And if We Take a Bacxward Step...

In these years the researches on the computer science applied to the building have had a considerable development. The applications concern the whole design process, from the programming to the design and from the execution control to the programmed maintenance with a great deal of problems solved using expert systems. It doesn't seem that the same care of men and means has been dedicated to the architectural design theory, to its deep roots which motivate it and to its peculiarity in comparison with other fields in which now the design, with the aid of the computer, is the only one possible. The designer of architectural objects has been always helped by design assistants: it is enough to think that the sixteenth century treatises are a group of rules, descriptions, solutions to design problems and that they represent the “knowledge” of the age. As the knowledge increased those treatises amplified to the encyclopaedic dimensions of the nineteenth-century handbooks and of those of the first years of this century, while new professional figures rose, the teaching developed and the building art became more and more complex