Designing Buildings: The Architectural Part

By Charles Xie

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We envision a future in which AI can be used to design green buildings that consume as less energy as possible without compromising our standard of living. Before that kind of AI is invented, we need to have a tool that humans can use to design a wide variety of buildings first. The devleopment of AI-enabled architecture design can be thought of as a process of machine learning from a large set of designs created by humans, possibly even augmented by using computer vision to learn from the tremendous amount of images of existing buildings on the Internet. In Part I of this series of articles, we show the current architectural design capabilities of Aladdin with the following examples. You can view and edit any of these examples by clicking the link below it. Building energy analysis will be introduced later in this series.

A colonial house

American colonial architecture represents a style associated with the colonial period of the United States. It typically features a rectangular shape with gable roofs and symmetrical arrangements of windows.

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A Dutch colonial house

Dutch colonial is a subtype of the colonial style that is primarily characterized by gambrel roofs. This example shows a Dutch colonial house with two intersecting gambrel roofs, two dormers on the main roof, and a front porch.

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A Cape Cod house

A Cape Cod house is an architectural style originated from Cape Cod of Massachusetts. It is typically a single or double-story house with a pitched gable roof and a chimney. The following example shows a Cape Cod house with three dormer windows and an attached garage.

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A Cape Cod house with a solarium

The following example shows a Cape Cod house with two dormer windows connected with a shed dormer in the middle. A solarium is attached to its sun-facing side.

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A bonnet roof house

The following example shows a bonnet roof that provides cover around the edges of the house for a surrounding porch.

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A mansard roof house

The following example shows a house with a mansard roof with dormer windows.

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A barn house with a monitor roof

The following example shows a barn house with a monitor roof.

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A Spanish style hotel

The following example shows a hotel with open arched doors.

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An adobe pueblo

The following example shows an adobe pueblo, a cluster of adobe houses built very closely together and stacked several stories high. It is a style associated with the Native American tribe of Puebloan people in Southwestern United States.

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A modern house

Modern home design features simple shapes. The idea is that form should follow function with minimal environmental impacts.

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A house with a butterfly roof

In Aladdin, butterfly roofs can be created by morphing a gable roof using its three control points.

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An apartment building

The following is an apartment building.

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