High-rise Building Optimization A Design Studio Curriculum

The paper presents an educational method used in teaching design of high-rise buildings in the city center. The author outlines the processes developed by students, the tools they used and the final results of design studio project and the supporting seminar, focused on exploring information processes in design. For the purpose of the design studio the students developed their own generative strategies that allowed incorporating optimization procedures into the design process. Within the framework of the seminar classes students developed individual optimization tools with the use of genetic algorithms in order to explore the search space and select the best possible architectural solutions for the specified criteria. The students used the above-mentioned tools mostly during the building's form-finding design stage or attempted to optimize just the building structure.