6.3 Suspended Ceiling Design Process - Bilkent University

In the case studies, it was also observed that certain aspects of design
are more prone to iterations. The identification of these aspects may be
useful for predicting problem areas in other designs. First of all, the
case studies showed that early design stage includes more iterative
cycles. The problematic situation of early design (also called conceptual
design) is well addressed in the literature. In building design, most of
the important decisions (orientation, circulation, functional layout, etc.)
are made in the early stages of design. However, most design software
can not support this stage of design development (Taşlı, 2001b).
Early design stage is characterized also by the following:
Use of incomplete and imprecise descriptions of the building.
Focus on qualitative aspects rather than quantitative details (Fruchter et
al., 1996).
Thus, decisions made in the early steps of design often have far-
reaching and unanticipated impacts at later stages. However, it is often
too costly to modify early design decisions as the design advances
since they affect many parameters and are likely to create “iterations in
iterations.” In order to resolve this dilemma, the assumptions related to
early design parameters should be accurate and/or parameter values
should be determined with tolerances to compensate for future
changes.
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