The recently developments in computational design methods have addressed the need of translating reference data into digital input. Therefore, the uneasily quantifiable data such as social and cultural references receive much less attention, thus resulting in a gap in the literature, namely, poor understanding of how people live and adapt buildings designed by architectural professions. In contrast, there are potential applications for social and cultural evaluation in architectural social science and environmental psychology, such as systematic frameworks that can be used to translate human psychological traits (personal, social and cultural) into digitised data. In Computer Science, a similar view exists in the agent-based modelling sub-area.
The aims of this study is to investigate how human emotion and behaviour relational to surrounding built environment can be modelled and simulated digitally, by creating a parametric platform that provides simulation of human inhabiting changeable virtual environments involving agent-based modelling. With its innovative idea of connecting cross-disciplinary knowledge, the study is expected to produce novel applications of computational tools and to demonstrate prototypes of ‘virtually lived’ architecture, which will help architects to upgrade their design through users’ spatial engagement.