Henry's problem and its representation - representing an architect's reasoning structure

Abstract

Growing scale and escalating technological sophistication of design and construction projects make the amount and complexity of associated information exploding. High levels of investment, resource and impact of modern scale projects engage the design process with broader participation, more elaborated discussion, more extensive collaboration, and more rigorous analysis. The computer application has received overwhelming development, not only in storage capacity and processing speed but also representation format. Despite the progress, problems are rising at the same time. For instance, `soft' information, such as design knowledge and heuristic reasoning are difficult to represent with traditional Information Technology paradigms. This paper discusses a new paradigm based on Fuzzy Reasoning System (FRS) to represent design knowledge and reasoning. To demonstrate the application, an example of a designer's problem and reasoning is presented.