Cognitive Strategies in Architectural Design

The paper describes one of the series of experiments studying the nature of the architectural design process and how design skills are acquired by students. An experimental situation is described which models some central features of design problems in the abstract. This allows comparisons to be made between groups of first and final year students of architecture as well as sixth form school pupils and post-graduate science students. Significantly different problem solving strategies are shown by the final year architecture and post-graduate science students. It is suggested that these results have implications for the nature of design legislation, design tools and particularly computer aided design systems, many of which currently in use appear to be based on the scientists' rather than designers' cognitive strategies.