Abu Dhabi Education Council
Abu Dhabi Education Council

Abu Dhabi Education Council headquarters



When designing a building, creating room layouts is a time-sap. Middle managers' offices need to be close to their admin staff; executive suites need to be within striking distance of their subordinates. Move one room, and you have to rearrange them all. Aedas (the global architecture firm that designed New York's National September 11 Memorial and Museum) may have a solution.

The layout problem arose when Aedas pitched for the contract to build the Abu Dhabi Education Council (ADEC) headquarters in UAE. So its London-based R&D group, led by Christian Derix, created a piece of software that took ADEC's gargantuan list of required rooms and fed it through an algorithm based on a simple model called attract/repel.

"The rooms try to move next or nearby to those which they are meant to be located. They're attracted to each other," says Derix. "Rooms not meant to be near one another are 'repelled'." Change one of the parameters in the model -- move a lift shaft, say -- and the pieces ping about until they settle into a practical arrangement.

Previously architects were forced to make endless redrawings if they wanted to consider different options; Aedas can instantly adjust the floorplan. The architects found they could bring the rooms together so tightly, in fact, that they created space for large voids to ventilate the building naturally, as well as making it more spacious. The cubist style of the building's façade (see model below), suggesting the rooms within, was the architects' way of honouring their algorithm. Work begins in January.


  1. a simple solution to a complex problem? 20 years from now - if we're still here &amp; if the science of design has matured - they're'll be a phrase that sums up how daft this isput christopher alexanders architectural design knowledge into a computer program? do this &amp; then you'll really have something. till then, we'll probably just get another generation of crappy buildings. at least as long as people continue to try &amp; get something (a decent building) for nothing (minimal design time)  

    Dec 10th 2011

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