Designing Flow: Landscape Stair Iteration
PEDESTRIAN SIMULATION | 5th Semester Graduate Studio: Designing the Future
Research into Simulation, Computation, and the Environment | Critic: Brady Peters
This studio course was designed around the use of computational tools in the design process and how digital simulation tools can become a testbed for design research. The research work developed through the Designing the Future studio was individually led and bridged aspects of generational computational design (explored through Grasshopper and Python scripting) and digital simulation. For my research, I explored pedestrian simulation, especially the software MassMotion. A variety of design explorations progressed through the course of the semester. Initially I ran an investigatory simulation of the Fulton Street Center MTA Station to reproduce the simulation methodology used by the building's actual design team (Gensler and Arup). This exercise introduced me to the software and the means to then iterate design through the lens of this software in the abstract. I investigated further simulations including developing the beginnings of a "spatial alphabet" analysis of pedestrian flow and a simulation of the congestion experienced at the Toronto Centre Island Ferry Terminal. One of the design explorations I undertook was the development of iterations on a generative landscape stair concept and testing the iterations in MassMotion. MassMotion simulations are run in real-time allowing for the evaluation of a variety of design characteristics. Here, Pedestrian Level of Service (LOS) quality is mapped onto the stair geometry in order to determine flow and congestion characteristics. The simulation displays LOS as a ramped gradient from Blue (LOS A), corresponding to free flowing areas; to Red (LOS F), corresponding to highly congested areas that impede flow and require redesign. Research Excerpt is published Computing the Environment: Digital Design Tools for Simulation and Visualiation of Sustainable Architecture (AD/Wiley 2018)