42 STANDARDIZATION: A CRITICAL VIEW

Standardization is often touted as the ultimate solution for electronic data exchange. With respect to design, it is arguable that while standardization can improve the design process through effective data exchange, it may also hinder the process by imposing a specific language for designers to express their ideas and concepts. With respect to architectural design, to support the dynamic nature of design, flexibility and extensibility are factors that must be considered in any standardization effort. We contend that a syntactic approach specifying a framework for expressing and comparing various representations holds more promise. In this paper, we describe a framework for representational flexibility, which borrows from various existing approaches and technologies