Quickborner Team, DuPont test space, 1967
Circulation is a complex topic, involving studies that trace back from Quickborner Team’s Burolandschaft (or even earlier if you consider Alexander Klein’s Existenzminimum), and involving knowledge that gave birth to entire fields of study such as Space Syntax. Far from trying to cover the whole ground here, this part is just a set of suggestions in the hope of building a bridge and possible interoperability with those fields of study, not necessarily aimed at performativity, but producing data for informed decision by search and result assessment.
Ricardo Bofill Taller de Arquitectura - The City in the Space (1971) - integrated circulation in a modular system
Circulation Topology - Bill Hillier, Space is the Machine
Assembler is conceived with AssemblyObjects at the scale of modular architectural spaces, with construction elements and traversable voids inside the same collision Mesh. With this kind of setup, one can draw and include in an XData object a line graph representing the circulation topology inside a single AO. With thoughtful lines and Handles positioning, when 2 AO connect with each other, where voids join together also connectivity lines join at the extremities, thus forming a larger connectivity graph that can then be analysed and navigated for all related intents and purposes.
Connectivity graphs must respect some constraints:
See this example:
Circulation path (in blue) associated to an actual geometry (in white) inside a collision geometry (in green). Note that the circulation graph touches the Collision Mesh only in presence of voids
2objects assembled, the voids touch and the circulation path connects
3 object assembled, circulation paths connects at voids
2 objects assembled, circulation paths do not connect in this case
Another (future) possibility is to use the (upcoming) Grasshopper plugin Parkour to generate Navigation Meshes (NavMesh) for your assemblages.
<aside> 💡 complete this part. Parkour isn’t out yet!
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