Data-driven Design Is Poised to Transform the Built Environment
Experts say that the advent of the digital age, the potential for gathering information has exploded, limited only by people's ability to process and utilize the sheer volume of it all. Emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence promise to remove those restrictions, and the potential applications in architecture are just beginning to be realized. "The most significant advances have been in how climate affects design decisions and how a building can respond to the powers of nature," said Damon Leverett, an instructor in the University of Arizona College of Information Science. "In the 1970s and 1980s, most of this information was available in almanacs, charts and graphs. Today, extensive online databases can connect to an architect's climate model, potentially producing more accurate building responses."