Grammars, Design and Assembly in Building

Descriptions of architectural designs in terms of building assembly operations are examined and the use of these descriptions for evaluating automatic construction considered. Descriptions are generated using a grammatical fmalism consisting of shape rules based on the spatial relations between components. Similar rule based descriptions can be given for architectural composition as well as the variable spatial relations in the robotic assembly devices. The design task is seen as primarily one which uses the interrelationships between these various rule based descriptions. The development of CAD systems which incorporate such a multi description formulation is examined briefly.