DESIGN METHODS

A distinction to be made between those buildings, which possess the relevant quality, and those, which lack it, a tool is required to draw the distinction.

There are several ways to specify sets of projects possession or lacking specific qualities.Firstly, it is advised to catalogue all the elements in the set that should be adopted.This method is impractical for all but small sets.

Secondly, one can present the typical elements in the set and the transformation processes for generating, through various procedures.

The third approach is to provide some testing tools to eliminate all the elements lacking the defined quality. This approach characterises the engineering or “neo-positivist” method of non-intuitive design.

The last approach, one that is followed here in developing the proposal for a more efficient daylighting design tool, consists of providing the designers with a grammar for generating the elements of the set.

Building researchers need to transfer their evaluative tools into typological models and structure them in an architectural grammar.The current, traditional design process presents many disadvantages, mostly in relation to its relevance to one’s design skill and the lack of opportunity for consultants to contribute specialised knowledge early in the design process.Even when a design team is encouraged to work together from the earliest stages of design, it has been found that design ideas are mostly generated by one person, in the form of visual concepts.

Two types of approach to architectural design are encouraged:

The non-intuitive design: machine design, the systematic methodology, or the engineered design process

The traditional design: the intuitive design, or the typological design

It is assumed that there is a visual thinking process analogous to, but different from, a literary or mathematical one through which architectural designs are expressed.

Building plans and elevations map these notions as drawings, embodying the knowledge developed in solving the design problem.Forms are the legitimate supports of this problem-solving design and typological precedents are collected and synthesised to provide their knowledge.