Building spatial design simulation and optimisation with structural and daylight objectives

The inevitable interdependencies and trade-offs between structural and daylight disciplines are rarely researched in multi-disciplinary design simulation and optimisation. As such, this paper presents a development of simulations of co-evolutionary design processes used for optimisation. The simulations entail an iterative process to delete or split spaces of a Building Spatial Design (BSD) according to its structural or daylight performance. Three types of co-evolutionary processes are investigated, i.e. (i) spatial-structural; (ii) spatial-daylight; and (iii) alternately (i) and (ii). Besides, an academic case study is carried out, where a variety of window sizes is considered while performing structural and daylight simulations. As a result, the general tendencies for structural and daylight objectives, their trade-offs, and the conflicts between optimising for structural or daylight performance are showcased. Furthermore, it is noted that co-evolutionary design simulations, if used for optimisation, show large improvements in just a few iterations.