This paper explores the challenges of converting architectural floor plans from raster to vector images. Unlike previous studies, our research focuses on domain adaptation to address stylistic and technical variations across different floor plan datasets. We develop and test our vectorization method on the CubiCasa5K benchmark, which includes 3 different floor plan styles. Our analysis reveals differences in input features across the CubiCasa5K styles, indicating the potential for domain adaptation research, mostly in room segmentation. However, we also find multiple indications that labelling in the CubiCasa5K dataset is ambiguous and inconsistent. Furthermore, styles with more training data do not always perform better, highlighting the complexity differences between floor plan styles. Our baseline shows a 0.7% gap for rooms yet a 0.6% improvement for objects, likely caused by the smaller feature gaps and inconsistent labelling. To address the adaptation gap, we add a Multi-Kernel Maximum Mean Discrepancy (MK-MMD) loss to the CubiCasa5K model to minimize feature distribution differences between domains. While our MK-MMD implementation shows potential for reducing the adaptation gap, persistence issues and mixed results across classes make it difficult to draw clear conclusions. Our findings also show the role of balancing spatial context in the MK-MMD calculation. These insights lay a foundation for future domain adaptation research in floor plan vectorization.

The realm of architectural design and conceptualization, despite witnessing advancements in design complexity facilitated by technological tools and fabrication techniques, appears to have experienced limited transformative change over time in the way we begin our design process. But is there an alternative way to look at architecture ? Perhaps a completely different way to begin a project ? Can the age of data abundance cause a shift in the way we look at architectural design ?