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abstract:

Cases play a central role in architectural design education. Many architectural journals, books and magazines are based on case studies of buildings, and instructors commonly use cases in lectures and studio teaching. These cases, which are often descriptions of the form, materials and design strategies of significant buildings, are used by students for a variety of purposes. They help elaborate and refine stated problems, suggest and refine design solutions, help evaluate a completed design and suggest possible alternative solutions. However, appropriate cases are scattered across the print literature and may be difficult to find. Perhaps more important, the ways in which most current cases are written and made accessible to students does not exploit their full potential as pedagogical tools. In this paper we describe "Archie" a "case-based design aid" (CBDA) that provides architecture students rapid and flexible access to evaluated multi-media design cases. A CBDA is a computational aid that provides novice and experienced designers access to cases that they can then adapt to solve their current design problem. Based on the theory and technology of case-based reasoning, a CBDA uses the computer to store and access cases and allows human designers to do their own adaptation. Archie is aimed at aiding teaching of conceptual design. It is intended to help students: 1) understand the intentions of the range of stakeholders who have an impact on a building project, such as designers, users, clients, and builders; 2) develop more explicit statements of goals and criteria for success of their designs; 3) make links between general goals and specific design solutions; 4) link written statements of goals and needs to graphic representations; 5) keep design problems open long enough to allow students to explore an appropriately wide range of possible solutions.

last updated 1.26.2002 by Ellen Yi-Luen Do