Computational optimization in architectural design and constructive issues. A case study: the canopy of a waste collection center

The application in architecture of digital models based on parametric functions addresses more and more towards the fusion between the design phase, at the time in which the project idea is conceived, and the computer simulation of the imagined object, to consider as a dimensional verification of the idea itself. The imaginative sketch of the designer is immediately transformed into a virtual object, which can be placed within an existing context through simple three-dimensional modeling operations controlled step-by-step by the designer with the aid of computer simulations. The simplicity with which these manipulations can be carried out has led the designer toward the adoption of software solutions that often generate unpredictable shapes and spatiality. This is the case of ‘direct search methods’ of optimization based on the adoption of (‘heuristic’) evolutionary optimization algorithms, such as the so-called genetic algorithms, that through the selection of various parameters, lead to the selection of families of any kind of shapes, not always supported by a suitable constructive technology. Thus producing a dichotomy between designed shapes and realized forms. It becomes therefore relevant to verify today’s possibilities of congruence between designed and realized shapes in the context of a renewed ‘ethics of building’, where the evolution of the architectural form towards the designer’s vision is at the same time verifiable under the structural aspect.