Dear colleagues,

I'd like to inform you that we have extended the deadline for the Workshop
"Spatial Cognition in Architectural Design", part of Cosit 2007, until May
13th.

Cheers,
Christoph Hoelscher
workshop co-chair

-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: Thomas Barkowsky [mailto:[log in to unmask]] 
Gesendet: Mittwoch, 2. Mai 2007 14:49
An: [log in to unmask]
Betreff: Workshop "Spatial Cognition in Architectural Design": Call for
Contributions

*** Call for Contributions ***
** Deadline extended: 13 May 2007 **

Since we have received a number of requests, we have decided to extend the
deadline of this interdisciplinary workshop.

Workshop

Spatial Cognition in Architectural Design:
Anticipating User Behavior, Layout Legibility, and Route Instructions in the
Planning Process

www.sfbtr8.uni-bremen.de/SCAD

in conjunction with international Conference on Spatial Information Theory
(COSIT'07) Melbourne, Australia, 19 September 2007


organizers

Thomas Barkowsky (University of Bremen, Germany) Zafer Bilda (University of
Technology Sydney, Australia) Christoph Hoelscher (University of Freiburg,
Germany) Georg Vrachliotis (ETH Zurich, Switzerland)


advisory board

Ellen Do (Georgia Tech, USA)
Christian Freksa (University of Bremen, Germany) John Gero (University of
Sydney, Australia) Gabriela Goldschmidt (Technion, Israel) Barbara Tversky
(Stanford University, USA)


workshop description

Architects make inferences about the spaces that they are not in. They can
infer how multi storey buildings look like by inspecting separate 2D layouts
of the floors. They can mentally synthesize separate spaces that make up a
building design, and they can create alternative designs by revising the
spaces and how these spaces may come together.

Apart from these inferences, architects may also anticipate how residents
and visitors of a building will behave in the spaces. They may design a
building in such a way that people's ability to understand the spatial
layout of this building is influenced (in a positive or negative way). For
instance, the legibility of the spatial environment may influence the way in
which routes between locations in the building are conceptualized, mentally
processed, and communicated. These issues as well can inform and change the
architect's spatial inferences and decisions in the architectural design
process.

When we study how architects work, think and design, we observe that they
use multiple external cognitive tools to make spatial inferences. However,
we cannot directly observe what internal resources they use or how they make
these inferences using their internal spatial cognition facilities.
There is anecdotal evidence that an architect is not limited to the periods
of using external cognition to be engaged in spatial inferences.
S/he also can be solving a spatial problem while, for instance, driving or
having a shower. Therefore there is recently more emphasis on the efforts to
understand internal cognition of designing.

   From a behavioral perspective, spatial cognition in the process of
architectural designing concerns constructing and interpreting spatial
information internally and externally using layouts, diagrams, symbols,
gestures, models, and various forms of digital media. To study how
architects are engaged in these activities we distinguish between internally
induced / mental inferences and externally induced inferences.
Mental inferences may refer to two kinds of
environments: the space around the body
(i.e. visible and tangible environments) and the space the body navigates in
(i.e. the environment too large to be seen at a glance). An architect's
inferences require switching between both mental space types; a mental space
where his body navigates in and between spatial components of a building and
a mental space defining the global layout of the building (i.e. how it
relates to the site and surroundings).

Questions to be considered in this workshop include, but are not restricted
to:

. How do architects switch between the designer's and the users'
perspectives
during the design process?
. What types of (internal and external) knowledge representations and
processes do they make use of?
. What are suitable computational tools for dealing with the spatial
complexity of the diverse spatial perspectives and requirements?
. What means are there to anticipate the way future users of the building
will conceive of the building layout?
. Regarding complex built environments, how can the aspect of
conceptualizing and communicating route knowledge be integrated in the
design process?
. How do spatial / architectural and mental complexity related to each other
with respect to building layouts? What are the limits both in the design
process and the real experience of the resulting building complex?


call for contributions

Authors are invited to submit a contribution of 4 to 6 pages as basis for
discussions during the workshop (pdf file in Springer Lecture Notes in
Computer Science format, see www.springer.com/lncs). Please send your
contribution to [log in to unmask]
Accepted contributions will be made available on the workshop web site
unless their authors instruct us otherwise.


important dates

Extended Deadline:
13 May 2007 submission of workshop contributions
15 June 2007 notification of acceptance
07 July 2007 final versions of workshop contributions
19 Sept 2007 workshop