Exhibition, The Weather To Come: Forest, City, Fire, Cloud. UC Berkeley, Institute of Urban & Regional Development, SF Climate Week 2026

Ramon Weber, Rae Zhao, Will Bartlett Suzuki, Soomin Park, Emma Nakaoka, Sihyeok Yang, Linc Ruiz-Truong, Hitiksha Bansal, and Wenzhuo Cai.

This research explored strategies of how computational methods can assess existing commercial buildings for conversion to affordable residential use. Through both in depth architectural case studies and high-level urban data analysis we are approached the challenge from two different directions. Through an architectural lens we conducted an in-depth literature review of building retrofits in urban contexts to identify different architectural and structural design strategies that could be applied to office-to residential conversions. We created a catalogue of possible interventions that can be mapped to existing buildings. Through a technological lens we created algorithmic workflows that would allow for estimation of building retrofit potential and created new prototypes for design interfaces for architectural designers to explore the potential of building retrofits. The digital algorithms combined existing graph-based analysis and design automation research with scalable computational geometry workflows and algorithms that are needed for large-scale urban analytics and estimation of building retrofit potentials.

The installation at the 19th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, curated by Carlo Ratti, creates a physical snapshot of the digital floor plan automation algorithms.

A database of 144 floor plans is distributed over a plinth. Each unique floor plan has a corresponding hypergraph representation. The nodes and lines in the hypergraphs are physically represented through 3D printed nodes and aluminum struts.

Four buildings with the same outlines hover over the database and pick and choose different floorplans underneath them. The hypergraphs of the chosen floorplans are extracted and projected into the building. The selected floorplans are adjusted to the new apartment boundaries inside the building and create different internal configurations. An environmental simulation assesses the performance of each layout in terms of daylight, energy use and spatial configuration.

The work was supported by the University of California, Berkeley, and Cass Calder Smith Architects.

Team:

Ramon Elias Weber, PhD, Assistant Professor UC Berkeley

Yuhan Zhang, Frederic Lam, Zhuoer Chen, Leah Altman, Linc Ruiz-Truong, Mia Wilson, Emma Nakoaka, Sihyeok Yang and Noel Fäh.