Interactive design optimization of architectural layouts

Many areas of design involve both quantifiable and subjective goals, preferences, and constraints. Aesthetic and other subjective aspects of design are typically ignored in optimization models because they are difficult to model with mathematics; however, they are extremely important in areas such as product design and architectural design. This article presents an interactive method for integrating mathematical optimization with human decision-making during conceptual design of architectural floorplan layouts. The optimization models and algorithms were presented in a previous article. Here, an object-oriented representation allows the designer to interact with physically relevant building objects during optimization. The designer's interaction causes the program to dynamically change the optimization representation on-the-fly by adding, deleting, and modifying objectives, constraints, and structural units. This work presents mathematical optimization as a tool to assist the designer in refining ill-defined design problems during the early conceptual design phase. The designer can quickly explore design alternatives visually and computationally by taking advantage of computational algorithms to maintain feasibility and compute efficient solutions.