Strategies Toward Architectural Knowledge Engineering

Conventional CAD-drafting systems become more powerful modelling tools with the addition of a linked attribute spreadsheet module. This affords the designer the ability to make design decisions not only in the graphic environment, but also as a consequence of quantitative design constraints made apparent in the spreadsheet. While the spreadsheet interface is easily understood by the user, it suffers from two limitations: it lacks a variety of functional capabilities that would enable it to solve more complex design tasks, also, it can only report on existing conditions in the graphic environment. A proposal is made for the enhancement of the spreadsheet's programming power, creating an interface for the selection of program modules that can solve various architectural design tasks. Due to the complexity and graphic nature of architectural design, it is suggested that both procedural and propositional programming methods be used in concert within such a system. In the following, a suitable design task (artificial illumination-reflected ceiling layout) is selected, and then decomposed into two parts: the quantitative analysis (via the application of a procedural programming algorithm), and a logical model generation using shape grammar rules in a propositional framework