UNSW Students Generate Dozens of City Designs Through Software Programming

Associate Professor M. Hank Haeusler, UNSW Director of Computational Design, wanted Second-Year students to develop an “Urban Simulator” program, where they could generate city designs from scratch using computational design methods. To do this, the students needed to learn how to program their own software tools and work as a team. UNSW achieved this with the help of the IDDA online learning platform. Using IDDA, students were rapidly trained up in Rhino, Grasshopper and Python Advanced techniques.

They then used their new skills to automatically generate dozens of city designs based on several variables including:

• Number of Parks
• Number of Buildings
• Building Setbacks
• Building Heights
• Transport configuration

“We have been delighted with the results our students have achieved. The IDDA online learning platform is world class. Our first and second year students are now producing work previously only reserved for Masters-level students. And our tutors can focus on teaching design strategy rather than troubleshooting software programs” Associate Professor M. Hank Haeusler, Director of Computational Design, UNSW

The results can be seen below:

Posted on 20 Jan 2020