1

Making the urban or architectural designer less vulnerable

in the math-based company of technical specialists by simulating their contributions in Excel and Visual Basic

INTED2008. International Technology, Education and Development Conference, Valencia, March 3rd-5th, 2008 Session Educational Software & Games, Tuesday, 4th March 2008 at 17.00hr. Room No.4

Prof.dr.ir. Taeke M. De Jong, chair Technical Ecology And Methodology, sharing a chair Regional Design

Faculty of Architecture, department Urbanism

GIS for environmental design?

2000 Trend 2040 Growth 2000

Scenarios by RIVM, licensed by Parliament for all relevant data

GIS not popular in design

• Data– expensive, laborious– difficult to judge relevance and reliability– doubtful related to local potentials, unexpected combinations– cheaper to evaluate design afterwards by specialists

• Designers look for– extending possibilities rather than obeying probabilities– a robust built environment surviving preliminary trends

• Graduates in design applying GIS tend to– reduce possibilities by sieve-analyses– overlook new possibilities by design

Averages misleading design

The same person at 1 or 2 m2 results in density values of 10000 or 5000 inhabitants per ha

Misleading density image applied on the

different surfaces

Two average density GIS interpretations

of the same state of dispersion caused by

grid choice

Pointillistic representation

Zero variant design TKA ‘residential’

design Hosper ‘recreation’

design H+N+S ‘nature’

to compare design alternatives properly:

50 dots each representing real size the floor space for 1000 inhabitants show directly: form (state of dispersion),

varying density, quantity, local possibility for facilities.

Pointillistic sketching

ScareTool QuadTreeTool GridDensityTool

Developed by graduate student David Rutten for CAD:

• close to design thinking

• direct quantitative check

• better than tables referring to drawings

Visualising 3D altitude database

Dutch xyz-coordinates now

available forevery 5min maps

5 x 6.25 km

How to access for a 200 x 200 m

Google Earth Section suitable in design?

improved 3D accessibility for design in Excel 200 x 200 m

simulating ground water levels

However, relevant detailed xyz altitudes GIS recently available:

Tracing a built-up area

Label Area XStart YStart1 1092 658 202 964 690 493 1020 713 714 1150 626 1125 678 757 1166 732 781 1407 1925 595 1528 849 700 1579 710 649 169

10 746 828 18011 1722 668 19212 654 852 20013 1688 712 21614 831 762 21615 1059 612 22816 1653 738 25117 894 837 26118 166 781 29019 259 768 31020 2871 751 361

21662

An allotment900 x 1450m

Tracing and numberingby brain scanner

ImageJ

Results in m2 built-up

by a medical brain scan application counting cancer cells:

Hidden suppositions not clear in VB

The urban island of an ensemble multiplied into a neighbourhood with a hierarchy of dry and wet

networks

http://team.bk.tudelft.nl/ > Publications 2001 > Standaardverkaveling

Stimulating quantitative awareness of counter-intuitive processes

0%

50%

100%

150%

200%

250%

300%

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80

Number of storeys

% F

loor

(F

SR

, F

SI)

0

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

0 25 50 75 100

125

150

km/hrve

hicl

es/h

r

Capacity / traffic lane(velocity)Density(number of storeys)

Sliders in Excel

• show hidden specialists’ suppositions (parameters)

• fine tuning input and desired output variables directly

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Making the urban or architectural designer less vulnerable

in the math-based company of technical specialists by simulating their contributions in Excel and Visual Basic

INTED2008. International Technology, Education and Development Conference, Valencia, March 3rd-5th, 2008 Session Educational Software & Games, Tuesday, 4th March 2008 at 17.00hr. Room No.4

Prof.dr.ir. Taeke M. De Jong, chair Technical Ecology And Methodology, sharing a chair Regional Design

Faculty of Architecture, department Urbanism