CumInCAD is a Cumulative Index about publications in Computer Aided Architectural Design
supported by the sibling associations ACADIA, CAADRIA, eCAADe, SIGraDi, ASCAAD and CAAD futures

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_id 2730
authors Balkovich, Edward, Lerman, Steven and Parmelee, Richard P.
year 1985
title Computing in Higher Education : The ATHENA Experience
source communications of the ACM. November, 1985. vol. 28: pp. 1214- 1224
summary In this article the use of computation in higher education is approached from the broad sense of its actual use in the curriculum. The authors try to identify areas where current educational methods have observable deficiencies that might be alleviated by the use of appropriate software/hardware combinations. Project ATHENA at MIT is the example the article is based on
keywords networks, software, hardware, UNIX, education
series CADline
last changed 2003/06/02 13:58

_id ddss9409
id ddss9409
authors Beekman, Solange and Rikhof, Herman G.A.
year 1994
title Strategic Urban Planning in the Netherlands
source Second Design and Decision Support Systems in Architecture & Urban Planning (Vaals, the Netherlands), August 15-19, 1994
summary Since the mid-1980s, several Dutch towns have initiated many urban planning and design activities for their existing area. This represented a shift in that previous urban planning projects typicallyconcerned expansion in the outskirts of the city, or urban renewal. The complex and expensive renovation of the existing housing stock rarely allowed a deep interest in urban design. Since 1985, attention shifted from the housing stock to the city as a whole. Furthermore, public andprivate actors increasingly become involved in the planning process. It became clear that a more comprehensive plan for the whole existing town or region was needed. Conventional planning instruments were considered ill-suited for this new challenge. The paper discusses promising attempts of various urban planning instruments to get a stronger but also more flexible hold on thetransformation of the urban planning area in the Netherlands. These new planning instruments have three common characteristics: (i) they give special attention to the different levels of urban management needed for different urban areas, (ii) these strategic plans provide an integral view on the urban developments, and (iii) these plans introduce a new strategy to deal with both private initiatives to transform urban sites and monitor wishes, proposals, etc. from inhabitants in the neighbourhoods. A comparative analyses of several cities indicates, however, that, in addition to these common characteristics, major differences between their strategic plans exist depending upon their historic patrimonium, economic status and planning tradition.
series DDSS
email
last changed 2003/08/07 16:36

_id ca88
authors Buzbee, B.L. and Sharp, D.H.
year 1985
title Perspectives on Supercomputing
source Science. February, 1985. vol. 227: pp. 591-597 : ill. includes bibliography
summary This article provides a brief look at the current status of supercomputers and supercomputing in the United States. It addresses a variety of applications of supercomputers and the characteristics of a large modern supercomputing facility, the radical changes in the design of supercomputers that are impending, and the conditions that are necessary for a conducive climate for the further development and application of supercomputers
keywords parallel processing, hardware, business
series CADline
last changed 2003/06/02 13:58

_id c547
authors Fenves, Stephen J. and Rasdorf, William J.
year 1985
title Treatment of Engineering Design Constraints in a Relational Database
source Engineering with Computers. Springer-Verlag, Spring, 1985. vol. 1: pp. 27-37. includes bibliography
summary A major aspect of engineering design is the formulation, application, evaluation, and satisfaction of design constraints. The ability to represent and process a wide variety of such constraints is a necessary ingredient of an engineering design database. This is especially true in databases integrating several design processes, where the database management system must serve as an active design agent performing many of the consistency and integrity checks that are currently done manually. This paper presents a mechanism for representing and processing engineering design constraints. The mechanism can be used for checking that constraints are satisfied as well as for deriving attribute values that satisfy the applicable constraints. Furthermore, the mechanism provides flexibility in sequencing the enforcement of constraints by allowing new constraints to be applied to a preexisting state of the database as well as to all subsequent operations on the database. In both these respects, the mechanism proposed appears to have applications beyond engineering design. The mechanism presented handles a broad class of single-relation, single-tuple constraints typical in engineering design applications. Instead of relying on normalization where possible, to remove functional dependencies, the mechanism incorporates new attributes that represent the status (satisfied or violated) of each constraint, thereby increasing the functional dependence of the relation. Consequently, passive constraint checking can be readily extended to active assignment of attribute values that automatically satisfy constraints. A prototype system implementing many of the components presented has been programmed in Pascal. In addition, portions of the system were implemented using the Relational Information Management (RIM) system, a commercially available DBMS
keywords civil engineering, design, knowledge, relational database, CAE, constraints management
series CADline
last changed 2003/06/02 13:58

_id 02c6
authors Wheeler, B.J.Q
year 1986
title A Unified Model for Building
source Computer-Aided Architectural Design Futures [CAAD Futures Conference Proceedings / ISBN 0-408-05300-3] Delft (The Netherlands), 18-19 September 1985, pp. 200-231
summary It is commonly recognized that the time-honoured procedure for preparing an architectural design for building on site is inefficient. Each member of a team of consultant professionals makes an independently documented contribution. For a typical project involving an architect and structural, electrical, mechanical and public services engineers there will be at least five separate sets of general- arrangement drawings, each forming a model of the building, primarily illustrating one discipline but often having to include elements of others in order to make the drawing readable. For example, an air-conditioning duct-work layout is more easily understood when superimposed on the room layout it serves which the engineer is not responsible for but has to understand. Both during their parallel evolution and later, when changes have to be made during the detailed design and production drawing stages, it is difficult and time consuming to keep all versions coordinated. Complete coordination is rarely achieved in time, and conflicts between one discipline and another have to be rectified when encountered on site with resulting contractual implications. Add the interior designer, the landscape architect and other specialized consultants at one end of the list and contractors' shop drawings relating to the work of all the consultants at the other, and the number of different versions of the same thing grows, escalating the concomitant task of coordination. The potential for disputes over what is the current status of the design is enormous, first, amongst the consultants and second, between the consultants and the contractor. When amendments are made by one party, delay and confusion tend to follow during the period it takes the other parties to update their versions to include them. The idea of solving this problem by using a common computer-based model which all members of the project team can directly contribute to is surely a universally assumed goal amongst all those involved in computer-aided building production. The architect produces a root drawing or model, the 'Architect's base plan', to which the other consultants have read-only access and on top of which they can add their own write-protected files. Every time they access the model to write in the outcome of their work on the project they see the current version of the 'Architect's base plan' and can thus respond immediately to recent changes and avoid wasting time on redundant work. The architect meanwhile adds uniquely architectural material in his own overlaid files and maintains the root model as everybody's work requires. The traditional working pattern is maintained while all the participants have the ability to see their colleagues, work but only make changes to those parts for which they are responsible.
series CAAD Futures
last changed 1999/04/03 17:58

_id ce52
authors Abram, Greg, Weslover, Lee and Whitted, Turner
year 1985
title Efficient Alias-Free Rendering using Bit-masks and Look-up Tables
source SIGGRAPH '85 Conference Proceedings. July, 1985. vol. 19 ; no. 3: pp. 53-59 : ill. (some col.). includes bibliography
summary The authors demonstrate methods of rendering alias-free synthetic images using a precomputed convolution integral. The method is based on the observation that a visible polygon fragment's contribution to an image is solely a function of its position and shape, and that within a reasonable level of accuracy, a limited number of shapes represent the majority of cases encountered in images commonly rendered. The basic technique has been applied to several different rendering algorithms. A version of the newly non-uniform sampling technique implemented in the same program but with different tables values was introduced
keywords algorithms, computer graphics, anti-aliasing
series CADline
last changed 2003/06/02 13:58

_id 678e
authors Aish, Robert
year 1986
title Three-dimensional Input and Visualization
source Computer-Aided Architectural Design Futures [CAAD Futures Conference Proceedings / ISBN 0-408-05300-3] Delft (The Netherlands), 18-19 September 1985, pp. 68-84
summary The aim of this chapter is to investigate techniques by which man-computer interaction could be improved, specifically in the context of architectural applications of CAD. In this application the object being designed is often an assembly of defined components. Even if the building is not actually fabricated from such components, it is usually conceptualized in these terms. In a conventional graphics- based CAD system these components are usually represented by graphical icons which are displayed on the graphics screen and arranged by the user. The system described here consists of three- dimensional modelling elements which the user physically assembles to form his design. Unlike conventional architectural models which are static (i.e. cannot be changed by the users) and passive (i.e. cannot be read by a CAD system), this model is both 'user generated' and 'machine readable'. The user can create, edit and view the model by simple, natural modelling activities and without the need to learn complex operating commands often associated with CAD systems. In particular, the user can view the model, altering his viewpoint and focus of attention in a completely natural way. Conventional computer graphics within an associated CAD system are used to represent the detailed geometry which the different three-dimensional icons may represent. In addition, computer graphics are also used to present the output of the performance attributes of the objects being modelled. In the architectural application described in this chapter an energy- balance evaluation is displayed for a building designed using the modelling device. While this system is not intended to offer a completely free-form input facility it can be considered to be a specialist man-machine interface of particular relevance to architects or engineers.
series CAAD Futures
email
last changed 2003/11/21 15:15

_id cc15
authors Ansaldi, Silvia, De Floriani, Leila and Falcidieno, Bianca
year 1985
title Geometric Modeling of Solid Objects by Using a Face Adjacency Graph Representation
source SIGGRAPH '85 Conference Proceedings. July, 1985. vol. 19 ; no. 3: pp. 131-139 : ill. includes bibliography
summary A relational graph structure based on a boundary representation of solid objects is described. In this structure, called Face Adjacency Graph, nodes represent object faces, whereas edges and vertices are encoded into arcs and hyperarcs. Based on the face adjacency graph, the authors define a set of primitive face-oriented Euler operators, and a set of macro operators for face manipulation, which allow a compact definition and an efficient updating of solid objects. The authors briefly describe a hierarchical graph structure based on the face adjacency graph, which provides a representation of an object at different levels of detail. Thus it is consistent with the stepwise refinement process through which the object description is produced
keywords geometric modeling, graphs, objects, representation, data structures,B-rep, solid modeling, Euler operators
series CADline
last changed 2003/06/02 10:24

_id 8ae8
authors Ayala, D., P. Brunet and Juan (et al)
year 1985
title Object Representation by Means of Nominimal Division Quadtrees and Octrees
source ACM Transactions on Graphics. January, 1985. vol. 4: pp. 41-59 : ill. includes bibliography
summary Quadtree representation of two-dimensional objects is performed with a tree that describes the recursive subdivision of the more complex parts of a picture until the desired resolution is reached. At the end, all the leaves of the tree are square cells that lie completely inside or outside the object. There are two great disadvantages in the use of quadtrees as a representation scheme for objects in geometric modeling system: The amount of memory required for polygonal objects is too great, and it is difficult to recompute the boundary representation of the object after some Boolean operations have been performed. In the present paper a new class of quadtrees, in which nodes may contain zero or one edge, is introduced. By using these quadtrees, storage requirements are reduced and it is possible to obtain the exact backward conversion to boundary representation. Algorithms for the generation of the quadtree, boolean operation, and recomputation of the boundary representation are presented, and their complexities in time and space are discussed. Three- dimensional algorithms working on octrees are also presented. Their use in the geometric modeling of three-dimensional polyhedral objects is discussed
keywords geometric modeling, algorithms, octree, quadtree, curves, curved surfaces, boolean operations
series CADline
last changed 2003/06/02 13:58

_id 2d64
authors Batori, D.S. and Kim, W.
year 1985
title Modeling Concepts for VLSI CAD Objects
source ACM Transactions on Database Systems 10 No. 3 - pp. 322-346
summary VLSI CAD applications deal with design objects that have an interface description and an implementation description. Versions of design objects have a common interface but differ in their implementations. A molecular object is a modeling construct which enables a database entity to be represented by two sets of heterogeneous records, one set describes the object's interface and the other describes its implementation. Thus a reasonable starting point for modeling design objects is to begin with the concept of molecular objects. In this paper, we identify modeling concepts that are fundamental to capturing the semantics of VLSI CAD design objects and versions in terms of molecular objects. A provisional set of user operations on design objects, consistent with these modeling concepts, is also defined. The modeling framework that we present has been found useful for investigating physical storage techniques and change notification problems in version control. REFERENCES
series journal paper
last changed 2003/11/21 15:16

_id ddssar0206
id ddssar0206
authors Bax, M.F.Th. and Trum, H.M.G.J.
year 2002
title Faculties of Architecture
source Timmermans, Harry (Ed.), Sixth Design and Decision Support Systems in Architecture and Urban Planning - Part one: Architecture Proceedings Avegoor, the Netherlands), 2002
summary In order to be inscribed in the European Architect’s register the study program leading to the diploma ‘Architect’ has to meet the criteria of the EC Architect’s Directive (1985). The criteria are enumerated in 11 principles of Article 3 of the Directive. The Advisory Committee, established by the European Council got the task to examine such diplomas in the case some doubts are raised by other Member States. To carry out this task a matrix was designed, as an independent interpreting framework that mediates between the principles of Article 3 and the actual study program of a faculty. Such a tool was needed because of inconsistencies in the list of principles, differences between linguistic versions ofthe Directive, and quantification problems with time, devoted to the principles in the study programs. The core of the matrix, its headings, is a categorisation of the principles on a higher level of abstractionin the form of a taxonomy of domains and corresponding concepts. Filling in the matrix means that each study element of the study programs is analysed according to their content in terms of domains; thesummation of study time devoted to the various domains results in a so-called ‘profile of a faculty’. Judgement of that profile takes place by committee of peers. The domains of the taxonomy are intrinsically the same as the concepts and categories, needed for the description of an architectural design object: the faculties of architecture. This correspondence relates the taxonomy to the field of design theory and philosophy. The taxonomy is an application of Domain theory. This theory,developed by the authors since 1977, takes as a view that the architectural object only can be described fully as an integration of all types of domains. The theory supports the idea of a participatory andinterdisciplinary approach to design, which proved to be awarding both from a scientific and a social point of view. All types of domains have in common that they are measured in three dimensions: form, function and process, connecting the material aspects of the object with its social and proceduralaspects. In the taxonomy the function dimension is emphasised. It will be argued in the paper that the taxonomy is a categorisation following the pragmatistic philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce. It will bedemonstrated as well that the taxonomy is easy to handle by giving examples of its application in various countries in the last 5 years. The taxonomy proved to be an adequate tool for judgement ofstudy programs and their subsequent improvement, as constituted by the faculties of a Faculty of Architecture. The matrix is described as the result of theoretical reflection and practical application of a matrix, already in use since 1995. The major improvement of the matrix is its direct connection with Peirce’s universal categories and the self-explanatory character of its structure. The connection with Peirce’s categories gave the matrix a more universal character, which enables application in other fieldswhere the term ‘architecture’ is used as a metaphor for artefacts.
series DDSS
last changed 2003/11/21 15:16

_id ddss9408
id ddss9408
authors Bax, Thijs and Trum, Henk
year 1994
title A Taxonomy of Architecture: Core of a Theory of Design
source Second Design and Decision Support Systems in Architecture & Urban Planning (Vaals, the Netherlands), August 15-19, 1994
summary The authors developed a taxonomy of concepts in architectural design. It was accepted by the Advisory Committee for education in the field of architecture, a committee advising the European Commission and Member States, as a reference for their task to harmonize architectural education in Europe. The taxonomy is based on Domain theory, a theory developed by the authors, based on General Systems Theory and the notion of structure according to French Structuralism, takes a participatory viewpoint for the integration of knowledge and interests by parties in the architectural design process. The paper discusses recent developments of the taxonomy, firstly as a result of a confrontation with similar endeavours to structure the field of architectural design, secondly as a result of applications of education and architectural design practice, and thirdly as a result of theapplication of some views derived from the philosophical work from Charles Benjamin Peirce. Developments concern the structural form of the taxonomy comprising basic concepts and levelbound scale concepts, and the specification of the content of the fields which these concepts represent. The confrontation with similar endeavours concerns mainly the work of an ARCUK workingparty, chaired by Tom Marcus, based on the European Directive from 1985. The application concerns experiences with a taxonomy-based enquiry in order to represent the profile of educational programmes of schools and faculties of architecture in Europe in qualitative and quantitative terms. This enquiry was carried out in order to achieve a basis for comparison and judgement, and a basis for future guidelines including quantitative aspects. Views of Peirce, more specifically his views on triarchy as a way of ordering and structuring processes of thinking,provide keys for a re-definition of concepts as building stones of the taxonomy in terms of the form-function-process-triad, which strengthens the coherence of the taxonomy, allowing for a more regular representation in the form of a hierarchical ordered matrix.
series DDSS
last changed 2003/08/07 16:36

_id a619
authors Bentley, Jon L. and McGeoch, Catherine C.
year 1985
title Amortized Analyses of Self-Organizing Sequential Search ; Heuristics Programming Techniques and Data Structures
source communications of the ACM April, 1985. vol. 28: pp. 404-411 : ill. includes bibliography.
summary Amortization is used to analyze the heuristics in a worst- case sense. The relative merit of the heuristics in this analysis is different in the probabilistic analyses. Experiments show that the behavior of the heuristics on real data is more closely described by the amortized analyses than by the probabilistic analyses
keywords economics, analysis, search, heuristics
series CADline
last changed 2003/06/02 13:58

_id 4316
authors Bentley, Jon L.
year 1985
title Associative Arrays -- Programming Pearls
source communications of the ACM. June, 1985. vol. 28: pp. 570-576 : ill
summary Anthropological studies have shown that one's language has a profound effect on one's view of the world. This column is about a language feature outside the Algol heritage: associative arrays. The column examines the associative arrays provided by the AWK language
keywords techniques, programming, algorithms, data structures
series CADline
last changed 2003/06/02 13:58

_id a217
authors Bhatt, Rajesh V., Fisher, Edward L. and Rasdorf, William J.
year 1985
title Information Retrieval Architectures For Expert System/DBMS Communication
source Industrial Engineering Fall Conference Proceedings. December, 1985. pp. 315-320. CADLINE has abstract only
summary The development of expert systems (ES) for manufacturing problems indicates a need to interact with potentially large amounts of data, much of which resides elsewhere in the ES user's organization. A large amount of information required for planning, design, and control operations can be made available through an existing database management system (DBMS). The need for an ES to access that data is critical. This paper presents two approaches to the development of ES- DBMS interfaces, both query-language based. One approach uses a procedural attachment to the ES language to obtain the required data via the DBMS query language, while the other one uses a separate interface program between the ES and the query language of the DBMS. The procedural attachment is able to acquire data from a DBMS at a faster rate than the interface program; however, the procedural attachment lacks knowledge of the DBMS schema. On the other hand, the interface program sacrifices speed but promotes flexibility, as it has the capability of selecting which DBMS to extract the required data from and allowing augmentation of schema knowledge outside of the ES. A disadvantage of the interface approach is the amount of time involved in data retrieval. The process of writing information to disk files is I/O intensive. This can be quite slow, particularly in PROLOG, the language used to implement the ES. Thus the use of such an interface is only suitable in applications such as design, where extremely fast I/O is not required
keywords design, engineering, expert systems, information, database, DBMS
series CADline
last changed 2003/06/02 10:24

_id 644f
authors Bijl, Aart
year 1986
title Designing with Words and Pictures in a Logic Modelling Environment
source Computer-Aided Architectural Design Futures [CAAD Futures Conference Proceedings / ISBN 0-408-05300-3] Delft (The Netherlands), 18-19 September 1985, pp. 128-145
summary At EdCAAD we are interested in design as something people do. Designed artefacts, the products of designing, are interesting only in so far as they tell us something about design. An extreme expression of this position is to say that the world of design is the thoughts in the heads of designers, plus the skills of designers in externalizing their thoughts; design artifacts, once perceived and accepted in the worlds of other people, are no longer part of the world of design. We can describe design, briefly, as a process of synthesis. Design has to achieve a fusion between parts to create new parts, so that the products are recognized, as having a right and proper place in the world of people. Parts should be understood as referring to anything - physical objects, abstract ideas, aspirations. These parts occur in some design environment from which parts are extracted, designed upon and results replaced; in the example of buildings, the environment is people and results have to be judged by reference to that environment. It is characteristic of design that both the process and the product are not subject to explicit and complete criteria. This view of design differs sharply from the more orthodox understanding of scientific and technological endeavours which rely predominantly on a process of analysis. In the latter case, the approach is to decompose a problem into parts until individual parts are recognized as being amenable to known operations and results are reassembled into a solution. This process has a peripheral role in design when evaluating selected aspects of tentative design proposals, but the absence of well-defined and widely recognized criteria for design excludes it from the main stream of analytical developments.
series CAAD Futures
last changed 2003/11/21 15:16

_id 4532
authors Bono, Peter R.
year 1985
title A Survey of Graphics Standards and Their Role in Information Interchange
source IEEE Computer. October, 1985. vol. 18: pp. 63-75 : ill. ; tables. includes bibliography
summary The survey describes each graphic standard and explains the interrelationships among the standards. The role and commercial impact of PCs serving as workstations in a distributed, network, multimedia environment is emphasized. It is shown that current graphics standardization activity focused on three principal areas: the application interface, the device interface, and picture exchange. The operator interface and hardware interfaces will be expected to be the subjects for standardization in the future. In addition, picture exchange will be replaced by information exchange, where information includes text, image, and voice components merged with graphics to create an integrated whole
keywords computer graphics, standards, GKS, communication
series CADline
last changed 2003/06/02 13:58

_id a6f1
authors Bridges, A.H.
year 1986
title Any Progress in Systematic Design?
source Computer-Aided Architectural Design Futures [CAAD Futures Conference Proceedings / ISBN 0-408-05300-3] Delft (The Netherlands), 18-19 September 1985, pp. 5-15
summary In order to discuss this question it is necessary to reflect awhile on design methods in general. The usual categorization discusses 'generations' of design methods, but Levy (1981) proposes an alternative approach. He identifies five paradigm shifts during the course of the twentieth century which have influenced design methods debate. The first paradigm shift was achieved by 1920, when concern with industrial arts could be seen to have replaced concern with craftsmanship. The second shift, occurring in the early 1930s, resulted in the conception of a design profession. The third happened in the 1950s, when the design methods debate emerged; the fourth took place around 1970 and saw the establishment of 'design research'. Now, in the 1980s, we are going through the fifth paradigm shift, associated with the adoption of a holistic approach to design theory and with the emergence of the concept of design ideology. A major point in Levy's paper was the observation that most of these paradigm shifts were associated with radical social reforms or political upheavals. For instance, we may associate concern about public participation with the 1970s shift and the possible use (or misuse) of knowledge, information and power with the 1980s shift. What has emerged, however, from the work of colleagues engaged since the 1970s in attempting to underpin the practice of design with a coherent body of design theory is increasing evidence of the fundamental nature of a person's engagement with the design activity. This includes evidence of the existence of two distinctive modes of thought, one of which can be described as cognitive modelling and the other which can be described as rational thinking. Cognitive modelling is imagining, seeing in the mind's eye. Rational thinking is linguistic thinking, engaging in a form of internal debate. Cognitive modelling is externalized through action, and through the construction of external representations, especially drawings. Rational thinking is externalized through verbal language and, more formally, through mathematical and scientific notations. Cognitive modelling is analogic, presentational, holistic, integrative and based upon pattern recognition and pattern manipulation. Rational thinking is digital, sequential, analytical, explicatory and based upon categorization and logical inference. There is some relationship between the evidence for two distinctive modes of thought and the evidence of specialization in cerebral hemispheres (Cross, 1984). Design methods have tended to focus upon the rational aspects of design and have, therefore, neglected the cognitive aspects. By recognizing that there are peculiar 'designerly' ways of thinking combining both types of thought process used to perceive, construct and comprehend design representations mentally and then transform them into an external manifestation current work in design theory is promising at last to have some relevance to design practice.
series CAAD Futures
email
last changed 2003/11/21 15:16

_id c211
authors Brown, A.G.P.
year 1986
title A Year's Experience with CATIA and CADAM
source Teaching and Research Experience with CAAD [4th eCAADe Conference Proceedings] Rome (Italy) 11-13 September 1986, pp. 7-16
doi https://doi.org/10.52842/conf.ecaade.1986.007
summary In June 1985 Liverpool University obtained the CAD packages CATIA and CADAM to run on its IBM 4341 mainframe. The following is a brief description of the investigations which have taken place in the first year of their implementation to gauge the usefulness of these packages, principalLy as CAAD teaching aids. Neither CATIA nor CADAM were initially developed as architectural design aids so a matter of initial concern was their appropriateness for teaching (and possibly research) in an architectural environment.
series eCAADe
email
last changed 2022/06/07 07:54

_id 63d0
authors Carrara, Gianfranco and Novembri, Gabriele
year 1986
title Constraint-bounded design search
source Computer-Aided Architectural Design Futures [CAAD Futures Conference Proceedings / ISBN 0-408-05300-3] Delft (The Netherlands), 18-19 September 1985, pp. 146-157
summary The design process requires continual checking of the consistency of design choices against given sets of goals that have been fulfilled. Such a check is generally performed by comparing abstract representations of design goals with these of the sought real building objects (RBO) resulting from complex intellectual activities closely related to the designer's culture and to the environment in which he operates. In this chapter we define a possible formalization of such representations concerning the goals and the RBO that are usually considered in the architectural design process by our culture in our environment. The representation of design goals is performed by expressing their objective aspects (requirements) and by defining their allowable values (performance specifications). The resulting system of requirements defines the set of allowable solutions and infers an abstract representation of the sought building objects (BO) that consists of the set of characteristics (attributes and relations) which are considered relevant to represent the particular kind of RBO with respect to the consistency check with design goals. The values related to such characteristics define the performances of the RBO while their set establishes its behaviour. Generally speaking, there is no single real object corresponding to an abstract representation but the whole class of the RBO that are equivalent with respect to the values assumed by the considered characteristics. The more we increase the number of these, as well as their specifications, the smaller the class becomes until it coincides with a single real object - given that the assessed specifications be fully consistent. On the other hand, the corresponding representation evolves to the total prefiguration of the RBO. It is not therefore possible to completely define a BO representation in advance since this is inferred by the considered goals and is itself a result of the design process. What can only be established in advance is that any set of characteristics assumed to represent any RBO consists of hierarchic, topological, geometrical and functional relations among the parts of the object at any level of aggregation (from components to space units, to building units, to the whole building) that we define representation structure (RS). Consequently the RS may be thought as the elementary structures that, by superposition and interaction, set up the abstract representation that best fit with design goals.
series CAAD Futures
last changed 1999/04/03 17:58

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