Crowd project to help architects

Office design news from Morgan Lovell

Published on 28-07-2011

Architects will benefit from a new project which uses artificial intelligence to recreate how large crowds move through buildings.

The project will demonstrate how the design or space planning of a building can either limit or enable crowds who are using it.

The software is being created by engineering consultancy Buro Happold and researchers from Bath and Bournemouth universities.

The program will allow designers to create a visual representation of a crowd, helping them to look at it as individuals with their own goals and behaviour rather than as a single mass of people.

Project supervisor Julian Padger said: "What Buro Happold wants to be able to understand is the impact of a space on the way people move."

The researchers hope to create an updated version of crown simulation software, taking into account hundreds of individual movements and creating a more sophisticated system through modern advances in processing power.

The Bournemouth/Bath project will look at reproducing crowds in a realistic manner, and making movement believable from both wide angles and close-up. They will also show how individual movements can affect the whole group.