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The design and construction of buildings involves many different professionals and large volumes of diverse information. Presently, the major media for communicating design decisions are drawings and specifications. Along with the ability to automate portions of the design process comes the need to communicate design decisions in other forms. Electronic communication to date has largely taken the form of files of numerical data. As the use of the computer moves towards symbolic reasoning, communication by simple files of primarily numerical data become inadequate.This paper describes an integrated environment of processes and information flows for the vertical integration of architectural design, structural design and analysis, and construction planning. The integrated environment makes use of a number of Artificial Intelligence techniques. The processes are implemented as Knowledge Based Expert Systems. A Blackboard Architecture is used to coordinate communication between processes. The global information shared among the processes is hierarchically organized in an object oriented programming language.The paper describes the current state of the integrated environment and its major knowledgebased processes. Emphasis is placed on the nature and structure of the information communicated among the processes. Implications are drawn on the nature and contents of a global database needed for computer-integrated construction.

Measured drawings of seven bungalows that were built between 1914 and 1926 in Buffalo, New York, are presented. The paper concentrates on the conventions which govern the organization of spaces in these bungalows and establish linkages with other house types in the popular tradition. The conventions found are expressed through the schemata of a parametric shape grammar which allow differences between bungalows to be explained as different geometric realizations of a shared set of conventions.

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