Homeowners and home buyers looking for a custom home often encounter an expensive process when attempting to create their dream home. They are either stuck with pre-made plans or unable to take on projects to transform their house. Startup Higharc is attempting to provide a solution to this problem, with its web-based home design app geared towards the everyday user and home buyer, The Architect's Newspaper reports.
Higharc is trying to embed “architectural intelligence” directly into its web-based software. The app uses, among other technologies, “procedural generation,” a computational technique borrowed from video games that generates graphics on the fly. “The difference between where this lands in gaming and our approach is that we’re building in these heuristic or structural rules, so that no house that’s produced in our system is structurally deficient,” explained Michael Bergin, co-founder and director of architecture at Higharc. “[Higharc] looks at the international building code and prescriptive span tables and ensures that every house that we are producing is something that’s buildable.” Higharc said that as it expands into new markets—it’s currently beginning its first roll out in the Chapel Hill, N.C, area—it is also incorporating regional building codes.
To help with siting, Higharc pulls in public GIS data. Users can pick a plot anywhere in their area from a Google Maps–like interface and try out building their home. They can then take their design and see how it fits on another plot, and Higharc will adjust the home accordingly to make sure it fits just right on the new site.
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