Computer aided tools for architectural and urban automatic generation

Abstract

Computer-aided design tools have been used in architecture and design offices for more than 30 years. It must be said that, from the beginning, they have behaved more like over-equipped drawing tools than as true supports for the creative process. In recent years, additional modules (plug-ins or dedicated libraries) make it possible to enrich the software environments already implemented in creative agencies: whether in the field of design, urban planning or architecture, these tools can generate and optimize on demand an infinite number of formal or conceptual solutions whose feasibility or effectiveness in terms of input constraints can be evaluated, for example, by bio-inspired processes. It is in this context that we put to test some generative tools able to quickly process hypothetical architectural or urban digital simulacra for a given historical period. Whether for the restoration of the ancient city of Vienna (France), to show the inhabited slopes of the Fourvière hill during the time of Lugdunum, to illustrate the historic urban fabric of the “Vieux Lyon” district or more recently as part of the exhibition “Claude, un empereur au destin singulier”, these generative tools are based on current knowledge of the architectural, constructive or stylistic constants over time: they thus make it possible to quickly produce plausible 3D images of squares, streets or buildings during the period of interest. Former experiments raised the question of the discontinuity of the generative models used, which will have to be applied differently not only according to the scale (bay, facade, building, block, district...) but also according to the nature of the objects to be represented (vernacular islets, residential or monumental buildings etc.) or the knowledge available about them (knowledge consistency, divergent historical conjectures etc.). The MAP laboratory has developed over time some simple software tools that made it possible to question in depth the structure of generative methods involved in the production of plausible architectural and urban digital reconstructions.