Spatial Computing for Design: An Artificial Intelligence Perspective

The articulation of the Science of Design by Herbert Simon and the paradigmatic relevance of Artificial Intelligence in that context are closely intertwined topics: Simon elaborates the ‘Sciences of the Artificial’ in the context of the design of artefacts. Situated in this AI-centric view of design, we characterize “spatial computing for design” as a specialisation concerned with the development of the general representational and computational apparatus necessary for solving modelling and reasoning problems in spatial design. Several representation and reasoning problems are discussed in the backdrop of relevant examples involving the formal modelling of structural form with respect to a desired / anticipated artefactual function. The discussion, although applicable to any spatial design activity, is grounded in the domain of assistive decision-support in the context of a conventional computer-aided architecture design workflow.