Living Cities Residential Tower for the 21st Century Design Competition
In Collaboration with Alfonso Oliva, Senior Structural Engineer

OpTowers is a system to generate schemes for the initial design phase given consideration to embodied energy of materials and building operation energy efficiency. An optimization workflow was implemented to minimize steel embodied energy and maximize solar radiation. A typical housing project in New York City was studied and used to define the site and program parameters. Scheme massing and orientation was determined by site, program, and solar parameters. Two structural strategies (moment frame and brace frame) and one façade strategies (full glazing curtain wall) were applied and/or optimized to each scheme. The catalogue of tower schemes serves as a reference for the preliminary design of energy-conscience structures.