Alternate Means of Digital Design Communication

This thesis reconceptualises communication in digital design as an integrated social and technical process. The friction in the communicative processes pertaining to digital design can be traced to the fact that current research and practice emphasise technical concerns at the expense of social aspects of design communication. With the advent of BIM (Building Information Modelling), a code model of communication (machine-to-machine) is inadequately applied to design communication. This imbalance is addressed in this thesis by using inferential models of communication to capture and frame the psychological and social aspects behind the communicative contracts between people. Three critical aspects of the communicative act have been analysed, namely (1) data representation, (2) data classification and (3) data transaction, with the help of a new digital design communication platform, Speckle, which was developed during this research project for this purpose. By virtue of an applied living laboratory context, Speckle facilitated both qualitative and quantitative comparisons against existing methodologies with data from real-world settings. Regarding data representation (1), this research finds that the communicative performance of a low-level composable object model is better than that of a complete and universal one as it enables a more dynamic process of ontological revision. This implies that current practice and research operates at an inappropriate level of abstraction. On data classification (2), this thesis shows that a curatorial object-based data sharing methodology, as opposed to the current file-based approaches, leads to increased relevancy and a reduction in noise (information without intent, or meaning). Finally, on data transaction (3), the analysis shows that an object-based data sharing methodology is technically better suited to enable communicative contracts between stakeholders. It allows for faster and more meaningful change-dependent transactions, as well as allow for the emergence of traceable communicative networks outside of the predefined exchanges of current practices

speckleworks/SpeckleServer: Speckle Server 0.0.3 (Release for DOI)

Speckle Server - the easy to deploy and host server for AEC design data communication

speckleworks/SpeckleCore: Speckle Core 0.0.3 (Release for DOI)

.NET Speckle core libraries containing all client side functionality

Supporting collaborative design and project management for AEC using Speckle's interactive data flow diagram

peer reviewedRecent advances in architectural geometry and the rising ubiquity of design computation and Visual Programming (VP) amongst architecture practices has led to the design and construction of more complex, larger scale architectural projects. Consequently, the Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) industry has witnessed the emergence of custom technological solutions tailored within some of the most progressive architecture practices to better understand and visualize complex digital design workflows. Although very relevant, such existing solutions have always been developed in isolation to solve particular design problems related to the conception and construction of a specific building project. Based on this observation, the open-source data platform for AEC called Speckle has been developed in order to bring more transparency in the design process, enabling multiple stakeholders working from different software environments to seamlessly communicate through its web interface. The present paper both introduces the platform and describes an interactive data flow diagram – named SpeckleViz – built upon it to support in a user friendly manner transparent collaborative design, project management and version control for AEC. This will be illustrated through two selected case studies