Boundary-Constrained Diffusion Models for Floorplan Generation: Balancing Realism and Diversity

Abstract: Diffusion models have become widely popular for automated floorplan generation, producing highly realistic layouts conditioned on user-defined constraints. However, optimizing for perceptual metrics such as the Fréchet Inception Distance (FID) causes limited design diversity. To address this, we propose the Diversity Score (DS), a metric that quantifies layout diversity under fixed constraints. Moreover, to improve geometric consistency, we introduce a Boundary Cross-Attention (BCA) module that enables conditioning on building boundaries. Our experiments show that BCA significantly improves boundary adherence, while prolonged training drives diversity collapse undiagnosed by FID, revealing a critical trade-off between realism and diversity. Out-Of-Distribution evaluations further demonstrate the models' reliance on dataset priors, emphasizing the need for generative systems that explicitly balance fidelity, diversity, and generalization in architectural design tasks.