Prof. Dr. Adrienne Grêt-Regamey | Landscape Planning and Urban Systems
Procedural Modelling of Sustainable Urban Patterns – a Case Study of MASDAR
Innovative procedural modelling methods for the automatic creation of large-scale 3D city models provide unprecedented opportunities to understand and encode urban patterns. They allow easy production of multiple design alternatives based on design rules leading the simulation procedure. While grammars shaping the urban environment have already been defined, the contribution of the natural environment to urban qualities has not yet been encoded and integrated into a procedural modelling approach for sustainable city planning.
Projects of the Landscape Visualization and Modelling Lab explore the use of shape grammar-driven procedural models for effectively linking natural resource indicators into the urban design process. It seeks to develop an approach providing a starting point for more comprehensive, sustainable urban planning, and a useful tool for more informed and participatory decision-making.
Environmental aspects are often not properly integrated or even neglected in urban development planning, which can have rather long-term negative social and economical impacts. The goal of the project «Integrating Natural Resource Indicators into Procedural Visualization for Sustainable Urban Green Space» is to develop an approach integrating natural resource indicators into procedural visualization for a more sustainable urban green space design. It explores the use of innovative shape grammar driven procedural models for effectively linking ecosystem services into the urban design process of the case study site, the Swiss Village Abu Dhabi in MASDAR, an ecocity of the future. The approach presented in this study provides a starting point for more complete, comprehensive, sustainable urban planning, and a useful tool for better informed and participatory decision-making.
