Connecting People and Algorithms: Generative Design for Informed Decisions

Bonava is a leading residential developer of affordable housing units in Northern Europe. To achieve this goal, lowering costs and increasing productivity is essential. Standardized single-family housing units have been developed, with accompanying models, drawings, and documentation in Revit software. When the site layout is ready, Dynamo software helps to get the information from the houses to the site model and vice versa. While solutions for the houses are predefined, site design remains the largest variable. We use generative design tools to create more-detailed site-layout solutions in earlier stages, and measure both hard and soft values for each option. Now, numbers back up design exploration, making it possible to identify correlations between different design metrics. Furthermore, this lets us bring representatives of different disciplines to fact-based discussions very early on, to assess the plot and make informed decisions for further development.