Close encounters of the architectural kind: Fid-Bau Portal

Close encounters of the architectural kind

Heylighen, A / Verstijnen, I.M

AbstractThroughout their career architects collect an extensive record of architectural cases, which they use as a source of inspiration and knowledge during design. Being novices, student architects do not yet have such a record. In order to compensate for this lack of knowledge, teachers in architecture engage their students into realistic yet simulated projects and introduce them to relevant architectural precedents for these projects. Within the realm of AI, case-based reasoning (CBR) stresses the importance of cases too. So far, however, applications that flow from CBR research have rarely found their way into architecture. The experiment that is reported in this article examines the conditions under which CBR technology can be useful in architectural education. The results show that in order for students to benefit from this technology, it should supply cases that are closely related to the project at hand. These results are consistent with psychological theories of knowledge representation in novices.