Optimal design of new hospitals: A computational workflow for stacking, zoning, and routing

The paper proposes a generative design workflow for three major hospital layout planning steps to satisfy multiplex configurational requirements. The initial step is stacking through clustering functional spaces into floor plans, for which a spectral method is presented. Subsequently, a novel simultaneous process of zoning and routing is proposed as a Mixed-Integer Programming problem-solving task; performed on a quadrilateral mesh whose faces and edges are allocated respectively to the rooms and the corridors. The paper situates the workflow in the context of an Activity-Relations-Chart for a general hospital while demonstrating, explaining, and justifying the generated optimal floor plans. The conversion of the hospital layout problem to a Mixed-Integer Programming problem enables the use of existing Operations Research solvers, allowing for the generation of optimal solutions in a digital design environment. The comprehensive problem formulation for a real-world scenario opens a new avenue for utilization of mathematical programming/optimization in healthcare design.