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While there are numerous benefits to working in teams comprising multiple disciplines, we do not have sufficient documented information on the functioning of multi-disciplinary teams in the building design context. As functioning impacts project outcomes, an understanding of the operation of building design teams comprising multiple disciplines is important. To contribute to the body of knowledge that addresses this gap, this paper examines literature on disciplinary types and team performance. Using an analytic framework identified in literature, this paper studies the organizational and social aspects of building design practice in order to shed light on the ways in which the multiple disciplines involved building design work together. Findings presented in this paper suggest that building design teams combine and integrate knowledge, skills and capabilities in a multidisciplinary manner. In addition, this paper discusses four social and organizational characteristics of multidisciplinary building design teams – the project delivery approach, disciplinary roles, preexisting social and professional relationships, and location and geographic proximity – and documents their impacts on team functioning.

Design activity has a significant discursive component. Based on the well-established Hierarchical Task Analysis Method, which links human behavior to syntactic analysis and the hypothesis that design as a problem solving activity can be characterized by its discursive space, we attempt to identify dependencies between design features, defined by codifications based on pairings of nouns (tasks) and verbs (actions) in protocol data. This enables their integration into a complete solution, within a team design setting. Using the Service Learning dataset provided on the Purdue University Research Repository and focusing on the protocols corresponding to the requirement specification, preliminary design and design development stages of design delivery, we carried out macro-, midi-and micro-level analyses. In the macro-level data analysis, statistical tests showed significant correlation between major and minor nouns (tasks). In the midi-level we established similarities between the occurrence of nouns and verbs in protocols. We also observed that certain nouns were more prevalent during specific design stages. In the micro-level data analysis, we found correlations between nouns. Overall, the results show that design actions are anchored around a central task and discursive data can provide significant insight into the integration of successive design actions.