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Spatial Computing for Design—an Artificial Intelligence Perspective

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Studying Visual and Spatial Reasoning for Design Creativity

Abstract

The articulation of the Science of Design by Herbert Simon and the paradigmatic relevance of Artificial Intelligence in that context are closely intertwined topics: Simon elaborates the ‘Sciences of the Artificial’ in the context of the design of artefacts. Situated in this AI-centric view of design, we characterize “spatial computing for design” as a specialisation concerned with the development of the general representational and computational apparatus necessary for solving modelling and reasoning problems in spatial design. Several representation and reasoning problems are dis-cussed in the backdrop of relevant examples involving the formal modelling of structural form with respect to a desired/anticipated artefactual function. The discussion, although applicable to any spatial design activity, is grounded in the domain of assistive decision-support in the context of a conventional computer-aided architecture design workflow.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Henceforth, by design we refer to spatial design in general, and in specific to architectural design, which we regard to be an instance of spatial design. By conventional design systems, we refer to computer-aided architectural design (CAAD) tools.

  2. 2.

    The journal “Artificial Intelligence for Engineering Design, Analysis and Manufacturing” completed two decades of publishing in 2007 and its anniversary publication is a good overview of the area [15, 25]. A sketch of ‘40 years of design research’ is available in [5]. The collected works of [1, 14, 17, 23, 26, 29, 34] are a rich source of reference and contextualisation.

  3. 3.

    Hypothetical reasoning about designs focussing on what could be rather than what is benefits from rich on- tological characterizations along these lines. This is further elaborated on in Sect. 4.4). Also, see the treatment of aspectualization for architectural design in [7, 8].

  4. 4.

    Whereas Louis Sullivan articulated the relationship between of ‘Form and Function’, the original attribution goes to the eighteenth century Italian architectural theorist Carlo Lodoli.

  5. 5.

    Dorst and Vermaas [20] present a critical review of the Function-Behaviour-Structure model. The discussion sheds useful insights about the nature of form-function.

  6. 6.

    An isovist is the set of all points visible from a given vantage point in space and with respect to an environment [6].

  7. 7.

    The examples are illustrated using a scheme that is close to the so-called Manchester Syntax Horridge and Patel-Schneider [2008] for the description of ontological knowledge in the Web Ontology Language (OWL). The syntax ‘M:C’ represents a concept ‘C’ within particular ontological module ‘M’. Formal descriptions for these examples may be found in [30].

  8. 8.

    Also related is the commonsensical notion of a physically realizable situation defined in terms of physical, compositional and existential consistency of spatial situations [13, 11].

  9. 9.

    In view of the developments in AI in the last two decades, it is interesting to relate these problems as they existed back then, and as they stand now. We leave this exercise to another paper.

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Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge the funding and support by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (Germany), and the German Research Foundation (DFG). The paper has immensely benefitted from our discussions and ongoing collaborations with John Bateman, Frank Dylla, Gregory Flanagan, Joana Hois, and Oliver Kutz.

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  1. University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany

    Mehul Bhatt & Christian Freksa

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  1. Mehul Bhatt
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Correspondence to Mehul Bhatt .

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  1. Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study, Fairfax, Virginia, USA

    John S. Gero

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Bhatt, M., Freksa, C. (2015). Spatial Computing for Design—an Artificial Intelligence Perspective. In: Gero, J. (eds) Studying Visual and Spatial Reasoning for Design Creativity. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9297-4_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9297-4_7

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