Design Space
March 27, 2012 in Compuational Design by Sivam
Understanding design space is one of the most important steps in computational design.
Experience design space in our learning page >
Feel free to discuss this. You can download it if you wish.




Hi Sivam,
I liked the interactive illustration of parametric design space. Nothing compares to slider bars in their ability to encourage hands-on participation! However, I would make the hyperlink to the lecture notes more noticeable.
The lecture notes were very concise with good illustrations. I like the explanation of parametric design space and performance space and how they map to each other. I would add an arrow from performance space back to design space to illustrate that it can be a back and forth process of iteration in order to find acceptable design solutions.
Being an AutoCAD user, I couldn’t help but make the association between design space/performance space and model space/paper space. Model space is where everything is designed at full size and paper space is where everything is mapped to a scale for presentation. Like design exploration, it’s often a back and forth process as well to arrive at the final product.
As a constructive criticism, I would recommend that you have someone proof read your work. There were some grammatical errors here and there that detract from the excellent points you’re trying to make.
Spell check only does so much and it will miss words that are spelled correctly but used in the wrong grammatical context. I find that reading my work back to myself once I’m done will catch a lot of these types of errors.
Thank you for asking me to review this presentation. I learned a lot from it.
Mark
Thanks Mark. I greatly appreciate your feedback. My spelling is beyond repair. I am spell checker dependent and the spellchecker messes the meaning up. So will get it edited.
I have now improved the links between the lecture notes and the online demo. This lecture just introduces the concept of design space. How to navigate it and explore design possibilities is to be covered separately as there are different approaches to it. But many jump into it without an awareness of design space causing much confusion so I thought it would be good to establish some clarity on it first.
Sivam,
Personally speaking, as an architect, I do understand the concept of ‘space’, ‘parameters’ and n-dimensions. Even though I employ traditional method of design, we still have to deal with design parameters and design performance on everyday basis.
So, if I could compress the basis of the lecture in 2 sentences…
Design restrictions is Design Space and desired design Outcome is Performance Space. Then we have to short-list design alternatives which are common denominators in both the spaces, which is termed as mapping…am I on right track?
Agneesh
…I will rephrase it.
Design Space consists of various design restrictions and Performance Space consists of Desired Design Functions. Design Restrictions & Design Function are constant, which we have to identify before we start exploring creative design solutions which lie within the realms of these two spaces.
Right now we are trying to establish the mental model of working in design spaces. There are many ways to structure design processes. We have not got there yet. The main intent here is to show how to define both spaces and constrict it to regions of interest.