Computerizing an Architectural Design Process: Toward the Development of Unique Variations for the American Home

Your home should be more than a meaningless collection of rooms and your neighborhood should be more then endless repeating sameness. The home that you live in should be designed and customized around you, the way that you have always intended to live your life, and reflect your one-of-a-kind personality. You should not have to fit your life into a home forced on you by market trends or the only floor plan options offered by homebuilders. A handful of architects are now experimenting with new technologies and design strategies to gain more influence within the American housing industry. By introducing new concepts in computerized client interation and configuration design tools, a broader economic spectrum of society will have access to customized design. The ensuing graduate thesis investigates precedents in past housing strategies, theories and experiments in computational design, construction methods, ideas in preference collection, and the development of prototype software applications.