Emil Ballegaard

Approximately one in six people worldwide experiences significant disability. This is a persistent architectural problem as users continue to be excluded from built environments that fail to accommodate their basic needs and preferences. My PhD thesis addresses one factor contributing to this problem: the lack of adequate information to guide architects towards designs that can accommodate users’ situated preferences and needs. More specifically, it investigates the apparent incompatibility between narrative user information and the computer-aided design (CAD) applications used by nearly every practising architect. Although architects frequently use these applications to addressed users, they are not designed to process informal, subjective information typical of user narratives. They may therefore unintentionally hinder architects from using such information to address users’ particular preferences and needs within CAD environments. Developing an understanding of this (in)compatibility is therefore considered a possibly significant step towards reducing users’ exclusion from the built environment. 
The project positions itself within a humanistic architectural discourse and draws on research in digital humanities to develop and critically examine tools that enable architects to apply user narratives in their CAD-based design processes. The project asks whether and how (in)compatibilities arise when such information is introduced into the computational design contexts. Three studies, each reported in a scientific article, examine distinct yet complementary aspects of this question: The first study uses a narratological framework to examine which components of a text-based user narrative are preserved when translated to a parametric CAD model and interpreted by practising architects. In the second study, a knowledge graph integrating user narratives with CAD geometry is developed to study how architects interpret narrative ambiguity within a CAD environment and what design actions such interpretations prompt. Using the graph developed, the third study investigates whether and how combining a user narrative with a generative algorithm can enable architects to assess subjective use-potentials from multiple generated floorplans.
Study one shows that the preservation of spatiotemporal elements in the translation of narrative text to CAD is consistent whereas qualia and focal points seem to risk being lost – suggesting that (in)compatibility is selective rather than total. Study two finds that ambiguity in the graph-modelled narrative is interpreted differently by participants. However, perceived ambiguity generally prompts conjecture-based actions that CAD offers limited support for – suggesting that (in)compatibility is contingent on contextual interpretation. Study three finds that the generative approach is challenged in conveying essential aspects of use. Instead, its potential appears to lie in sensitising architects to relationships between design possibilities and user requirements that are otherwise difficult to identify – suggesting that (in)compatibility depend on the function of design output. Together, these findings suggest that (in)compatibility between user narratives and CAD is relative, contextual, and to some extent designable. This points to both opportunities, challenges, and unknowns for architects seeking to guide their CAD design decisions with user narratives to accommodate the diverse preferences and needs of users.