Dynamic Symbiont: An Interactive Urban Design Method Combining Swarm Intelligence and Human Decisions

Can a virtual city game be built by both the public and computer-based on real-site data? In the current process of deepening global connectivity, requirements for an effective urban design are no longer limited to functions or aesthetics, but a smart, dynamic complex with multi-interactions of data, group behaviours, and physical space. This paper introduces the logic of swarm intelligence and particle system for proposing a new urban design methodology. The platforms range from simulations that quantify the impact of the disruptive interventions of city activities to communicable collaboration between different users in a UI system, which creates virtual connections between optimized urbanscape and users. In the design system, based on the context data, the computer firstly simulates and optimizes the existing 2D activity joints between the people and analyzed the current spatial connection nodes into certain design rules. Through optimal programming for spatial connection and data iterations, the activity connection structures in the second simulation are abstracted into a set of interactive 3D topographic. The final data-visualization results are presented as a co-building megacity in a virtual construction game. Users can choose the virtual building unit types and intuitively influence the future urbanscape decision through virtual construction. © 2020, Education and research in Computer Aided Architectural Design in Europe. All rights reserved.