hr-studioSearch · 03
A computational design primer · Objectives & Fitness

The landscape of better.

Feasibility told you where you may stand; an objective tells you how good the standing is. Score every design and the flat map rises into terrain — hills of value, valleys of waste, ridgelines of compromise. Optimization is mountaineering in this landscape, and before you climb, you should learn to read it: its peaks, its false summits, and who decided which way is up.

Scroll to begin
i.

A number for every design

A fitness function is just a rule that scores a design — here, the tower’s usable floor area. Apply it to every point of the map at once and the space acquires relief: warm where the score runs high, contour lines tracing equal value like a topo sheet. Your design is a hiker with an altimeter.

Drag around the map and read your score.

Warm = higher score · contours = equal value
ii.

Peaks, and false peaks

Real landscapes are multimodal — several hills, one true summit. And here is the oldest trap in optimization: stand anywhere and walk straight uphill, and you reach the top of your hill, which may not be the top. Tap anywhere to release a climber and watch which basin claims it.

Tap to drop climbers; ★ marks the true summit.

Uphill always ends on a peak — not always the right one
iii.

Whose “better”?

The landscape isn’t discovered — it’s declared. Score the same towers for raw floor area and the champion is a fat full-height slab; score for material efficiency and a modest mid-rise wins; score for slender drama and a tapered spire takes it. Same designs, three landscapes, three different champions. Choosing the objective is the real design act.

Switch the objective; watch the terrain and champion move.

Same map · three declared landscapes
iv.

Better lives on the edge

Now lay last chapter’s rules over the terrain. If the free summit is illegal — too tall for the cap, too greedy for the daylight plane — then the best legal design slides downhill until it hits a rule and stops exactly on the boundary. This is why real buildings are built to the height limit, to the setback, to the budget: optima press against active constraints.

Toggle the rules and watch the champion hit the fence.

The legal best presses against the rule
v.

The landscape room

The terrain in full relief. The fitness surface stands as a shaded 3D model you can orbit — choose the objective and watch the mountains rearrange; switch on the site rules and see the illegal territory sink into shadow with the legal champion ★ pinned to its fence. Tap the small map to drop climbers and watch their uphill trails sort themselves into basins. Next chapter, we stop walking uphill and start searching properly.

Drag the relief to orbit · tap the map to drop climbers
Score the space and it becomes terrain; choose the score and you choose the terrain. Peaks deceive, champions change with the question, and the legal best leans on the fence. Next: how to actually find the summit — strategies for searching a landscape you cannot see all at once.