AA EmTech graduates, Puja Bhagat (MArch) and Jonathan Wong (MArch), have developed and released H.I.V.E., a socially driven pedestrian simulation plugin for Grasshopper3d, as a part of their MArch thesis.

H.I.V.E. – meaning Human Interaction Visualisation Engine – is a pedestrian simulation plugin for Grasshopper which leverages human interactions for generative architectural design. It integrates social factors as a driver of design, enabling architects and urban planners to make better informed design decisions at varying scales. H.I.V.E empowers designers to holistically understand how people may utilise different spaces by humanising the computational design process.

By offering three different methodologies for conducting a socially driven pedestrian simulation, H.I.V.E. operates on large scale scenarios by abstracting the relationships between buildings and spaces as a network of nodes and edges. The cellular automata method operates on medium scale scenarios by introducing spatial characteristics to agents and programs in a two-dimensional space. The physics based simulation operates on the smallest scale scenarios by allowing agents to interact through vector forces within a bounded three-dimensional space. For more information on Puja and Jonathan’s thesis, click here and download their plugin here.

Image: Socially driven pedestrian simulation completed by H.I.V.E.