Bryant Park Market Optimization
Group 1_Weiyu Xu/ Yufei Huang/ Jie Lai/ Steven Fei/ Ziqi Feng
Introduction
Bryant Park has become a popular place for public activities. In order to encourage more flexibility in circulation and maximize exposure to the market stalls distributed in the park, the project aims to test out possibilities to balance the locations of the stalls of various capacities and sizes and propose convenient circulation routes for the pedestrians.
Thereby, through identifying the problem of distribution of holiday shops, we propose the optimization of stall distribution and user circulation for the committee of Bryant Park to better organize the space. Through a series of circle packing and shortest paths simulations, ideal stall layouts and orientations have been concluded.
Methodology
Step-1 Stall configuration
To understand how the size and shapes of stalls can influence the general layout of the space, we developed 3 prototypes of stalls as the main input to the simulation.
Step-2 General Circle Packing
To better locate stalls of different types to different zones, we first defined the main boundary of the site. Another “inner boundary” was also included as the customized parameter for the committee to define if there could be any space not allowed for the stall zones.
Parameters:
- a. Stall zone numbers
- b. Stall zone size range
- c. Site inner boundaries
Step-3 Shortest Path Circulation Score
A series of different circle packing simulations were developed in combination with shortest path simulations to examine the best potential solution for the zones packing layout. (kangaroo circle packing scripts were cited and modified from Daniel Piker’s original scripts)
Step-4 Circle Packing and Shortest Path Simulation within each zone
Once an optimized layout for the program zones were proposed, another round of circle packing within each zone was further developed to more specifically locate the stalls and their orientations. The scheme for distributing such stall layouts was finalized based on the circulation scores.
Step-5 Orientation optimization
To optimize the orientations of each stall to increase its exposure to the flowing pedestrians, the stalls with “fan-like” facings were simulated based on the laid-out paths.
Conclusion
The most important factor that forms the boundary of our design space is, of course, the circles. Program layout in real-life is a far more complex issue not only in geometric configuration, but also involves social, economic and even political factors. We were able to achieve the optimized stall layout through circle packing as the fundamental logic, yet the very logic is also the largest limitation of our tool. Furthermore, there will always be the debate of how much top-down input should there be when it comes to planning and arrangement — adding yet another layer of complexity in the issue we are attempting to solve. We believe our tool is best used to rapidly generate a range of design possibilities in draft stages, while further optimizations and human design inputs are indispensable for the design to be finalized and applied. But the expandability of the design space, combined with a highly customizable list of inputs may provide the potential for our tool to be flexibly reconfigured, thus better adapting to the complex nature of the design problem.
No matter how advanced the tools, we must not give up the human inputs in computational design processes.
