Architectural design re-use is one avenue of Case-Based Reasoning research that can be of direct benefit in housing design for large population groups. The design of good representation schemes for a CBR task is an important step towards facilitating the construction of case-based reasoners. This paper attempts to give a careful presentation of the representation for architectural design reuse. One design case representation prospect in the domain of residential architecture is to decompose a house design, and use relative room positioning, co-ordinates and orientation to represent the basic spaces within the house. 1. Introduction Architects and other design professionals frequently use experiential knowledge. Architects often refer to documented cases of buildings they and their peers have designed in order to get inspiration for solving new architectural tasks. Adaptation of previous design solutions to new problems is not unusual in architectural practice, especially...

Learning from experience is the essence of Case-Based Reasoning (CBR). Because architects are said learn design by experience, CBR seemed to hold great promises for their field, which inspired in the 1990s the development of various Case-Based Design (CBD) tools. Learning from the experience of developing and using these tools is the objective of this paper. On the one hand, the original expectations seem far from being accomplished today. Reasons for this limited success can be found at three different levels: the cognitive model underlying CBR, the implementation of this model into concrete CBD tools, and the context in which these tools are to be used. On the other hand, CBR research seems to have caused some interesting side effects, such as an increased interest in creativity and copyright, and a re-discovery of the key role cases play in architectural design. 1.

CASE-BASED DESIGN PROCESS-facilitating the use of product models for the purpose of information evolution 1.

HouseCAD is a CBR design case representation model that uses relative room positioning, co-ordinates and orientation to represent the basic spaces within the house. In the current version, 125 cases were used in the simulation -- where 8 transformations of a brief were matched with each of these cases. The design cases were decomposed using a process of combination and elimination of some sub-cases to permit the use of 32 common case descriptors. The author considers cases stored as memory of the design field.

The design of a good representation scheme is an important step towards facilitating the construction of casebased reasoners. The paper presents a design case representation scheme based on a conceptual CBR model for architectural design re-use, and discusses relevant lessons from case representation in other CBR models. The model presented decomposes a house design, and uses relative room positioning, co-ordinates and orientation to represent the basic spaces within the house. The author considers cases stored as memory of the design field.