Design exploration of architectural geometries and structural performance for sports arenas based on SOM-clustering and structural performance simulation

Indoor sports arenas are a kind of important public buildings, which require iconic architectural forms and well performing structures for the long-span roofs. Hence, during the early stage of an arena design, it is crucial for designers to define a proper building form based on integrated design exploration of both geometric typology and structural performance. To support such design exploration, this paper proposes a method based on SOM (self-organizing map)-clustering and structural performance simulation as well as SAG (Sports Arena Generator: a specific parametric model for arenas proposed by the authors). This method can support designers to explore designs according to both geometries and performance and also illustrate the relationships between geometric typology and specific performance values, which is crucial for both architectural design and the research about building performance. A hypothetic arena is used as an example to demonstrate and validate the method.