Shape Grammars for Innovative Hybrid Typological Design

Abstract

This paper describes a new methodology of deriving innovative hybrid designs using shape grammars of heterogeneous designs. The method is detailed within three phases of shape grammars: analysis, synthesis and evaluation. In the analysis phase, the research suggests that original rules of each design component are grouped in subclass rule sets to facilitate rule choices. Additionally, adding new hybrid rules to original rules expands the options available to the grammar user. In the synthesis phase, the research adopts state labels and markers to drive the design generation. The former is implemented with a user guide grammar to ensure hybridity in the generated design, while the latter aims to ensure feasible designs. Lastly evaluation criteria are added to measure the degree of innovation of the hybrid designs. This paper describes the derivation of hybrid minaret designs from a corpus of heterogeneous traditional minaret designs.

‘The International Style’ multilingual three-dimensional grammar and hybrid designs

“…The notion of hybrids is introduced in grammar as a deviation from the main style, being the result of two parent languages. They are relevant in multilingual formulations as they are the result of manipulation of the parameters used for each language and unlike other work in hybrids this does not explore hybrids using shape rule manipulation or adjustment, 21,22 but simply by varying the interval of parameters used.…”

“…They often share with the parents strong key characteristics and some detail features that might confer additional design character. In grammar design, hybrids are either generated by adjusting graphic design rules (the most common route) 21,22 or as rehearsed in this study by simply playing with the parametrization. By using a range of parameters from both parent languages, results are consistently efficient where new hybrid designs generated fall within the design space of each parent (overlapping parametric spaces).…”