Towards a Data-Structure that can Handle Ambiguous Information in a Computer-Aided Tool for the Early Phase of Architectural Design

The goal of our research is to develop a computer system that supports an architect in the early phase of the design process. We envision a system that aids in three ways. It helps the architect in maintaining an overview of the development of his or her ideas over time. It shows the current state of the process in a restructured representation. It supports and stimulates the generation of new associations whenever required.The difficulty lies in linking up with the rich information structure of the architect and the various cognitive processes he or she uses to handle this information structure. The consequence is that the system must be able to include all design content, to interpret it, but not to restrict the architect in his or her creativity. Moreover, the system should stimulate creativity.We conducted an experiment to get better insight in what the architect provides as input for the system in the early phase of the design process. Several difficulties have been encountered, which we discuss along with possible solutions for managing the data. The system makes use of user-defined relations and system-defined relations. With these relations we can represent the design content in a comprehensive network that we call the Idea Space. This Idea Space is the basis for above-mentionedfunctionality. In this paper we focus on the (textual) input provided by the architect. In order to get better insight in the ideas and relations made by the architect, in other words the input for the system, we conducted an experiment. Several difficulties were encountered, which we discuss along with possible solutions for managing the data