School buildings layout: Enhancing resilience to targeted violence utilizing cellular automata (CA)

This study is dedicated to the examination of safety requirements and the enhancement of resilience against security breaches and targeted violence in the architectural design of school building floor plans. For this purpose, the study utilizes Cellular Automaton (CA) as a design tool, as a means of generating possibly infinite number of solutions according to the set design rules. The initial phase of the study involved the abstraction of existing school floor plans (sourced from European and US architectural practices) to a diagrammatic level suitable for subsequent CA cell definition. Further, additional safety-oriented criteria were incorporated, resulting in the emergence of innovative architectural configurations. The safety parameters applied drew insights from the redesign endeavors of Fruitport High School in Michigan in 2019, with a particular emphasis on the implementation of angular, mazelike corridors for defensive purposes. The findings presented in this research demonstrate that, despite the perceived intricacies within contemporary architectural practices, the employed methodology facilitates an expanded repertoire of architectural solutions while concurrently addressing heightened security requisites. The emerged set of generated architectural layouts shows the properties of a new architectural typology of school buildings, to which additional ambiental values can be associated, while recommended net areas have been preserved. Furthermore, the results underscore the adaptability of this approach to various architectural challenges, particularly those centered around the corridor as a pivotal element in the functional organization of spatial layouts.