenf
They give the impression of the building being alive. And therefore your
presence is potentially a threat that it will deal with and you'll be trapped
for an eternity in an endless maze of reconfiguring hallways and dead ends.

~~~
retbull
Well I wasn't feeling this way but now I am... Seriously though I prefer the
more organic feel. I don't really like square hallways and I wouldn't mind
being in a rounder room. though it would need to take into the actual
requirements of the rooms. A shop class needs both a lot of space and square
enough walls/floor plan that they can fit in equipment without a ton of wasted
space.

------
code_duck
This is great. I did a major project in eighth grade about designing a school
to make traffic flow more logical and the strict times they specified for
student travel achievable. We were expected to leave a class, travel to our
lockers, accomplish any necessary bathroom tasks and to travel to the next
class in four minutes and 20 seconds. Failing to do so was a disciplinary
matter, but it did not appear that the school or our schedules were designed
with this sort of urgency in mind.

The main focus of my solution was to make the school a torus. Like many of my
youth projects (writing a text adventure game...), I did not have the
knowledge to solve the problems scientifically.

------
hgbhgbhgb
I'm an architect in germany, working as project-lead for the initial stages of
medium sized buildings till building permit and therefore responsible for the
conception and its validation in all terms of structure, fire-protection,
installations, etc.

I'd like to make my point that any kind of over-optimization of one or more
aspects will put one of the biggest virtues of truly good and functional
architecture at risk: being adaptive for a wide variety of future changes
(use, program, technology, climate, energy resources, partitioning, shrinking,
expanding, etc.).

The actual task of designing a building is to find the right balance in a
myriad of parameters, which sometimes create synergies (think sunlight and
heating), but often are just one step away from undesirable impacts (think
sunlight and overheating). Flexibility in architecture always results out of
generous tolerances and robustness - which is always in danger to be
eliminated by optimization for limited scenarios.

Also many aspects of the design logically derive from each other: if I plan a
school with natural ventilation, it'd be probably a good idea to have windows
in two sides of the room, that can exchange the whole air of the room in a
5min break. If I opt for a mechanical ventilation this advantage would be gone
and the disadvantages of not having a more compact cubature would override and
result in a completely different layout.

While I appreciate all kind of tools that give me an insight into complex
interdependencies (how do floorplans with optimized A,B,C look like?) i think
that good architectural solutions need humans to make a tailor-made decision
based on a bigger picture of our society that has the chance to be valid for
some decades(centuries?). Good architects choose to rely on typologies that
evolved from history for this difficult task and transform them when needed.

I'd be curious if the approach of OP could be used backwards as a software
based analysis what details make successful typologies actually successful.

On a side note: It's pretty interesting that the resulting floorplans of OP
are somewhat similar to the traditional arabic city structure (google
traditional damascus city center and zoom into the still intact quartiers).

------
CapitalistCartr
I work in 3D drafting & design, and CNC programming. In my life I've seen
woodwork go from almost always boxes, to heavily jellybean, organic shapes.
Because we have the tools to do it, people want it. Any less looks dated.

Houses will go the same way as the tools become available. In the yacht
business a new design took a room full of men a couple years to design and
draw, so they were slow, serious business. Now it takes three guys at
computers six months. So people expect it: a new design every year at the boat
show. Go two years without and bad rumors circulate.

------
lmilcin
Almost 2 decades ago I wrote a perl script to automatically optimize open
space floor plan using genetic algorithm.

The idea was to have a function, for each office worker in the office that
would grade the place they are sitting in (distance to toilet, printer,
lighting, space around desk, etc.) and have algorithm evolve open space plans
to have best overall satisfaction and also make sure that there are no places
that have very low score.

Now, this algorithm could only take existing floor plan, it could only place
furniture on existing floor with existing walls but it was still nice
excercise.

------
sevensor
There's a whole academic sub-discipline in Mechanical Engineering devoted to
optimizing geometries like this. Shape Optimization tries to find shapes with
particular properties, e.g. minimizing material use while maximizing shear
strength. You'll find hundreds of papers going back decades if you want to dig
into it:

[https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C39&q=sha...](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C39&q=shape+optimization)

------
brazzledazzle
You’d need to carefully study the safety implications. People already get
disoriented in fires when they have to move in a straight line. Add winding
and branches and it could cause some issues.

------
kuon
All non square rooms I experienced where terrible to place furniture.

~~~
cmyr
Square furniture, I presume?

~~~
dsr_
The alternative to a cultural standard is custom pieces. In this case, the
cultural standard is right angles. It could have been 60 degree angles and we
would all think hexagonal rooms are ideal.

Chairs, tables, desks, bookcases, shelving systems, and all the things that go
on top of them. Paper. Boxes. Books.

------
knappa
I like it, despite the infeasibility. Here are a few more things missing from
the plan: 1) The main door should be by the admin offices, for security
reasons. 2) The gym has to be rectangular for the basketball court, or large
enough that it can contain it. 3) One of the gym's looks slightly non-convex,
which is pointless. (Although that might be an artifact of rendering the
door.)

------
chm0022
It just makes me think of Harry Potter ladder, in reality, there must be
considered lots of real-time calculations.

------
ggg9990
Why is it considered good to minimize walking time and hallway time in
schools?

~~~
pavel_lishin
There are actually a few good reasons beyond "ze children must be OPTIMIZED!"
\- fire safety, mentioned in the post, is one of them.

~~~
ggg9990
How many elementary school children have perished in school fires in the last
25 years?

~~~
pavel_lishin
Thankfully, zero: [https://www.nfpa.org/News-and-Research/Fire-statistics-
and-r...](https://www.nfpa.org/News-and-Research/Fire-statistics-and-
reports/Fire-statistics/Fires-by-property-type/Educational/School-fires-
with-10-or-more-deaths)

But your point is well taken; there's no particularly great reason to, unless
your school is so big and your administration is so goofy that kids are
constantly running late. That constraint would be better suited to applying
these algorithms to offices, hospitals, military bases, prisons, and maybe
shopping malls.

~~~
jermaustin1
The high school I went to (Alvin H.S. in Alvin, TX) was laid out terribly. It
was almost 70 acres, and there were dozens of buildings with classes in them.

We were given 7 minutes between classes, and my freshman year I had to cross
the campus multiple times per day (more than 2000 feet each way). That meant
pretty much running.

On days when it was raining, and you couldn't cut through the grass, or if you
were handicapped and had to stick to the 5 foot wide covered paths, you were
guaranteed to be tardy and written up or sent to your office (potentially back
across campus).

In the nearly 15 years since I left that school, they have consolidated most
of their buildings, and only have about 10.

They could definitely have used some sort of planning algorithm to come up
with the optimum scheduling for their students.

~~~
davidivadavid
Guess your H.S. optimized for student fitness?

------
unit91
Interesting that the optimized floorplans look so much like brains!

------
lainga
Right optimized one looks best, because it's the only one that doesn't
squirrel any of the big rooms (library, gym, cafeteria) away at the ends of
corridors.

~~~
pc86
I think it's probably a balancing act between placing the big room at the end
of a hallway (making that hallway a nightmare prior to any event) and placing
it in the middle of the building (making that intersection a nightmare prior
to any event). I'm sure it depends largely on the specifics of the room and
how often it will be used of course. Less frequently utilized is probably
better off further away from the center, more frequently better off closer but
with multiple entrances & exits to ease congestion.

