Design Signals: The Role of Software Architecture and Paradigms in Design Thinking and Practice

Does the ontology of design software influence built form? Panagiotis Michalatos , lecturer in architectural technology at Harvard Graduate School of Design and a principal research engineer at Autodesk, Inc, here looks at how the move from drawing typologies to digital modelling since the mid-1990s has affected architectural aesthetics. He goes on to examine two more recent developments that may announce a further paradigm shift: granular tracking of design input, and data organisation practices in biomedics which, transferred to architecture, could allow for a more spatio-temporal approach.     

以业务流程为驱动的电力行业知识管理系统

文章以业务流程为驱动开展某电力单位知识管理系统建设,实现知识管理和业务流程管理相互促进,一方面在业务流程执行的刚性要求下,能有序地收集业务各个环节的知识,能实现与业务活动密切的知识文档的强制化积累,另一方面,员工通过此系统能将知识库中积累的知识复用于新的业务流程中,循环地提升业务工作能力。     

基于结构特征的海量三维模型管理方法

虚拟现实和3D可视化技术的发展带来三维模型的海量增长,传统方法采用关键字匹配方式检索和管理海量模型数据,不能满足语义级别的模型检索和管理要求.提出一种基于结构特征的海量三维模型管理方法.使用该方法的思路框架,分析海量模型实例,通过聚类与分类的方法进行概念发现,构建管理特定领域的本体库,基于本体库设计并实现基于结构特征的三维模型管理系统,最后对系统进行应用和验证.结果表明该方法很好地解决了传统三维模型管理从单一维度管理模型的低效、冗余和难以重用,实现了三维模型的多维度高效检索和管理.     

探讨建筑设计知识的批判及其重建

本文立足于后现代主义,对建筑设计中的乡土性、反审美等内容进行了介绍个分析。在此基础上,根据时代发展的需要,对建筑设计知识的重建进行了分析。     

The Role of Farm Advisors in Multifunctional Landscapes: A Comparative Study of Three Danish Areas, 1995 and 2008

This study investigates the influence of farm advisors on farmers’ decisions regarding ‘Multifunctional landscape commons’, a concept covering environmental and landscape values that benefit the public but which depend on farmers’ management practices. The influence of advisors is analysed by combining data about the source of advice with evidence of land use and landscape changes and participation in subsidy schemes. The study compares three agricultural areas in Denmark. Structured interviews were carried out with all farmers possessing more than 2 ha land in 1995–6 and in 2008. Vertical, production and business-oriented advisory services predominate, together with legal and organisational spatial competence networks. A new group of hobby farmers and pensioned farmers tend not to be included in traditional advisory networks, leaving them to carry out landscape changes and multifunctional landscape commons without professional guidance and consultancy. This means the horizontal coordination among farmers, that is, the territorial competences, decrease.     

The challenges of creating actionable knowledge: an action research perspective

Academia has a critical role in developing new knowledge which construction industry practitioners need to envision, undertake and sustain successful innovation. The new knowledge produced by academia, however, often does not satisfy the needs of practitioners. This unsatisfactory state of affairs is frequently taken to be the consequence of the cultural, motivational and operational differences between the two communities. Actionable knowledge is presented as a useful concept which can fuse the expectations, contributions and outputs of academia and practitioners. Within this context, action research is argued to be an appropriate methodology to develop successful actionable knowledge. Results from an action research project are given which provide researchers and practitioners greater understanding of the key factors that shape the degree to which action research produces actionable knowledge: change focus, collaboration capabilities and systematic process. The criteria intrinsic to Mode 2 research (Gibbons et al., 1994 Gibbons, M., Limoges, C., Nowotny, H., Schwartz, S., Scott, P. and Trow, M. 1994. The New Production of Knowledge: The Dynamics of Science and Research in Contemporary Societies, London: Sage.  [Google Scholar]) are demonstrated to have utility in evidencing actionable knowledge. The implication for policy is that there is a need to develop and use appropriate actionable knowledge frameworks and measures to design funding calls, and to evaluate research proposals and outputs.     

Construction management and economics: the epistemology of a multidisciplinary design science

Research in the field of construction management and economics (CME) can be characterized as a multidisciplinary design science. Results from the sciences and humanities are necessary inputs for this field of research that deals with design, production and operation of the built environment. The output of CME research as multidisciplinary design science consists of three types of solution concepts: empirical generalizations based on statistical data analysis (technological laws), concepts that specify what to do, if a certain result is to be attained under given circumstances (functional rules), and insights in the interrelationship between design, production and operation of the built environment and social practice (socio‐technological understanding). Scientific justification of these solution concepts is obtained through testing them in the specific context of the built environment.     

Industrial renewal within the construction network

The construction business network is generally seen as conservative and non-innovative, for which a number of reasons have been identified. One of these reasons relates to the special inter-organizational setting that exists within the industry. The starting point of our study was to investigate whether there is any truth in this perceived lack of innovation. One reason for the industry’s bad reputation could be that the way innovation generally is defined and measured is unsuitable for the construction business. Therefore, renewal was used as the central concept of change in our investigation. The second issue concerns factors that either assist or impede renewal, and the ambition was to identify those factors driving, as well as those hindering renewal. In order to identify the degree of renewal, as well as the factors affecting it, we conducted a survey of Swedish construction companies. The resulting picture shows a clear connection between the inter-organizational interfaces within the industry and how renewal takes place. The total renewal activity is on a considerable level with more than 60% having made changes visible from the customer’s point of view. The most active interface is also in relation to customers, while the relationship to suppliers generally is more distant. Finally, the project focus which characterizes the industry affects what type of renewal takes place, and exposes the lack of knowledge transfer between individual projects and actors as an important hindrance to renewal in the construction network.     

A best practice process model for hybrid concrete construction

The term ‘hybrid concrete construction’ (HCC) is used to describe the combination of concrete construction methods, e.g. in‐situ concrete and precast concrete, with one another or with other materials, e.g. steel. Although it could be argued that most buildings employ such combinations, HCC is the deliberate integration of different construction techniques to achieve a cost, speed or other performance benefit. UK government has been concerned that the construction industry suffers from poor management and exchange of tacit knowledge which can disappear after project teams ‘break up’. The completion of several innovative and high profile HCC projects was considered to be a major opportunity to capture project teams' tacit knowledge in this area. The objective of the research was to compile a best practice process model, such that project teams could be better informed as to their roles and responsibilities and thus be better equipped to deliver a building to the client's satisfaction, by using HCC. Interviews and knowledge capture workshops were used to extract lessons that lay embedded in both individuals and teams. The main conclusions were that successful HCC projects were characterized for example, by the development of an ethos of trust, the early involvement of specialists (such as precasters) and the effective management of both tacit and explicit knowledge. The research builds on previous work in the area by identifying best practice information on design, specification and construction factors for HCC and, in addition, some transferable lessons on knowledge capture techniques.     

Tunnel vision? Brunel's Thames Tunnel and project narratives

Looking at historical projects has much to offer our understanding of project management, for both research and practice. However, there are important challenges in how alternative narratives about such projects are reconstructed and related to each other. To explore these challenges, this paper uses the example of the Thames Tunnel project, completed under the direction of Marc Brunel in 1843, and reputed to be the first tunnel to be built under a major river. In telling the story of the project, we focus on five alternative discourses: technico-rational; practice; networks of people, things, and ideas; politics; and society. The common response to such variety is either to attempt to construct an overarching meta-narrative, or to explore the differences as a way of highlighting the localized and contingent nature of knowledge about projects, or adopt some intermediate position somewhere on the spectrum between these two extremes. Instead we seek a different route grounded in a sociology of knowledge that acknowledges simultaneous, provisional, and contested processes of division and stabilization in the ways that epistemic communities constitute knowledge through their own narratives and practices. These have implications for the stories that are told about project management and, crucially, the activities and interests that both shape and are shaped by such narratives.