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Abstract
The Automating Concrete Construction (ACORN) project explored digital workflows from the design to the construction of reinforced concrete building floor elements, reducing carbon emissions and increasing efficiency of building processes. The resulting digital tool, named SQUIRREL, enabled the design of shells, composed of prefabricated segments, through an interactive framework, composed of parametric design tools, and informed by architectural, structural, and construction requirements, including building integration, fabrication, transport, assembly, and resource reuse. This paper presents the design and implementation of the SQUIRREL tool, focusing on the main design tasks for a segmented reinforced concrete shell, including formfinding and segmentation layout definition. This paper also documents the development and application of a Design Space Visualisation module within SQUIRREL, which streamlined parametric studies used to inform the design decisions behind the modelling and implementation process. Finally, we discuss the right balance between design automation and user interaction, which should inform the development of future construction-aware computational design tools.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Journal | International Journal of Architectural Computing |
| Early online date | 21 Feb 2025 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | E-pub ahead of print - 21 Feb 2025 |
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank the rest of the ACORN team for their support, in particular Mishael Nuh for his contributions on coding for SQUIRREL Grasshopper components, as well as the technicians at the National Research Facility for Infrastructure Sensing and the industrial project partners and affiliates for their feedback. The first author wishes to acknowledge that the research reported here was undertaken whilst he was a researcher at the University of Bath, UK. The second author wishes to acknowledge that the research reported here was undertaken whilst he was a researcher at the University of Cambridge, UK.Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the UKRI through the ISCF Transforming Construction programme EP/S031316/1.
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| UK Research and Innovation | EP/S031316/1 |
Keywords
- Design automation
- computational design
- construction-aware design
- design exploration
- design space
- digital fabrication
- parametric modelling
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Building and Construction
- Computer Science Applications
- Computer Graphics and Computer-Aided Design
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Dive into the research topics of 'SQUIRREL: balancing design automation and user interaction in a computational tool for designing segmented concrete shells'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.Projects
- 1 Finished
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Automating Concrete Construction (ACORN)
Shepherd, P. (PI) & Ibell, T. (CoI)
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council
1/01/19 → 31/03/22
Project: Research council