Decisions taken in the ‘private design space’ of the design team or ‘actor’ are closely related to the type of support that can be provided by a Collaborative Design system: automatic checks performed by activating procedures and methods, reporting of 'local' conflicts, methods and knowledge for the resolution of ‘local’ conflicts, creation of new IT objects/ building components, who the objects must refer to (the ‘owner’), 'situated' aspects (Gero and Reffat, 2001) of the IT objects/building components.

Decisions taken in the ‘shared design space’ involve aspects that are typical of networked design and that are partially present in the ‘private’ design space. Cross-checking, reporting of ‘global’ conflicts to all those concerned, even those who are unaware they are concerned, methods for their resolution, the modification of data structure and interface according to the actors interacting with it and the design phase, the definition of a 'dominus' for every IT object (i.e. the decision-maker, according to the design phase and the creation of the object). All this is made possible both by the model for representing the building (Carrara and Fioravanti, 2001), and by the type of IT representation of the individual building components, using the methods and techniques of Knowledge Engineering through a structured set of Knowledge Bases, Inference Engines and Databases. The aim is to develop suitable tools for supporting integrated Process/Product design activity by means of a effective and innovative representation of building entities (technical components, constraints, methods) in order to manage and resolve conflicts generated during the design activity.

Pairs of participants were set a design problem and asked to solve it in face-to-face settings. The same problem was then tackled by participants in settings using two different modes of computer-supported communication: email and an electronic whiteboard. Protocols were collected and analyzed in terms of the constraints of each tool relative to the task and to each other. The GOMS methodology was used as a way to represent the collaborative design process in a way that yields information on both the productivity and performance of participants in each of the three experimental conditions. It also yielded information on the component elements of the design process, the basic cognitive building-blocks of design, thereby suggesting fundamentally new tools that might be created for interaction in virtual environments.

A further goal of the study was to explore the nature of task differences in relation to alternative platforms for communication. It was hypothesized that design processes involving significant negotiation would be less aided by computer support than straight forward design problems. The latter involve cooperative knowledge application by both participants and are therefore facilitated by information-rich forms of computer support. The former, on the other hand, requires conflict resolution and is inhibited by non face-to-face interaction. The results of this study point to the fact that the success of collaboration in virtual space is not just dependent on the nature of the tools but also on the specific nature of the collaborative task.

Cyberspace is an electronic extension of this cognitive space. Designers of virtual environments already know the power these spaces have on the imagination. Computers are no longer just tools for projecting buildings. They change the very substance of design. Cyberspace is itself a subject for design. With computers architects can design space both for physical and non-physical media. A conscious integration of cognitive and physical space in architecture can affect construction and maintenance costs, and the impact on natural and urban environments.

This paper is about the convergence of physical and electronic space and its potential effects on architecture. The first part of the paper will define cognitive space and its relationship to cyberspace. The second part will relate cyberspace to the production of architecture. Finally, a recent project done at the University of Michigan Graduate School of Architecture will illustrate the integration of physical and cyberspaces.