Knowledge-based collaborative architectural design

The constant increase of the complexity of the building process is generally accompanied by a parallel general reduction of product quality, commonly ascribed to the inadequacy of the routine design methods and tools. In facts these ones make their overall integration more difficult and impose serious constraints on design creativity, while they do not help design considered as 'the ability to choose from different solutions'. It is generally recognized that the solution of the problem lies in efficient forms of collaboration among all the actors involved in a project. However none of the forms and tools proposed hitherto has been found satisfactory. The essay shows how the essential basis of all forms of collaboration lie in the representation and management of the knowledge activated along the design process. It subsequently illustrates an innovative distributed Knowledge-based system that allows effective and creative collaboration among the actors. By virtue of the interoperability established among the various semantic universes it enhances the level and the quality of the exchanged information among the actors while managing not to change their operating modes.