New Methods In Urban Simulation

The course consists of lectures and exercises of state-of-the-art and emerging simulation methods that can assist urban planners, architects and landscape planners in the design process. The simulations are based on the stocks and flows model and include parameters such as density, transportation, materials, capital, sustainability and visualization. Topics include but are not limited to the teaching of GIS based city modeling and simulation, building simulation, visualization and the prototyping of large scale city models. This course will start with a focus on collaboration, introduce design pattern recognition and implementation into urban models. The course continues with techniques for energy simulation and cost estimation on an urban scale and introduces methods for the realtime visualization of urban scenarios. Recent urban growth prediction systems are introduced as well as techniques for the mining of urban data sets to gain insights from the non-visual textures of urban fabrics.

The course is structured into 8 lectures, three initial workshop, corresponding exercises, contact hours, and independent work. Working in groups is a core part of the didactic concept.

Responsibles:
Lecture, Mo 8-9:30, HIT H12: Jan Halatsch
Exercises, Mo 10-11:30, HIT H12: Jan Halatsch, Julia Dyllong, Yuliya Schlegel

Adressee:
Participants of the masters program in architecture with focus in urban planning and urban modeling. NOTE: Course is limited to 20 participants.

Certificate of achievement:
Graded examination at the end of semester.
Successful participation in exercise course, workshop week and semester project thesis.

Credit points:
Successful participation will be honored with 6 ECTS and grade.

Materials:
Course slides, exercises, project templates, literature, and examination questionnaires will be made available upon request.

Flyer / Schedule

L01 | 27-09-2010

Porto Alegre (POA) – a model for sustainable future cities in Brasil

Lecture 1

Workshop 1: First steps with our modeling framework (ArcGIS, PurdueSim, CityEngine, Ecotect, ShowCase, Vue)

Exercise 1: Form groups and create impressions using the software and our sample data


L02 | 04-10-2010

Methods for the Prediction of large-scale scenarios

Lecture 2

Workshop 2: UrbanSim und PurdueSim for the prediction of urban scenarios

Exercise 2: Regional scale – modeling urban scenarios with PurdueSim


L03 | 11-10-2010

Collaborative City Design

Lecture 3 (A. Kunze)

Workshop 3: AP – a participatory technology for the development of urban requirement specifications

Exercise 3: Specification of sustainable urban scenarios for Porto Alegre with AP


L04 | 18-10-2010

Mid-term critic I

Student presentation of initial ideas and first urban scenarios for Porto Alegre


25-10-2010

Seminar week


L05 | 01-11-2010

Introduction to pattern-based modeling

Lecture 4

Workshop 4: Modeling building designs with CityEngine

Exercise 4: Sketching and implementing urban designs for POA in CityEngine


L06 | 08-11-2010

Methods for the analysis of urban performance

Lecture 5

Exercise 5: Passive design scenarios with Ecotect and CityEngine: Sun and Wind


L07 | 15-11-2010

Mid-term critic II

Student presentation of evaluated urban scenarios for Porto Alegre


L08 | 22-11-2010

Urban models as think tools

Lecture 6

Exercise 6: Accessibility and visibility analysis of suggested urban designs


L09 | 29-11-2010

Real-time visualizations

Lecture 7

Exercise 7: Authoring real-time visualizations using Showcase

or Exercise 8: Authoring real-time visualizations using Unity3D


L10 | 06-12-2010

Test and presentation of student works