Continued population growth and urban regeneration have made the design of residential buildings one of the most significant topics for architects. With the development of automation and computational tools, more and more algorithms are being applied to architectural design to save time and labour, while exploring the diversity of results. This project aims to establish a computational process to solve the procedural generation of massing for residential buildings based on the combined use of Texture Synthesis and Cellular Automata.

The proposed model translates design requirements and site constraints into detailed geometric output in real time. Texture Synthesis is used on given sites upfront to generate an overall distribution with specific features, and Cellular Automata is applied at a later stage to delineate detailed house units. Several indicators on density, house accessibility, daylighting and visibility were set to evaluate the performance of the whole community and individual houses respectively.

By combining the advantages of Texture Synthesis and Cellular Automata, the proposed methods are able to successfully resolve tile-based layouts and 3D massing for residential buildings. In doing so these can offer a valuable support for both the design of complex residential projects and the fast exploration of a wide range of solution that meet environmental, circulation, urban constraints.