AREAS OF INVESTIGATION AND RESEARCH PROJECTS

Projects undertaken at the Center since its inception in 1985 cluster around the following basic
research areas:
Design Theory, Methodology and Tool Development Spatial Representation, and Typology of Artifacts Development of methods to represent, classify, and manipulate design products: Visual, graphic, numerical, and symbolic models. Linguistic descriptions. Visualization aids in the design process. Use of images, diagrams, and sketches. Design Process, Problem Solving, and Heuristics Development of tools for design reasoning with emphasis on multicriteria decision-making and mechanisms for the conception of preparametric design solutions. Use of Precedent, Principles, and Analogy in Design Learning and Creativity Projects involve the study of mechanisms for recruiting and redesigning precedents by analogy, as well as the development of a design knowledge bases, systems for organizing and re-using design experience that refl ect in their structure and use cognitive and conventional constraints. Architects, theorists, and educators have often pointed out the importance of using precedents in the design process. But it is only recently that the role that precedents can play in the conception of new schemes has begun to receive widespread attention in design and computer-based practice. The Center focuses on this subject, investigating several aspects of it: the relation between cases, rules, and principles in precedent-based design reasoning systems; the problem of product typology; artifact thesauruses; and, more generally the representation, recognition, and recalling of built forms for precedent-based design systems.

Design Discourse Analysis
Development of methods to parse, analyze, and structure verbal design discourses. Researchers also study the application of such methods to identify and structure belief and value systems and other programmatic constraints to guide the design process. The same methods are applied also in the area of Design Collaboration.

Design Collaboration and Community of the Mind
Development of multiagent, collaborative, intelligent, design systems employing all the above approaches. The agents in the collaboration may either be professional specialists brought in to work on a projector users, clients, and other interested parties who are integrated within the design process.Over the last eight years the Center, has been working on the subject of collaborative design. Recognizing that architecture is undergoing a rapid change from the centuries-long tradition that assumed design was a solitary process to the modern concept that design is an inter active, participatory process, the Center identifi ed the area of collaborative design as one of its top research priorities. A number of research projects in this area have been carried out which have as a unique characteristic the integration of empirical investigations of architectural practice, fi eld studies, with theoretical studies drawing on computer and cognitive science.These investigation take into consideration changes of architectural practice resulting from the increasing trend towards an internationalization of professional involvement; increasing economic pressures for rapid delivery of design solutions with minimal cost and minimal risk; the impact of new information and media technologies, increasing division of labor and splitting design into different technological and managerial specialized tasks; the pressures of democratization of society in all industrial nations making professional practice increasingly open to discussion by all participants; and the increase in litigation in all developed nations necessitating a more explicit recording of interactions consultative procedures, and contractual relations. Some of the questions posed are: How do we reason together in design? What are the criteria for selecting channels to be used for that? How is knowledge acquired in such an interactive framework? What are the new problems in design methodology that emerge out of collaborative design? What are the new criteria to be used when evaluating design methods in the context of collaborative design? Given the newness of the problem the research used extensively case studies.

Design Domain Case-Studies and Cognitive History
Empirical and Historical Investigations Cases drawn from design practice and analysis of theories applied in practice. Comparative crosscultural studies have been used extensively to analyze contextually acquired, socio-culturally defi ned design conceptual frameworks, categories, and rules in designing.

Documentation and facilitation of design research.
Publication of architectural archives, containing data recording the creative process of major important projects, conceptual drawings, and other primarily visual documents, has been considered an essential part of the activities of the Center.