This is my first article for ECAADE conference in the year 2000, it was about my research work and my doctoral thesis. Years ago, ideas such as cloud computing and other integration technologies were science fiction, now they are a reality disrupting our thinking and way of doing buisness.

1. Activities Oriented Environments
A conceptual model for building advanced CAAD systems
Farid Mokhtar Noriega
Keywords
CAAD, CAAD Design Pradigms, CAAD User Interfaces, Architectural Design Management
Abstract necessary for designing advanced CAAD sys-
tems. The majority of the existing structural pro-
The Activities Oriented Design Environments, is a posals (MITCHELL, KALAY, EASTMAN, BIJL,
collection of proposals that will introduce impor- etc.), cover partial aspects of the existing tech-
tant changes in the interaction procedures and in- nology.
tegration mechanisms, in the design of CAAD soft- • 2- The USER-COMPUTER interaction procedures
ware and the operating environments that support are the most critical component of the CAAD
them. We will discuss how this environment uses systems. The CAAD programs, still use sophisti-
the architectural activities as a reference for his or- cated interaction procedures, distant form day
ganizational scheme, and the structural rules that to day design activities. Users are constantly
control it’s operations. pushed to develop complex roundups, in order
to develop a simple design task.
• 3- The lack of an organizational scheme neces-
Justification sary for the development of Architectural De-
sign project activities with the aid of Computer
This proposal is the synthesis of a doctoral thesis Technology.
research project, who’s main objective is the in-
vestigation of the CAAD technology concepts and
fundamentals, and their use in the design of an Theoretical Fundamentals
advanced conceptual model for an integrated
CAAD that supports the architectural project ac- The first step for the development of an appropri-
tivities, from it’s early conceptual phases and until ate USER-COMPUTER interaction procedures, is
it’s final stages. the development of an alternative organizational
The initial research, showed three critical defi- scheme of the architectural design project activi-
ciencies: ties, capable of integrating the computer technol-
• 1- The lack of innovative conceptual paradigms, ogy in the daily architectural practice.
131

2. The main purpose of this organizational scheme liminary planing of the projects activities and the
is to share with CAAD systems developers, a set of USER-COMPUTER interaction.
simple terms, expressions and activities procedures The development of the whole organizational
necessary for the construction of adequate USER- scheme, of the ACTIVITIES ORIENTED ENVIRON-
COMPUTER interaction mechanisms, and a solid MENT will use a set of structural rules, that govern
integration of the project information from the early the main relations between the architectural de-
stages of the design process. sign activities:
Our major concern, was to search for a reduced • 1- MULTIPLE LEVEL ORGANIZATION: uses the
number of architectural expressions capable of rep- decision tree (ALEXANDER, 1975), to subdivide
resenting without confusion the majority of the the project activities into multiple levels, each one
architectural activities, considering that the archi- represent a complex set of related activities. The
tectural design activity has a sophisticated organi- multi level structure, will define the exact loca-
zational scheme whose volume and intensity de- tion of each activity in the organizational scheme.
pends on many factors like the building type and • 2- repetitive Subdivision: progressively divides all
the necessities program. the activities, main and auxiliary, at each level of
The first criteria for organizing this activities, is the organizational scheme, into three subgroups
the Level of contribution. Some activities are es- of activities: DESIGN, PRODUCE and COMMU-
sential for the development of the activities, those NICATE. These generic activities, represent at
were called MAIN Activities, others participate par- each level a complete set of highly specialized
tially in some critical moments, those were called activities.
AUXILIARY Activities. From the study of the other • 3- ACTIVITY GOALS: controls the level of de-
organizational schemes (RIBA, MITCHELL, etc.), we velopment of the activities schemes, the direc-
selected five expressions that has the capability of tion of it’s evolution and the election of the nec-
symbolically representing these design activities: essary shifts. The architectural design activity,
DESIGN, PRODUCE and COMMUNICATE, as the doesn’t follow a unique linear direction, they
Main architectural activities; MANAGE and ASSIST could evolve in several directions: front-back,
as the Auxiliary activities. left-right and parallely.
Design, represent all the creative activities de- • 4- MINIMUM DEFINITION LEVEL: represents
veloped in the architectural project. Produce, rep- the adequate moment for beginning the design
resent all the activities related to production of the activity, when the architect determines the main
working drawings and the management of the con- design goals, activities, and resources, necessary
struction activities. COMMUNICATE, represents all to develop it.
the activities related to the communication of the
design ideas. Manage, represent all the activities
that control the organization of the project activi- Operating scheme
ties and the computer system. Assist, are the ac-
tivities responsible of the users assistance, during The Activities Oriented Environments, could be
the development of their activities. used as the main User Interface for an existing
This reduced set of representative activities will operating system. This will allow the architect and
avoid conceptual confusions, each time the archi- all the design team share a unique working envi-
tect or project manager will have to define special- ronment. The architect, will use it to organize the
ized activities; this approach will simplify the pre- project activity, and the design team the activities
132 3. Advanced Design and Planning Tools

3. organization and the adequate tools for develop- types of geometric models (surface, solid, etc.) to
ing it. give the user a complete liberty in the initial repre-
The system will work as follows: sentation process.
The chief designer will initiate the design plan- The programs working in this Environment will
ing assistant in the initial phase of the project. At use professional known terms to build the user in-
this initial level, the designer will select the activity terface, which will eliminate the necessity to learn
focus from the three basic activities (design, pro- different procedures in the system. The Environ-
duce, communicate). Each one of them will define ment will establish some basic interaction rules,
a sophisticated set of sub-activities. This goal will which will not interfere with the interaction proce-
depend basically on some other design variables dures necessary for each program.
such as: objectives, resources, project program, etc. This initial operating script allowed us to deter-
This initial goal is not going to be the definitive mine some investigation necessities in order to de-
project planing, but will help him configure a glo- velop a full functional Activities Oriented Environ-
bal idea about the project needs, especially the ment, these are:
computer equipment an programs necessary to • 1- The elaboration of a detailed scheme of the
develop it. For example: if the designer selects the day to day architectural project activities, to use
design as a goal, the design planing assistant will it as a global reference for all the design profes-
lead him to the next level of definition in order to sionals.
select from the established activities what he con- • 2- This basic scheme will offer the computer
siders adequate to his design. At every level, the manufacturers a precise orientation towards the
system will provide the user, upon request, the real needs of the architects.
applications necessary to develop the selected ac- • 3- The need to design a flexible representation
tivities and their availability in the market or in his model that allows: a) the substitution of simple
own system, or the www direction of a company geometries with detailed ones to support the
that develops it. In some cases, the user will be progressive refinement of the design, b) the
requested to go to a more detailed level of the or- standard 2D representations and technical draw-
ganizational scheme, when the activity is poorly ing conventions.
defined. • 4- The development of: a) Expert assistants that
Once the basic need of the selected activities has could act as seamless decision making tools for
been defined the user has enough resources to every activity; b) Learning assistants, to help re-
begin developing the basic conceptual idea in a duce the users learning curve; c) Management
neutral environment, which doesn’t depend on a assistants, to maintain the project activities and
specific program nor uses a restricted data model. control their execution.
Each project will have his own container, which will As we could observe, the Activities Oriented Envi-
integrate all the data (geometric, descriptive, im- ronments as conceptual and operating scheme, is
ages, bitmaps, etc.) related to the design. The data still in it’s initial phases. It will need an extensive
will be associated together by dynamic links. collective work to refine it, develop the most ad-
The programs operating in the environment, will equate activity organization, and design all it’s op-
have the liberty to consult the project container erating components such as: interaction proce-
and extract from it the information it needs, rec- dures, integration scheme and data representation
ognize the available links for updating all the data. models.
The container will be able to combine different
Activities Oriented Environments 133

4. References COMPARATIVE STUDY. KALAY, Yehuda. Editor In:
Principles of Computer-Aided Design, Computability of
Design. John Wiley & Sons; 1987.
ALEXANDER, Christopher. NOTES ON THE SYNTHESIS
MITCHELL, William J.; LIGGETT, Robin; y TAN, Milton.
OF FORM. Harvard University Press; 1964.
THE MULTI-LEVEL ANALYSIS AND OPTIMIZATION
EASTMAN, Charles M.
OF DESIGNS. Yehuda Kalay. Editor In: Evaluating and
FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEMS IN THE DEVELOPMENT
Predicting Design Performance, Jhon Wiley & Sons;
OF COMPUTER-BASED ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN
1990.
MODELS. KALAY, Yehuda. Editor In: Principles of
Computer-Aided Design, Computability of Design, John
Wiley & Sons; 1987.
Farid Mokhtar Noriega
MaCINTOSH, Patricia G. MODELS OF SPATIAL
Madrid school of Architecture (ETSAM), Madrid, Spain
INFORMATIONS IN COMPUTER-AIDED DESIGN A
vizbits@eurociber.es