The Architectural Design Machine (AD_M): Integrating

International Journal of Applied Engineering Research ISSN 0973-4562 Volume 9, Number 4 (2014) pp. 483-493 © Research India Publications http://www.ripublication.com

The Architectural Design Machine (AD_M): Integrating Architectural Knowledge Saleem M. Dahabreh, Ph.D Department of Architecture, Faculty of Engineering and Technology, University of Jordan, Amman 11942, Jordan Telephone: +96265669224 Fax: +96265669224 Email: [email protected]

Abstract This paper presents the architectural design machine, a theoretical framework that structures architectural knowledge. It is based on the premise thatorganizedand structured architectural knowledgecan lead to a more informed and rational design process, consequently resulting in a more structured and innovative design solution.This framework discerns the complexity of architectural knowledge and enables its systematic integration through mapping the concepts of design machines from design computing into architectural discourse. In the mapping of these concepts, the notion of context is reintroduced, and more importantly, the role of design thinking in architecture is expanded to be that of reflection and reframing of knowledge in building rather than mere integration and application of knowledge, accordingly, the traditional substantive and procedural knowledge of the architecturaltriad ofbeauty, firmness, and commodity are extended to include reflexive and conceptual knowledge as an integral component of architectural knowledge. The paper concluded that this model can be used in the description and analysis of existing works of architecture as well as structuring the generation of architectural form. It can be of great value in architectural pedagogy as a theoretical framework in teaching design studio. Keywords: Architectural knowledge, Design machine, Design reframing, knowledge based systems.

Introduction “As an artist, it is possible to create exuberant and unique objects from a small and limited set of elements and rules; as a scientist, it is a challenge to discover a simple

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explanation for complex behavior, a general causal structure for a series of related but unique events.” Lionel March, 1972 As a cognitive activity, architectural design is regarded as an intellectual endeavor of high complexity; it proceeds from abstract conceptions to end with a concrete syntactic description of an architectural form, thus requiring, a diverse and complex web of substantive, procedural, and reflexive design knowledge (Dahabreh, 2006). Given the complexity of issues architectural design deals with, it becomes a necessity to develop a conceptualization that structures architectural knowledge in a way that better informs the design process and provides rigor to the generation of architectural form. This paper postulates such a structured framework, whichframesthe description, interpretation, and evaluation of existing architectural works, facilitates theunderstanding of architectural form through understanding it underlying constituents factors, thus allowing for a more structured generation of proposed works of architecture, and consequently leading to a more structured discourse of architectural design. The framework presented has been preceded by diverse design models and frameworks that foregrounded different aspects of the description, interpretation and production of designs in general. In order to reduce the complexity of architectural design problems, rationalize and systemize the production of design solutions, these models looked at design as a form of computation (Shyu, 2005). Such was the work of Hannes Meyer and LudwingHilberseimer in the 1920s (Schumacher, 2011). However, it was the seminal work of Christopher Alexander’s Notes on the Synthesis of Form (1964) through the introduction an analytic paradigm that set the stage speculate architectural design as a form of a logical construct (Tzyonis, 1992; Schumacher, 2011). Since then, there has been efforts to develop frameworks for ‘design machines’ that dealt with design problems as complex systems that needed to be broken down into modular parts (Toulkeridou, 2010): Negroponte (1970) worked with ‘architecture machines’, as an artificial intelligence system that assisted, augmented and eventually replicated architectural design processes. Murray Milne (1971) built CLUSTR, a computational system meant to assist designers early in the design process to find the structure intrinsic in their design problems. Stiny and March (1981) presented ‘design machines’ as an algorithmic schema for the design process. Their work was contingent to Stiny and Gips’ (1978) ‘aesthetic algorithms’. Gero (1990) presented function–behavior–structure (FBS) framework as a formal representation describing the three variables of a designed object. Tzonis (1992) developed the P.O.M. system as means to represent information contained in precedents, principles, and rules of architecture and feed them into a reasoning mechanism to generate designs. Economou and Riether (2008) extended the design machine of Stiny and March to a ‘Vitruvian machine’ that mapped Vitruvius’s triad of venustas, firmitas and utilitas into formal studies of architecture. Due to the rigor of its generative and operational capacity, these models looked at design as a form of computation where designing is compared to a computational process that operates on input symbolic representations and proceeds according to a

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set of rules to produce a design outcome or a symbolic representation of it (Shyu, 2005). As such, these models used computers both as means and metaphor to develop knowledge based design systems that dealt with design information and ordered it as useful subsets of convenient data that facilitates design and form generation. However, most of these models dealt with design generically and not with regard to the particularity of architectural design. More importantly, these models described designs in terms of substantive and procedural knowledge and did not account for role of design concepts in integrating and relating diverse knowledge to synthesize form; they excluded reflexive conceptual knowledge as part of the design process or as part of the description of architectural form. Reflexive knowledge manifested as a design concept reflects ‘how’ designers ‘think’ about a design problem and reflect upon it, and therefore at least partially explains ‘why’a design took its final form. Accordingly, design concepts not only structure the form but also become embedded within, making it imperative to introduce design concepts and reflexive knowledge as part of the description of any work of architecture and an integral component of any architectural design model. Using the design machine schema of Stiny and March (1981) and the Vitruvian machine by Economou and Riether(2008) as a base, this paper aims to develop an architectural framework that integrates and structures architectural knowledge in an orderly manner as well as discerns and systematically incorporates design thinking and conceptual knowledge as an integral part of that framework. By no means this framework is intended to be exhaustive; rather, it will include the basic categorizes of the architectural knowledge through which designers reason about architectural form schematically and accordingly govern design intelligence. The remainder of this paper is divided into three sections: the second section offers an understanding of architectural buildings so as to provide the building blocks of the framework. Section threesummarizes the schema of the design machine. Section four integrates the understanding of buildings and the design machine to present the AD_Machine.

Architectural Knowledge: Understanding Buildings To lay out the foundation of the framework, an understanding of the type of architectural knowledge required for the design of a work of architecture is essential. One way of gaining that understanding is by looking at architectural buildings. Buildings can be looked at as a system of complex material construction composed of a physical structure, a system of spaces arranged by the physical structure, and a spatial experience engendered by the previous two systems (Peponis, Karadima & Bafna, 2003). Through its physical structure, a building organizes spaces to house activities that respond to the needs and values of different individuals, groups, and institutions. This spatial subdivision has explicit rules about how people, objects and activities are disposed in space, which insures proper functioning of the institution inhabiting the building and represents the particular practices or knowledge in a certain field (Markus, 1987). These rules impose restrictions on the location i.e. adjacencies and proximity, zoning of different functions, accessibility, and movement between these spaces. Provision of spaces to house various activities is the primary

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pragmatic function of any architectural building.This function answers the question of ‘what’ a building does and knowledge about it is substantive in nature. Associated with a building’s function are a building’s operation and performance. A building’s operation refers to how the form of buildings controls, holds or channels, people, objects, equipment associated with activities (Tzonis, 1992). According to Zarzar (2003) a buildings’ performance refers to the conditions that a prospective building is intended to bring about in order to carry out the function. The physical structure of buildings has to do with engineering issues such as material manipulation, building practicality, and structural soundness and construction, and at the same time, it has to do with artistic creation that addresses issues of formal composition, stylistic expression, and articulation. Although engineering and artistic creation are closely correlated with the corporality of the building, their raison d’etre is very different; on one hand, the engineering aspect of the physical structure is problem solving related to the materiality of the building activity. It involves the process of transforming raw material into a built form by means of utilizing existing engineering knowledge and technical know-how. This comprises the technology aspect of the building. Accordingly, the second type of knowledge about a building is procedural in nature, it answers the question of ‘how to build’. On the other hand, the artistic aspect of the physical structure is phenomenological and semantic in nature; it has to do with the formal articulation of the building expressed in the formal attributes such as design elements, architectonic forms, architectural vocabulary, etc…, andthe underlying conceptual and systems that structure these elements. This comprises the architecture/artistic aspect of any building. Accordingly, the third type of knowledge required is procedural in nature, nevertheless, it answers the question of ‘how’ designers express their design ideas ‘formally’. As seen from the discussion above, knowledge about a building are mainly substantive and procedural in nature, to use Faludi’s(1984) terms; it is about the variables involved with building’s function, operation, and structure, and how to apply that knowledge in constructing buildings. Design in that sense is conceived as a knowledge integration process that connects knowledge to create an integrated entity. As such design can be looked at as “a cognitive activity in which information are networked internally through mental function of search and connection” (Shyu, 2005 p. 138).However, design involves more than the integration and application of knowledge; it involves critical reflection upon a design situation through an internalized design process, thus framing it in a different way that goes beyond its immediate conditions and leads to new understanding of the design context and a higher level of creativity (Dahabreh & Abu Ghanimeh, 2012). This reflexive activity requires a different type of knowledge; conceptual knowledge. Conceptual knowledge is a term associated with the study of history and it functions as additional information designers add to the problem so as to generate a design solution(Hammarlund, 2010). This type of knowledge is known in architectural design literature as design concepts. They refer to “how the various aspects of the requirements of a building can be brought together in a specific thought that directly influences the design and its configuration.” (McGinty, 1979, p. 215). Furthermore, they not only represents ‘how’


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the designer/s thought about the design task or what the designer was given by the client but also ‘what’ the designer added to the design task that was not required by the design program. Furthermore, architectural buildings do not exist in vacuum; they are part of the techno-physical environment created by humans as a response to their needs, whether perceived or real, physical or nonphysical, which in turn are established by the natural physical environment and the socio-cultural environment that prescribes human values and goals (Rosenman&Gero, 1998). Accordingly, knowledge about buildings, also includes knowledge about its surrounding context with its constituents. From the discussion above, one can conclude that any building has threeaspects to its design: real and pragmatic aspect that deals with both what a building does in terms of housing activities and functions and howto construct its material structure, an architectonic aspect that deals with the architectural formal expression i.e. howto structure the building reflected in the formal language of design, and an abstract, conceptual aspect expressing how the designer thought about the design situation and what he/she added, thus providing a logical order that governs and organizes its material construction and design language. The Design Machine Looking at architectural design as a form of computation requires a framework that includes the definition of design knowledge involved in the design and the exploration of the possible structure of that knowledge (Shyu, 2005) to organize it and consciously generate architectural form.Economou and Riether (2008) presented the Vitruvian machine as one of the early models specific to architectural design that structures architectural knowledge and frames formal studies in architectural design. Their machine was based on a schema presented by Stiny and March (1981) in their paper the “Design Machines”where they proposed a schema that specifies an algorithmic structure for design, which was founded on Kenneth Craik’s (1943) schema of thought (fig 1). According to Craik, the power of thought depends on: the “translation” of external processes into symbols that function as a model for the world through an input device, a receptor; the “reasoning” about these symbols to arrive at other symbols (theory); and the “retranslation” of these symbols into external processes to correspond to external processes through an effector.

Figure 1 basic schema for Craik's general model of the process of thought (Sources: redrawn by author after Sting and Gips 1978) Stiny and March’s schema consisted of four components: a receptor (input), an effector (output), a language of designs, and a theory (Fig. 2).The receptor contains a

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list of descriptions of events, objects or processes of the outside world. The output of the receptor is the specification of initial conditions and requirements for a design situation. The effector provides descriptions and instructions that convert descriptions of a design situation and a design produced as a response to that situation into various representations e.g. drawings, texts, etc… Thus, the receptor fixes the requirements and purposes a design must meet and the effector specifies how the design is built or manufactured. The language of designs component includes descriptions of all possible designs of a certain kind or style defined in terms of some point of interest. These design languages have three rules: syntactic governing their formal composition, semantic governing their intended meaning and purpose, and evaluative based on the former two rules. The theory component is the brain of the schema; it connects the three other components of the machine; it determines the fit between a design selected from the language module and a design context defined by a receptor and effector. Essentially, according to Stiny and March, the theory supplies the principle/s that enable a design machine to choose the most suitable design for a certain design context.

Figure 2 diagrammatic representation of the design machine. Source: redrawn by author after Stiny and March, 1981 Economou and Riether adapted the design machine into the realm of architectural design by mappingthe earliest triad model of architecture-venustas, firmitas, and utilitas-proposed by Vitruvius into the machine. Translated as beauty, firmness, and commodity respectively, the receptor was mapped to utilitas/commodity and to function. The effector was mapped to firmitas/firmness (F) and to materiality, and the language as mapped to venustas/beauty (V) and to geometry broadly conceived to include all pictorial and spatial descriptions of form (fig. 3).


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Figure 3 diagrmmatic representation of the Vitruvian machine. Source: redrawn by author after Economou and Riether, 2008 Nevertheless, in their mapping, Economou and Riether either did not account for the theory part or regarded it as a fitting mechanism as defined by Stiny and March.But as we have seen earlier, design in architecture is more than an integrating or fitting knowledge together; it involves the reformulation of all of constituents relating to a design situation, critically reflecting upon them, and accordingly, synthesizing an architectural form. Therefore, both of these schemas undermine the role of design as a reflexive activityand as a result did notaccount for reflexive knowledge as part of thecharacterization of any work of architecture. Furthermore, neither the design machine nor the Vitruvian machine explicitly accounted for the dynamic role of the context in influencing designthinking, affordances, and shaping architectural form.Accordingly, both these models fall short of providing a full account of architectural knowledge required within the design process, thus, the need arises for a more complete model that accounts for all factors that influence the generation of architectural form and their relationships. The Architectural Design (AD)_Machine Taking a look at the aspects of the building discussed in section two of this paper, and the four components of the design machine, a strong similarity can be noticed, accordingly, an isomorphic mapping between types of architectural knowledge and the components of the design machinecan take place where the design machine can provide the initial skeleton of the AD_Machine; substantive knowledge concerning the real and pragmatic aspects of the buildingor‘what’ the building does are mapped into the receptor forming the first component of the model. These become the design charge, to use Baxandall’s (1985) term, referring to what is expected of a design before design starts. This includes programs, requirements, technical and performance

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specifications, engineering specificationsand known solution types, and also refers to the aims of design that are known in advance, independent of the designed object. In that sense, these form the design desiderata that refers to ‘what’ the designer has to address within the context of a design problem. The technology aspect of the building or ‘how to build’ the materiality of a building is mapped into the effector component where procedural knowledge both in drawing and representation conventions and actual construction allow the representation and actual realization of the proposed architectural form. It is broadly conceived to include all technology, construction, and production specifications. The architectonic aspects that deals with the formal aspects of a design are mapped into the design languages component. This represents procedural knowledge about ‘how’ the designer/s formally organized the material construction, generated the formal properties of the building, and accordingly subdivided the space of the building into a spatial pattern. Since forms are what architects manipulate in order to express their design ideas, it is consistent to use the term formal language to refer to the architectonic aspect of the physical structure. Here, the term language is used analogically not literally; firstly, architecture through design mediates between things apart from its materiality e.g. communicates meaning among other things, just like language, and secondly architecture can be related to the syntactic aspects of a language with its structural and grammatical rules (Forty, 2000). In general, architectural formal languages are characterized by a vocabulary and a grammar; the vocabulary is made up of a distinct set of elements, while the grammar is made up of a collection of rules that embody the compositional principles or conventions that govern how the elements can be placed in space (Dahabreh, 2006). Conceptual knowledge is mapped into the theory part of the design machine but here the role of theory is not to link all the components together or supply the principle/s, which choose the most suitable design for a certain design situation; rather, through conceptual knowledge, the designer reframes and reformulates the given design taskwhere creative design becomes a series of exploration in which problem and solution spaces evolve togetherin correspondence with Schön’s (1987, 1992) definition of design as ‘reflection-in-action’.Within the AD_Machine, conceptual knowledge includes first-order or substantive concepts as tools for handling facts about the design situation, and second-order or procedural concepts for understanding an issue at hand as processes, relations, and interpretations.As design concepts become the essential formative scheme that organizes the design, they assimilate the ‘substantive and procedural knowledge’ of the other components into ‘analytical knowledge’ where both concepts and knowledge become manifested intellectually in the spatial and formal configurations of architectural form. Consequently, the theory part of the AD_Machine can be seen as a formulation process that involved the exploration of aesthetic aims through the manipulation of form and the evaluation of the design proposals against the design desiderata (Peponis, 2005). The redefinition of the theory component as a reformulation process extends substantive and procedural knowledge specified at the beginning of the design process to include a design ‘brief’ as defined by Peponis &Wineman (2002) or additional aims, or inflections of aims brought about by designers themselves in the


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course of design as well as the aims of design as intrinsic to the designed object that cannot be initiated before the design process itself, thus, including what the designer added to the design task during the design process and reflecting the true dynamism of the design process. It is this type of theoretical reformulation and innovation that differentiates architecture from mere building(Schumacher, 2011). Finally, the AD_Machine introduces what was missing in the previous models, the context in which architectural forms operate and function. This context includes the natural physical, techno-physical, and socio-economic environments mentioned earlier in the section two. These three environments interact with each other and in return influence each other, accordingly, they determine the context in which any architectural building exists, consequently, knowledge about a design context is an integral part of any architectural design framework.The model of the AD_Machine is presented in fig. 4.

Figure 4a diagrammatic representation of the AD_Machine

Conclusions This paper proposed the organization of complex architectural knowledge into theoretical framework that is based on the idea of a design machine. The architectural design machine bridges between research and developments in design computation and architectural design through the integration of knowledge based design systems into architectural discourse where these systems are used to structure architectural knowledge and better inform the architectural design process.Furthermore, it expands the traditional triad of venustas, firmitas, and utilitas that deals with what to design, how to design it, and how to construct it, to include how to conceptually think about it, thus addressing reflexive knowledge that answers why a design took its final form as a crucial part in the synthesis of architectural form. In that sense, the main thrust of the

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AD_Machine model is not only in the introduction of conceptual knowledge into the machine, but more importantly, the reconsideration of the theory part of the design machine as reflecting about a design situation, rather than the application of knowledge to that situation. This allows for the understanding of architectural design as an open and dynamic process. Through capturing the main constituents of architectural knowledge, the architectural design machine can act as a-prioriframework that supports architects in the conceptual stages design. Furthermore, it can act as a posteriori framework that can be used in architectural criticism and analysis through the systematic description, interpretation, and evaluation of built works of architecture. In that sense, it has a great value in architectural pedagogy whether in teaching in the design studios or in the field of architectural morphology. Finally, the architectural design machine is a generic conception of architectural knowledge structure; it only describes generalized schemas of relevant and interrelated knowledge necessary for architectural designing. This framework provides a new foundation for the development of intelligentknowledge based design systems relevant for architectural design. Furthermore, each of the components of the architectural design machine can be further broken down into smaller components where they can be presented as detailed schemas and frames that can be further investigated and modelled.

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