| authors |
McLaughlin, Sally |
| year |
1991 |
| title |
Reading Architectural Plans: A Computable Model |
| source |
Computer Aided Architectural Design Futures: Education, Research, Applications [CAAD Futures ‘91 Conference Proceedings / ISBN 3-528-08821-4] Zürich (Switzerland), July 1991, pp. 347-364 |
| summary |
A fundamental aspect of the expertise of the architectural designer is the ability to assess the quality of existing and developing proposals from schematic representations such as plans, elevations and sections. In this paper I present a computable model of those aspects of the evaluation of architectural floor plans that I believe to be amenable to rule-like formulation. The objective behind the development of this model is twofold: 1) to articulate a belief about the role of simple symbolic representations in the task of evaluation, a task which relies primarily on uniquely human capabilities; and 2) to explore the possible uses of such representations in the development of design expertise. // Input to the model consists of a specification of a design proposal in terms of walls, doors, windows, openings and spaces together with a specification of the context in which the proposal has been developed. Information about context is used to retrieve the goal packages relevant to the evaluation of the proposal. The goal packages encode information about requirements such as circulation, visual privacy and thermal performance. Generic associations between aspects of a plan and individual goals are used to establish if and how each of the goals have been achieved in the given proposal. These associations formalize relationships between aspects of the topology of the artefact, such as the existence of a door between two rooms, and a goal, in this case the goal of achieving circulation between those two rooms. Output from the model consists of both a graphic representation of the way in which goals are achieved and a list of those goals that have not been achieved. The list of goals not achieved provides a means of accessing appropriate design recommendations. What the model provides is essentially a computational tool for exploring the value judgements made in a particular proposal given a set of predefined requirements such as those to be found in design recommendation literature. |
| series |
CAAD Futures |
| full text |
 file.pdf (296,753 bytes) |
| references |
Content-type: text/plain
|
Darke, J. (1979)
 The primary generator and the design process
, Design Studies 1 no. 1: 36-44
|
|
|
|
|
Forbus, K.D. (1984)
Qualitative process theory
, Artificial Intelligence 24: 85-168
|
|
|
|
|
Foz, A. (1973)
Observations on designer behavior in the parti
, Design Research and Methods 7 no. 4: 320-323
|
|
|
|
|
Hillier, W., Musgrove, J. and O´Sullivan, P. (1972)
Knowledge and desip
, MitchelL WJ. (ed.). Environmental Design: Research and Practice. University of Califomia
|
|
|
|
|
Zeisel, J. and Welch, P. (1981)
Housing Designed for Families: A Summary of Research
, Cambridge, MA: Building Diagnostics NSB 21 (1971). House design for temperate climates. Australian Government Publishing Service
|
|
|
|
| last changed |
1999/04/07 12:03 |
|
