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ItemAn ethnographic study of the role of evidence in problem-solving practices of healthcare facilities design teams(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2013-08-12) Kasali, AltugProgressive efforts within the healthcare design community have led to a call for architects to use relevant scientific research in design decision making in order to provide facilities that are safe, efficient, and flexible enough to accommodate evolving care processes. Interdisciplinary design project teams comprising architects, interior designers, engineers, and a variety of consultants struggle to find ways to deal with the challenge of incorporating the evidence base into the projects at hand. To date there has been little research into how these interdisciplinary teams operate in the real world and especially how they communicate and attempt to integrate evidence coming from different sources into the architectural design that is delivered. This study presents an investigation of a healthcare design project in situ by using methods of ethnographic inquiry, with the aim of developing an enhanced understanding of actual collaborative healthcare design practices. A major finding is that ‘evidence’, as used in practice is a richly textured notion extending beyond just the scientific research base. The description and analysis of the observed practices is presented around two core chapters involving the design process of 1) the emergency department and 2) the inpatient unit. Each design episode, which depicts the complex socio-cognitive landscape of architectural practice, introduces how evidence, with its various types and representational forms, was generated, represented, evaluated, and translated within the interdisciplinary design team. Strategically utilizing various design media, including layout drawings and mock-ups, the architects represented and negotiated a set of physical design attributes which were supported by differing levels of scientific research findings, anecdotes, successful precedents, in-house experimental findings, and intuition, each having different affordances and constraints in solving design problems over time. Individually, or combined into larger “stories” which were collectively generated, the set of relevant evidence provided a basis for decision making at various scales, ranging from minor details within rooms to broader principles to guide design work over the course of the project. Emphasizing the role of the architects in translation of evidence, the design episodes provide vivid examples of how various forms of evidence shape the design of healthcare environments. The case observed in this research demonstrated that the participants formulated and explained their design ideas in terms of mechanistic arguments where scientific research, best practices, and anecdotal evidence were integrated into segments that formed causal links. These mechanistic models, as repositories of trans-disciplinary knowledge involving design, medicine, epidemiology, nursing, and engineering, expand the scope of traditional understanding of evidence in healthcare design. In facilitating design processes architects are required not only to become knowledgeable about the available evidence on healthcare, but also to use their meta-expertise to interpret, translate (re-present), and produce evidence in order to meaningfully engage in interdisciplinary exchanges. In re-presenting causal models through layouts or mock-ups, architects play a critical role in evidence-based design processes through creating a platform that displays shortcomings of available evidence and shows where evidence needs to be created in situ.
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ItemAn ethnographically informed analysis of design intent communication in BIM-enabled architectural practice(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2011-07-05) Abdelmohsen, Sherif Morad AbdelkaderThe building information model (BIM) is assumed to encompass all the required parameters, rules and attributes about a design product and process for Architecture-Engineering-Construction (AEC) practitioners in a way that is comprehendible by all participants sharing the model and that communicates their needs and intentions. The socio-cognitive day-to-day interactions that occur in the workplace imply however that there are discrepancies between what is exchanged as design information when sharing a model and what is exchanged as goals, needs and possibly conflicting intentions and interests when sharing a common ill-structured problem. The findings of an ethnographic study are presented. The study investigates affordances and limitations in BIM-enabled practice regarding the communication of design intent among design teams in the context of an architectural project. Grounded theory coding was used as a basis for analytic induction through constant comparison and examination of data from field observation, interviews and design meetings, to identify emergent conceptual categories central to the research inquiry. A "thick description" was provided that took into account the dynamic interactions among teams, including interdisciplinary, intradisciplinary and non-disciplinary interaction. By dissecting hypothetical models of shared project information offered by BIM, the dissertation identified interfaces of information exchange, states of the BIM model as a boundary object, and emergent and overlapping communities of practice that delineate the degree of completeness and correctness of a BIM model and describe its effectiveness in capturing and conveying the intent of participants upon interaction. To draw parallels to other contexts, the assumptions central to the study were discussed in relation to a spectrum of possible scenarios within the larger population of AEC firms. In light of the findings and "persona" descriptions identified in the study, the dissertation examined and proposed amendments and richer descriptions to existing surveys and market reports that address the use and benefits of BIM in the AEC industry, including topics such as the internal business value of BIM, top ways to improve value of BIM, and impact of project factors on BIM value.
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Item3D mental visualization in architectural design(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2010-07-30) Yagmur-Kilimci, Elif SezenMany architects report about mentally visualizing 3D aspects of their design ideas while simply working with 2D sketches of them. Indeed, in architecture, the general practice of conveying 3D building information by means of 2D drawings bears on the assumptions that every architect can mentally visualize a building in 3D by looking at its 2D drawings or sketches and that architects, as many report, can capture the 3D aspects of a building design during such 3D mental visualization practices. Additionally, many intuitively believe that the levels at which architects perform such 3D mental visualization practices is highly correlated to their spatial visualization abilities as defined by existing measures of spatial visualization ability. This thesis presents the outcomes of protocol studies and analyses that were conducted with the aim of developing an in-depth understanding about such 3D mental visualization practices and capabilities of architects on the basis of four research questions. First, what might be the nature of the 3D mental visualization phenomena that architects claim to experience: what are the features of these 3D mental visualizations as evidenced in specific tasks; and what might be the nature of the mental representations created during these visualization processes? Second, can every architect carry out these 3D mental visualization practices; might there be individual differences among architects' performances? Third, might 3D mental visualization of buildings be only an architectural skill; can non-architects, who can read 2D architectural drawings, visualize a building in 3D based on its 2D drawings and can they do so to the same levels of performance of those of architects? Fourth, might performance in 3D mental visualization tasks be related to/predicted by spatial visualization ability? The major conclusions of this thesis with regard to the first research question include that (1) architects can be visualizing the buildings in one of the two major forms or by alternatively switching between them: by imagining themselves situated within (almost) the actual size 3D building environment or by imagining a 3D small scale model of the building; (2) the mental representations they create during these visualization processes capture the various visual and spatial aspects of the buildings with a structure similar to that of an actual size or small scale model of the visualized space/form, yet the way they capture these aspects is not like the way these aspects would be captured from a certain viewpoint in reality; and (3) what they experience during these visualization processes is not like the continuous holistic visuospatial experience that one would have when looking at a building or walking inside/around a building. With regard to the second, third and fourth research questions this thesis concludes that (question 2) architects differ in their 3D mental visualization skills; (question 3) 3D mental visualization is an architectural skill in that it relies on certain abilities that become heightened in architects, possibly during education; and (question 4) 3D mental visualization skills are not related to spatial visualization ability as defined by the standard paper-folding test of spatial visualization ability.
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ItemSpatial Cognition in Design(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2006-11-16) Ho, Chun-HengPrevious studies suggest that 3D visualization is fundamental to design spatial cognition, and the capability to work with 3D mental or physical models and taking perspective views from a set of 2D drawings are essential parts of design education, although there is no definitive evidence that can directly support these beliefs. This dissertation focuses on the issues of how spatial capabilities correlate with design performance and whether design education can improve students' spatial capabilities. Two types of capabilities tests, i.e. spatial capability test and general reasoning test, are used, and there are 251 Georgia Tech undergraduate students involved in this research. The results of this research suggest that the correlations between design studio performance and the tested factors are more salient among female students than male students. While female students generally have lower spatial capabilities than male students in design, they can take advantage of their general reasoning capability to compensate for the lack of the other two spatial capabilities and perform well in design studio. A stepwise regression further reveals that, for the female design student group, the general reasoning capability is the only predictor for their design performance. However, no significant interaction is observed in the male design student group between tested capabilities and design studio performance. As a result, there seems to exist a threshold requirement in spatial capabilities for design major students. After passing this threshold, other factors such as domain specific skills and knowledge or self-motivation would likely to be the dominant one. Lastly, although the results show the tested capabilities are all important for design major students from different perspectives, the design education does not show any contribution in the improvement of these capabilities.