Exploring communication in collaborative design: co-operative architectural modelling

Abstract

An exploration of communication in collaborative design from the perspective of co-operative architectural modelling is reported. The objectives and problems of communication in collaborative design are described and anaysed by viewing design as, basically, disciplines of modelling complex objects. Three cases of teamwork in architectural modelling are studied, each demonstrating a rich and informative approach to collaboration. Looking at the cases from the co-operative modelling perspective, important conditions for communication are observed: firstly, the participation and co-ordination among heterogeneous systems of representation and action that individual members of a design team work with; and secondly, the interconnection between common goals shared by all participants and domain-oriented goals pursued by individuals. In exploring how the conditions were met, it was found useful to characterize communication in terms of the inter-relations between common images and distributed design developments. Two generic patterns of communication in collaborative design were found, which suggest two alternative conceptual frameworks for developing computational representations.