Community in the Mind. a Model for Personal and Collaborative Design

Abstract

The present paper will discuss a landmark historical change that occurred during the last decade redefining architecture from an insular, solitary, and private activity into a distributed, cooperative, and community-based one. It will inquire into the reasons for this shift and explore the need to develop a new framework for personal and collaborative design and the opportunities resulting from it. How do we reason together in design? What are the criteria for selecting the technology to be used? How is knowledge acquired in such interactive framework? What are the new problems that emerge out of Collaborative Design? What are the new criteria to be applied when evaluating new design methods in the new context of Design Community? The paper will also examine some ideas related to a model for Personal and Collaborative Design and explore cognitive aspects of Community in the Mind. It will raise some basic question concerning new directions for research: The relation between Collaborative Design model to the cross-cultural design practice and the relation between cognitive organization of the Design Mind and the social organization of the Design Community