Automating Design

Construction technology: not just faster, but smarter

In the Creative Technologies team at Bryden Wood, we have developed methodological and technical systems to implement design automation in construction across a range of different construction technologies. They embed the principles of Design for Manufacture and Assembly (DfMA) and mass customisation to radically change the nature of asset design – and our role as designers within it.

Our approach is about making the design process not only faster, but smarter too.

We create intelligent, automated processes that allow us to iterate more quickly, gain greater insights into problems and find better solutions for the built environment. Design automation is about taking a data-driven approach that can support genuine evidence-based decision making.

Four key threads of computational design technology

We bring together different strands of computational design technology that are organised around four threads of thinking;

• Systems: we capture and encode logic and rules by which design systems work
• Algorithmic design: we create intelligent automation processes to act on those systems
• Connections: we join our construction technology to other systems and platforms to allow everyone to benefit
• Interactions: ultimately, technology is about people and we want to put design automation in construction technology into the hands of the many.

Our aim is to change the construction industry through design automation. We want to increase estate-wide standardisation by enabling a manufacturing-led approach to design and delivery. Design automation uses rule-based methods that can lock in aspects of asset performance and design compliance, while achieving genuine mass customisation to ensure that design quality is not only maintained but can be enhanced.

Applications across sectors, and the benefits of new technology in the construction industry

Our approach is deliberately sector-neutral. We have been able to develop design automation in a wide range of contexts, including:

• Public and private clients
• Social and economic infrastructure
• Open source and proprietary tools.

Whether we are automating the design of 40km of road or railway infrastructure in days, or generating schools or homes in minutes with our innovative digital design apps and configurators, we use data-driven construction technology to change the way that design can be done. By using cutting-edge computational design technology coupled with human architecture and engineering know-how, we can realise a better built environment.

 

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