Applying CBR to the Teaching of Architectural Design

Abstract

This paper presents an approach to the analysis and description of the nature of process knowledge in architectural design, the development of a conceptual model for Galathea, a case-based navigation tool for its support, and the application of this theoretical foundation to the teaching of design to a group of about 100 second-year architecture students. Design is assumed as a globally coherent information, memory and experience-intensive process in which professional skill is the capability to govern a large number of continually evolving variables in the direction of desired change. This viewpoint on design has guided the development of Galathea, the model of a tool aimed at describing architectural design through the description, mapping and management of the complete decision-making path of projects by means of the dynamic representation of the relationship between goals, constraints and the decisions/actions adopted at specific nodes and through the creation of a case-base aimed at the storage, retrieval and adaptation of relevant design moves in similar project contexts. This conceptual model is applied to educational activity at the faculty of Architecture of Milan, with the aim of teaching how to govern a project from the outset considering it as an evolving but coherent map of design moves, which allow the adoption of the correct decisions involving the most disparate types of information, experience and memory, and which altogether conduct to the desired goal. The resolution paths of the students, all applied to the same architecture problem, result in a design move case-base, the further utilisation and interest of which is open to collegial discussion