Adopting Parametric Construction Analysis in Integrated Design Teams

This paper reports on an industry-academia collaboration for integrating construction and engineering analyses into a graduate-level architecture design studio, including the developed workflow and curriculum, and lessons learned from the students’ and instructors’ experiences. The studio program pursues two learning goals namely implementing multi-variate analyses to develop a sustainable design concept as well as practicing collaboration and communication inside an interdisciplinary team. The results of this paper are mostly useful for students and new professionals in the AEC field who want to take most advantage of the emerging data-driven built environments and adopt a new mindset that supports the integration of construction information into the design process. Specifically, the outcomes of the design studio effort are summarized in the following three categories: (1) the development of a generalized and standard workflow for implementing parametric, computational, and performance-based design and construction approach that assists project teams to create design concepts, evaluate their design performance, and visualize the results, (2) the establishment of a framework for evaluating the quality of design process and collaboration in an integrated design team, and (3) the creation of visual programming methods and tools and design/construction software applications for systematic design programs’ analysis and data visualization/interpretation for knowledge-based decision making (this work is in progress).