paradigms of performativity … simulation tools for social performance

I contributed a chapter on Simulation Tools for Social Performance to the recently published The Routledge Companion to Paradigms of Performativity in Design and Architecture. This book, edited by Mitra Kanani, focuses on a non-linear, multilateral, ethical way of design thinking and expands on the multiple facets and paradigms of performative design thinking as an emerging trend in design methodology.

A very short excerpt from my chapter Simulation Tools for Social Performance – Immersive Building Simulations that talks about agent-based simulations as a tool to optimize a space’s social performance can be found on my research blog parametricsemiology.com. The entire, much more encompassing text can be found among many others in the book – please consider buying it. Find the abstract below:

Simulation Tools for Social Performance – Immersive Building Simulation

Robert R. Neumayr (Vienna), 2019.

Abstract: Architectural design has witnessed profound changes within the last decades. New material technologies, novel computational tools, digital design techniques and the growing importance of sustainability  have shifted the conception and production of architectural and urban space for present-day society whose patterns of occupation and interaction have become increasingly interwoven. Contemporary building designs are therefore more and more evaluated according to their capacity to resolve the numerous design challenges that simultaneously arise from  contradictory necessities and constraints. As designers need to reconsider their position within this changing environment, this chapter introduces the theories behind current digital simulation strategies and – looking in more depth at the concepts of Tectonic Articulation, Space Syntax, Agent-Based Occupancy Simulations, Evolutionary Design Solving and Genetic Algorithms – it examines how multi-layered immersive building simulation processes yield complex results in previously unexplored solution spaces and how contemporary immersive building simulations increasingly shift their emphasis towards the societal aspects of the built environment and its related social performance.

Keywords: Immersive Building Simulation, Tectonic Articulation, Agent-based Semiology,  Genetic Algorithms