Modelling Form and Function in Architectural Design

Form, function and the relationship between the two are notions that have served a crucial role in design science. Within architectural design, key aspects of the anticipated function of buildings, or of spatial environments in general, are supposed to be determined by their structural form, i.e., their shape, layout, or connectivity. Whereas the philosophy of form and function is a well-researched topic, the practical relations and dependencies between form and function are only known implicitly by designers and architects. Specifically, the formal modelling of structural form and resulting artefactual function within design and design assistance systems remains elusive. In our work, we aim at making these definitions explicit by the ontological modelling of domain entities, their properties and related constraints. We thus have to particularly focus on formal interpretation of the terms “(structural) form” and “(artefactual) function”. We put these notions into practice by formalising ontological specifications accordingly by using modularly constructed ontologies for the architectural design domain. A key aspect of our modelling approach is the use of formal qualitative spatial calculi and conceptual requirements as a link between the structural form of a design and the differing functional capabilities that it affords or leads to. We demonstrate the manner in which our ontological modelling reflects notions of architectural form and function, and how it facilitates the conceptual modelling of requirement constraints for architectural design.