6.3 Suspended Ceiling Design Process - Bilkent University

2. COLLABORATIVE DESIGN RESEARCH IN
THE CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY
Researches on collaboration in the AEC industry have been based on a
social paradigm of design defined by Mitchell (1994). According to this
paradigm, design is the product of a team of professionals from different
disciplines rather than a product of a single talented individual who has
represented the image of designer since the Renaissance. The
paradigm prioritizes the “whole” over the “parts.” Mitchell presumes that
designers, with the help of the ever developing communication and
software technology, will come together in “virtual” design studios (or
offices) to produce designs without geographical and time constraints
(Mitchell, 1994). This vision has been realized to a great extent in the
second half of the 1990’s when collaboration research gained a
momentum.
Concurrent engineering is another paradigm that has driven
collaborative design research. The concept of concurrent engineering
was initially proposed as a means to minimize product development
time. Since then, many definitions of concurrent engineering have
emerged in the literature. In general, it implies a systematic approach to
the integrated and concurrent design of products and their related
processes (Pena-Mora et al., 2000). Shared product knowledge and a
communications architecture that will create a persistent space to
support interaction among participants throughout all phases of the
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