id |
ddss9482 |
authors |
Schmitt, Gerhard N. |
year |
1994 |
title |
Interaction with Architectural Cases in a Virtual Design Environment |
source |
Second Design and Decision Support Systems in Architecture & Urban Planning (Vaals, the Netherlands), August 15-19, 1994 |
summary |
The prime business of architecture is change through design. While most architects will welcome any tool which supports this activity with minimal effort, they will not embrace a tool which either seems to automate design or requires major efforts to understand and use. Conventional databases - be it in the form of books or computer applications - are normally in a serving function to support the activity of design and to provide reference. Visual databases have a long history in architecture in the form of drawings, photographs and, more recently, computer-captu-red or computer-generated images. Whereas the first computer-based image libraries closely followed the existing paradigm of existing paper-based libraries, new developments both in software and in computing media offer different opportunities. Knowledge-based and case-based descriptions of architectural features increasingly replace the traditional, passive representations. While in the past these images were subject to more or less random interpretations, the new computer-based images are only one representation of a model which includes many other aspects. The visual aspects of a building are thus no longer restricted to the finished drawing, but new representations of the abstractions of a building become possible. True and direct interaction with visually presented objects thus becomes a reality. The paper presents a prototype of a visual database in a virtual design environment in its critical aspects: (i) the architectural content and representation of such a database and the criteria for the cases in it, (ii) the enabling computing and software environment, and (iii) three practical applications. The prototype is presently being implemented in the Architectural Space Laboratory (ASL) in the Department of Architecture at ETh Zurich. |
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last changed |
2003/08/07 16:36 |
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