Navigating Design Goals based on Formal Knowledge, Artificial Intelligence, and Human Experience

Although Design is a goal-driven activity, our understanding of these goals is often limited and tacit. Will tomorrow’s city be more liveable? Why do you consider this street walkable? How can I make my building more adaptable?

In this seminar, Dr Herthogs will present past, ongoing, and future research. He will illustrate how methods bridging human and artificial intelligence can help us navigate design processes in a goal-driven way.

Examples include search engines for planning regulations and urban design cases, automated site and SWOT analysis workflows, and formal floor plan evaluation methods.

This work highlights the central role Symbolic AI methods such as Knowledge Representation, Ontology, and Knowledge Graphs will play when developing computational applications in planning, urban design, and architecture.

Pieter Herthogs is a Senior Researcher and Investigator at the Singapore-ETH Centre’s Future Cities Laboratory Global. His work focuses on developing Design Evaluation and Knowledge Representation approaches that bridge disciplines and domains. Together with his team, Dr Herthogs applies these approaches to three main areas: computational city planning, building adaptation & circular economy in construction, and public space quality.

He is an investigator of the projects Cities Knowledge Graph, Circular Future Cities, and Semantic Urban Elements. Dr Herthogs holds a Doctorate in Engineering Sciences and a Master in Architectural Engineering from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium.