Expanding Architectural Design Processes Through Structural Optimization: A Multidisciplinary Perspective

Multicriteria optimization offers a powerful tool to support architectural design processes by providing the ability to generate optimal design variants based on an evaluation function. This paper explores how parametric modeling and multicriteria optimization, as tools of generative design, can contribute to promoting interdisciplinarity between architecture and structural engineering within the design process. It will be shown how parametrically structured design processes expand and change the role and approach of designers in comparison to classic, linearly organized planning processes. The focus lies on examining how the concept of generative design can support the integration of structural parameters
into architectural design. Using a practical example from a master's thesis and based on experiences from a design course at HafenCity University Hamburg, the theoretical perspective will be tested within a teaching context. The aim is to demonstrate the potential of parametric models as a shared design foundation for a generative design process, both technically and aesthetically, thereby providing impulses for an integrative and interdisciplinary design culture.