IJUP08 - Universidade do Porto

Information Systems about Materials for Architecture
F. Figueiredo 1
1 Department of Construction, Faculty of Architecture, University of Porto, Portugal.
What to build with is a question that has always remained with architects. The need for
information and knowledge organization has always been felt. Recent transformations
brought a stronger presence of these antic subjects. Architecture finds its balance at this
present of stunning acceleration. The need of speeding up the projecting, without
relinquishing quality, made man search for ways through specialization and
interdisciplinarity. This work is intended to study if Information Systems (Inf. S.) about
construction materials can take to high levels of interdisciplinarity at Architectural project
and if the use of such instrument enables us to find a material that does what we want from
it, instead of finding it based on what we know about it.
Some bibliographic references gave clues about the context, complement and articulation
at an Architectural level and at material’s generic subject; however, the most important
references were Manzini [1], Sousa [2] and Nielsen [3]. An Instrument for characterization
of S. Inf. about materials was built with the bibliographic support. The definition of the
guidelines of this instrument was made simultaneously with the choice of the 17 study
cases. The samples were used for testing the instrument and for base of later analysis,
while studying deeply 4 of those cases.
Reflections were made about different concepts over materials and their information, and it
was understood which ones were the most relevant inter-confluences at materials definition
in the process of Architectural project. The actual panorama of the on-line Inf. S. about
materials was analyzed, through some characterization parameters, from the Instrument,
and selected for the purposes. A series of potentialities in the study cases relating to the
searching for materials through their properties were found and listed; the needs enounced
by the authors in the ambit of Architectural project with the potentialities that were found
in the studied Inf. S. were crossed.
In short, it appears that we can say that the actual Inf. S. about construction materials can’t
take us to a larger interdisciplinarity in the Architectural project yet. It happens because the
different types of language and contents aren’t connected. Where it comes to searching
materials by properties, it was found that some Inf. S. enable this and several other related
features. However, there are limitations because they don’t merge into one search tool. The
developed, used and validated Instrument can be applied to other studies or case studies in
different or similar contexts. Also, the potentialities found during the analysis, together
with the goal of associating different languages and contents, could contribute as a starting
point for developing new or already existent Inf. S. about materials for Architecture.
References:
[1] Manzini, E. (1993), a matéria da invenção. Porto, Ed. Centro Português de design.
[2] Sousa, J. (2005), “Convergência e não-linearidade no processo digital”. In Arquitectura e Vida
(62), Lisboa, Ed. Loja da Imagem, pp. 28-32.
[3] Nielsen, J. (2000), Designing Web Usability. Indianapolis, Ed. New Riders Publishing.
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