'Designing in' Complex System Interaction: Multi-Agent Based Systems for Early Design Decision Making

This paper presents a novel framework for the integration and development of multi-agent based computation techniques to bridge the cyber/physical divide to enhance early stage design decision-making. Through the development of feedback loops of simulated occupancy behavior with design process, the framework presents a new paradigm for the integration of the building occupant and designer, and the building itself as agents for contributing to optimize building design including space use, visibility, adjacency, geometry and scale. The framework argues for the invention and value of linking of human agency, with computer agency and for incorporating emergent conditions and system interaction complexity in early design decision making. The paper focuses on an initial system design which focuses on transit users of multimodal facilities which brings feedback to the designer to optimize for a subset of identified design criteria. The framework shows that with the use of multi agent based simulations for incorporating more intelligently formalized occupant behavior, designers and engineers can ‘design in’ more realistic real world complexity and therefore generate design alternatives more rapidly while demonstrating more efficient spaces in terms of actual versus assumed complex natural and physical system interactions