UNSW Built Environment Faculty has been running a Computational Design program for a number of years, In 2016 the course, led by teaching professor and architect Suleiman Alhadidi, contained a 5 week module which required students to take a real life built environment problem and use data to design a solution.

The course introduces students to new concepts in design such as Internet of Things, Generative Data-driven Design, and Environmental Computational Design. Driven by recent published research by Suleiman in the area of Data-driven design and Environmental Metrics, this course aims at pushing the knowledge of these concepts in early stages of design.

The ‘crit’ at the end of the 5 week program was held in BVN Architects Sydney Studio where the students showcased their work, ideas varied from Stock Market performance driven design to measuring noise values using sensors in real time and designing kinetic adaptive design to mitigate such city problems.

Narissa Bungrakearti’s project (video above) combined computational software and available topographical data to derive the form of a tower to maximise views adjacent to Hyde Park in Sydney’s CBD.

Nariddh Khean’s project (video below) addressed the issue of shadows of towers reducing natural light on the streets in Sydney’s CBD.  The project derived an arrangement of reflectors that could be attached to a new or existing tower and optimised the arrangement to maximise light on the streets below based on known paths of the sun throughout the year.