Learning to design architecture

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A good architectural design makes our living-space comfortable, functional, and beautiful, enhancing our quality-of-life. A good architectural design further 1) saves energy, where the household utility cost reaches 100 billion dollars every year in North America; and 2) reduces household life-hazards for the babies, the elderly, or people with disabilities, where 160,000 Americans die due to household injuries every year. Unfortunately, designing an effective floorplan is possible only by professional architects, where a small fraction of buildings (less than 10% in North America) employ a design professional for custom design due to the cost. Automatic floorplan generation will have tremendous impacts on trillion dollar real-estate/construction industries.In this proposal, the applicant and Autodesk will develop a computational assistant for architectural design, enabling a computational assistant to 1) explore design variations that are compatible with a sketch by an architect; 2) produce floorplans in a format that allows manual post-processing; and 3) provide an interactive feedback loop for design refinement.The project will be of particular importance to Canada, where the population growth is significant as a developed country (the highest in G7 countries), and housing is in short supply in most major urban centres. The government of Canada is rolling out its National Housing Strategy (NHS), a 10-year $55 billion plan that will 1) create 125,000 new housing units; 2) lift 530,000 families out of housing need; 3) repair/renew 300,000 housing units; and 4) reduce chronic homelessness by 50 percent. The project will reduce costs for implementing the NHS, whereas the underlying geometric modeling technologies will also boost visual effects and gaming industries, where Canada is a world leader.