Evolutionary Design for "Environmental Expressionism"

The 20th Century “Structural Expressionism” movement used structural optimisation to generate elegant structural forms and contribute to the visual aesthetic of buildings. Advanced computational techniques offer great opportunities for multi-objective optimisation and allow us to search for integrated answers to broader environmental questions. Where these answers contribute to the visual aesthetic of buildings we see an evolution from Structural Expressionism to what might be called "Environmental Expressionism". Such an approach was used for the design of the canopy roof of the new Santa Maria del Pianto underground station, in Naples. An evolutionary algorithm was successfully used to optimise the arrangement of a complex honeycomb roof structure to maximise sunlight penetration in the station shaft, shading of the lift platform at ground level, structural performance and buildability.