Vancouver Tower Toolbench

Small tools for designing a high-rise in Vancouver. Each one takes a set of City rules and shows you where your tower stands against them.

Made by Ruijie Liu and Sinnie Choi in Xun Liu's ARCH 540 studio, UBC SALA, fall 2026

These are study tools for early design. They won't tell you if a tower complies, size its structure or prove it's feasible, and each one shows where its numbers come from.

We link the tools you already use and leave the decisions to you.

We mapped how a Vancouver high-rise gets designed today and where that process tends to break. The workbench is built around those spots.

10steps from brief to City decision

7places where the process breaks

11tools mapped against the steps

89/89checks passed by our first prototype

Downtown Vancouver seen from Queen Elizabeth Park — Protected view from Queen Elizabeth Park Jonathanfv · CC BY 3.0

The Cambie Street view cone toward the North Shore mountains — Cambie Street view cone Ian Spence · CC BY 3.0

Vancouver House tower under construction — Vancouver House rising W & J · CC BY-SA 2.0

Living Shangri-La tower — Living Shangri-La Klazu · CC BY-SA 4.0

False Creek towers in 2025 — False Creek, 2025 Northwest · CC BY 4.0

Vancouver skyline with the North Shore mountains — Skyline and mountains Kyle Pearce · CC BY-SA 2.0

How a tower is designed today

Ten steps from brief to City decision, with a lot of going back and forth between people and tools.

Tap a step to see who does it and where it breaks, or tap a lane (a to g) to see every step it touches.

Pictograms drawn with GPT image generation for this site. On a phone, swipe sideways.

Public Views Guidelines cover — **Step 3a**Public Views Guidelines

Vancouver Tall Challenge brief cover — **Step 1**Competition brief

Evolution of High-rise Buildings in Vancouver first page — **Step 5**Structure research

The ten steps in detail

Where today's tools stop

Each tool covers part of the process, and none of them gets as far as the City enquiry or decision.

Tap a tool's line to see what it does and where it stops.

Solid dots: the tool covers the step. Hollow dots: partly, only if scripted, or planned.

All tool cards

Who does what

AI helps with the wording, code does the checking, and people make the calls.

AI can

Turn what you ask into a structured request
Propose a revision within allowed limits
Draft an explanation with its sources

Code checks

Units, coordinate frame, source date
Geometry and arithmetic, recomputed
Every number has a citation, or it stops

People decide

What the brief is and what matters
Which option goes forward
What is frozen and submitted

AI cannot confer compliance · refresh City policy · supply a survey · repair a file that lost its meaning · settle values · replace City discretion

Seven decisions that stay with people Tap one to read it.

G1 to G7 run from the brief to the City's decision.

How our workbench runs

The steps run in a fixed order, and code picks what runs next.

Tap any step in the cycle to see who does it and what is checked.

Orange: you decide. Violet: the AI writes words. Black: code checks. Blue: tools compute.

Code choosesA router, not the model, decides which tool runs next.

3 rounds, then stopEvery correction loop has a limit and an exit.

CANNOT DETERMINEWhen an input is missing or unclear, it says so instead of guessing.

Each AI step, its check, and who closes the loop

AI step	Pattern	Check that cannot be skipped	Who closes the loop
Parse intent into fields	Chain + router	PreToolUse: schema, range, units, frame, date	Harness blocks; a person resolves ambiguity
Retrieve source passages	Fixed approved route	Identity, version, locator, authority	Planner confirms it applies
Call and normalise tools	Fixed router	PostToolUse: schema, IDs, units, hash, recompute	Harness retries up to 3, then stops
Propose alternatives	Evaluator–optimiser	Geometry and arithmetic rejection	Harness retries; architect changes the rules
Explain the comparison	Evaluator–optimiser	Stop hook: numbers, citations, basis, no verdict	AI revises up to 3; a person approves
Reframe or select	None (person only)	Person, basis, evidence and version logged	The project team

First attempt: hub v0.5

It reads real exports from our tools, measures three options with the same area rule, and logs every decision.

89/89hand-written checks passed
run on 16 Oct 2026

Tap a block to see what that set of checks tests.

Hub v0.5 Compare and decide screen: tool stations across the top, and a table checking three tower options against the brief and City rules — Hub v0.5, the Compare and decide screen. Across the top are the stations, one per tool (Vista, Form Studio, Structure Lab and others). The table checks options A, B and C against the competition brief and City rules: height, non-residential floor area, housing plate size and tower separation.

Not shown yet: no AI model is connected · a sample block, not a legal parcel · City area definitions not applied · not yet tried by users

How this research was made

A GPT model wrote the drafts, and Claude Opus 5.5 reviewed them in two rounds before we published.

PlanQuestions from the Assignment 2 brief
DraftGPT (gpt-5.6-sol) · 53 sources
Peer reviewClaude Opus 5.5 · method and sources
Revise26 findings applied
GateConditional pass · final fixes

60 sources: City of Vancouver documents, 14 peer-reviewed papers, vendor documentation and our own files. 59 opened and checked. The City's new design guidelines take effect 27 October 2026; the floorplate figures will be rechecked then.

Read the full report ↗