The Symposium on Simulation for Architecture and Urban Design (SimAUD) took place at the Georgia Tech School of Architecture in Atlanta April 7-9, 2019. Assistant Professor Dana Cupkova delivered a concluding keynote titled “Shape Matter,” which the SimAUD community described as a “great journey through complex thermodynamic aesthetics.”
SimAUD offers a platform to unite researchers and practitioners in the fields of architecture, urban design, urban planning, building science, and data science. Over the last decade, simulation and design computation have become synonymous with the pursuit of building performance and integrated environmental design. The rapid acceleration of computing power, through the continued development of hardware, software, and web-based applications, allows architects and urban designers broad access to tools that can aid the design process. With this expanded capacity comes a blurring of disciplinary boundaries, as simulation-based decision support unites stakeholders from various fields. In many ways, this increased collaboration between disciplines has made the building industry more amenable to reiteration, optimization, and integration across a range of performance considerations - from energy to form generation fabrication, human comfort, and behavior.