I posted, back in May, about the work we’d been doing to explore the possibility of using the Space Analysis package for Dynamo to plan for post-COVID office layouts. Soon after that post our research relating to the pandemic shifted focus towards a longer-term plan of creating a “living lab” that would allow us not only to explore how design decisions might impact viral transmission, but to have these decisions based on data measured from a functioning ventilation system. Expect to hear more about that research in a future post.
We handed over the work that had been done until then by Rhys Goldstein, Hali Larsen, Lorenzo Villaggi, Ray Wang, Jim Stoddard and myself across to the product team, who could then explore whether it might play a part in some sample content showing possible workflows in Generative Design for Revit.
Thankfully the material did prove to be of use, and at least contributed to a series of blog posts – written by the fantastic Colin McCrone – that showed how to implement a workflow in Dynamo – still using Space Analysis – that would allow you to optimise an office layout for metrics such as congestion, exposure and proximity.
The first was posted in August, while the remaining two were posted last week:
- COVID Office Occupancy: Single-Objective Optimization
- COVID Office Occupancy: Multi-Objective Optimization
- COVID Office Occupancy: Building a Mega-Graph
The graph is a thing of beauty. Colin has put a huge amount of effort into documenting such a complex graph, and the tips he’s documented in his third blog post are hugely valuable in and of themselves.
Here’s a fairly high resolution image, if you want to get a sense of the overall flow without opening Dynamo:
If you’re interested in this topic – and how Generative Design for Revit might help – then I strongly recommend taking a close look at Colin’s posts.
On a related note, here’s a quick video that was posted recently to Redshift that also discusses how the current pandemic (and possible future outbreaks) are causing us to rethink office design:
I hope you find this material useful. From my perspective Colin and team have done a great job building a workflow that will be of great use for people looking to use Generative Design for Revit to rethink the layout of their offices for when things start returning to [the new] normal.
