Property-Oriented Information Systems for Design Prototypes for the BAS•CAAD system

Property-oriented systems are a new kind of information systems that are based on concepts of properties instead of concepts of things or classes of things. By focusing on properties, the property-oriented systems become more flexible and more suited to the dynamic early stages of design than the traditional class-oriented systems can be. The theoretical framework for property-oriented systems developed within the BAS*CAAD project and presented in this thesis has previously been presented in several papers, a selection of which are included here. Some of the basic considerations from the papers are further developed in a separate chapter. Additionally, the thesis covers several questions regarding prerequisites for and implications of property-oriented systems. These questions have not been addressed in earlier BAS*CAAD publications. The development of research proptotypes based on the theoretical framework is presented, with a discussion of the different versions and the considerations behind them. A study of the history of computer aided building design has revealed that many basic ideas of today were developed the first time at the beginning of electronic computing, in the early sixties. Since the early development seems to be unknown today, a brief account is presented in this thesis, with special focus on issues considered in the BAS*CAAD project. Finally, the experimental architectural design software DASK, developed mainly by the present author in the later 1980s, will get its first presentation in writing in this thesis.