Reflections: On architectural computing and beyond

Abstract

collaboration between designers and stakeholders by allowing simulations side by side comparisons of performance, form and feedback of multiple design alternatives, leading to more informed design decisions. In their manuscript titled ‘ Resilient by design: informing pandemic-safe building redesign with computational models of resident congestion ’ , Frederick Ortner and Jing Zhi Tay describe a computational design-support tool that was developed in response to safe-distancing measures enforced during the COVID-19 pandemic. The proposed approach adopted a hybrid method for simulating building resident movements based on both pre-determined schedules and likely itineraries. The tool was developed to gain a better understanding of congestion in crowded migrant worker dormitories that experienced high rates of COVID-19 transmission. This study contributes to general understanding of con fi gurational and operational aspects of resilience in the built environment, which is particularly relevant in the context of ongoing global pandemic. The manuscripts selected for this special issue of IJAC under the theme of ‘ Re fl ections ’ offer a diverse collection of topics, methods and applications that are enabled by technological affordances of computational design. Although each manuscript addresses their own speci fi c set of research questions and challenges, all of them contribute to the wider fi eld of architectural computational design and practice, by offering new insights and technological innovations, advancing our research fi eld and paving the way for future research projects.