Process and relation analysis : capturing architectural thought

Abstract

This paper reflects the research conducted for the Design Technology Group at the Architectural Department at MIT under the participation of Charles Dalsass and the supervision of William Porter. The research evaluates electronic tools which support the formation of ideas in a collective design process. The tools focus on how to capture, analyze, and visualize concepts that develop from an individual or collaborative thought process. This work builds upon the user programming method developed by William Pena and its further development by Henn Architects in Munich. William Pena's work introduces a shared knowledge base to enhance the user programming process. This shared knowledge base consists of cards pinned up on a board. The cards contain comments made during a meeting that can be viewed by all participants. In this project, we investigate an electronic version of the previously described shared knowledge base. The electronic version provides advanced capabilities for remote collaboration, ease of storage, and manipulation of ideas. This builds the basis for follow-up explorations on how to relate, organize, visualize, and personalize the data contained in the knowledge base. Next, some corresponding methods will be developed to observe and visualize the concept formation process. The project will also discuss new ways to track the development process, the multiple use of the knowledge base for alternative purposes, and the synchronous and asynchronous manipulation of the knowledge base by remote participants. This study precedes the development of a computational solution, and therefore the last section of this paper will discuss the user interface and functionality of the proposed application. Although this research is centered around the architectural concept formation process, its content can be applied to various professions.