| Title |
A Study on the Utilization of Design Information in Architecture |
| Abstract |
Architectural design is distinguished from other design fields by the great number of decisions required to be taken before a design brief can be realized as a building product. Furthermore, changes in both society and technology render the scope and magnitude of architectural design increasingly complex. This in turn increases the quantity and diversity of design decisions which a designer has to make. Accordingly, the place of information in architectural design is gradually receiving greater attention and consideration by the profession, yet the amount of information used by designers throughout the design process is still inadequate when compared to the overall scale and complexity of today's design work.Empirical studies on the demands and subsequent uses of information, often called 'user studies', are now quite numerous in certain scientific and technological disciplines. They are however, as yet few and far between in the architectural profession, and the studies that do exist rarely go into the subject in any depth.In this study, the information activity of designers is described from a phenomenological point of view, focusing on the prevailing attitudes of architects towards the importance of design information. This study explores problems associated with the underuse and ineffective use of overt design information, and suggests how two approaches, the information science based approach and the designer based approach, may be evolved in an attempt to cope with them. |