How to avoid problems when changing something in a design.
The paper introduced here, Titled “Emergent Coherent Behavior of Complex Configurations through Automated Maintenance of Dominance Relations, spells out how such a program could function.
If such a program would exist, a good deal of interaction between designers working on a same building could become transparent, and many mistakes could be prevented.
Author
john habraken
Website
This is a pretty abstract paper which takes an effort to read, but the concept of dominance is very important in at least two ways. It explains the physical organisation of a building as a complex configuration of parts where the removal, introduction, or displacement of one part may demand adjustment of other parts. This, in turn, explains the relation among the actors in control of such parts. These are first of all the owners and installers of subsystems, but it also all designers, not only those who arrange technical subsystems but also architects, urbanists, fit-out designers and interior designers. They all interact with one another in relations of dominance and submission.