Features

• Sky occlusion field used to calculate both CIE overcast sky daylighting for windows, and annual direct sunlight hours for outdoor spaces.
• Binary tree building model capable of representing a full range of traditional building layouts, enables evolution through crossover as well as mutation.
• Building model supports non-orthogonal buildings and plots, fitting real world sites.
• Internal circulation graph is evaluated for connectedness and travel distances.
• Multiple room and outdoor space types are supported, additional types can be added.
• Pattern language configuration represents the value component of the fitness calculation — see Which patterns does Homemaker score? for how that scoring actually works, and which of Alexander’s 253 patterns it does and doesn’t cover.
• Building cost configuration means that the fitness function is effectively a cost/benefit calculation.
• Configuration is flexible enough to generate building types suitable for different climates and densities, i.e. traditional buildings from Northern Europe to North Africa.
• Optional ‘programme-driven’ fitness mode: define an exact spatial programme (room types, target sizes, required adjacencies) instead of letting the original site-driven mode’s room mix emerge on its own — this is also how the software now reaches beyond ordinary housing to other building types, a shop or workspace being just another room type in the programme.
• Only traditional buildings are suitable for design by evolution, this software can’t be used to design gridded, blobby or spreadsheet style architecture, just modest, ordinary buildings with a subdivided, load-bearing-wall structure.
• Output is stylable with a flexible fenestration, door and moulding system.
• IFC is a first-class output format, building models can be dropped into existing industry BIM systems.
• DXF/Collada/STL/SVG/DOT output also available.
• Validation of Pattern Language theory, demonstration that APL is internally consistent and can be used to design viable buildings.
• Produces humane, adaptable, buildable and compact building designs.
• Fully Free Software (GPLv3 licenced), this software has no proprietary dependencies.

For how these features fit together, see the Software Overview; for a step-by-step walkthrough of actually using them, see the Homemaker walkthrough.

Bruno Postle - March 2020

Last updated 11 March 2020.