The Shape of Empty Space:
  Human-centred cognitive foundations in
      computing for spatial design
                        Mehul BHATT 1 and Carl SCHULTZ
    Spatial Cognition Research Center (SFB/TR 8), University of Bremen, Germany


             Abstract. We propose a human-centred model for abstraction, modelling and com-
             puting in function-driven spatial design for architecture. The primitive entities of
             our design conception ontology and computing framework are driven by classic no-
             tions of structure, function, and a↵ordance in design, and are directly based on the
             fundamental human perceptual and analytical modalities of visual and locomotive
             exploration of space. With an emphasis on design semantics, our model for spa-
             tial design marks a fundamental shift from contemporary modelling and computa-
             tional foundations underlying engineering- centred computer aided design systems.
             We demonstrate the application of our model within a system for human-centred
             compu- tational design analysis and simulation. We also illustrate the manner in
             which our design modelling and computing framework seamlessly builds on con-
             temporary industry data modelling standards within the architecture and construc-
             tion informatics communities.
             Keywords. architectural CAAD, cognitive systems, ontologies (artificial intelligence),
             declarative languages, knowledge representation and reasoning, geometric and
             spatial representation and reasoning, computational geometry




References
Bhatt, M., Schultz, C., Huang, M. (2012). The Shape of Empty Space: Human-Centred Cognitive Founda-
tions in Computing for Spatial Design. IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing
(VL/HCC) 2012, Innsbruck, Austria

Bhatt, M., Schultz, C., Freksa, C. (2013). The ‘Space’ in Spatial Assistance Systems: Conception, Formali-
sation, and Computation. in Thora Tenbrink, Jan Wiener, Christophe Claramunt (editors). Representing space
in cognition: Behavior, language, and formal models. Series: Explorations in Language and Space. Oxford
University Press, 2013, 978-0-19-967991-1.

Bhatt, M., Lee, J. H., Schultz, C. (2011). CLP(QS): A Declarative Spatial Reasoning Framework. Proceed-
ings of the 10th International Conference on Spatial Information Theory (COSIT 11). Editors: Egenhofer, Max
and Giudice, Nicholas and Moratz, Reinhard and Worboys, Michael. Vol. 6899, Pages: 210–230, Springer
Berlin / Heidelberg (LNCS), Belfast, Maine. ISBN: 978-3-642-23195-7.



  1 Corresponding Author: E-mail: bhatt@informatik.uni-bremen.de




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