Workshops as practicum's to improve integration and knowledge exchange in collaborative design

The cooperation between the various disciplines interacting in an architectural design process is often inadequate or lacking. This is due to the growing complexity of building design processes involving many experts from different disciplines, having a different knowledge background, view and approach to solutions for design and construction. This lack of collaboration is usually shown by the next aspects; a lack of integration in the team, knowledge gaps between design and construction, failing flows of information and communication and feedback between designers and practitioners. In order to increase the potential of creating better integral design concepts, practitioners tend to use support tools. A design management approach to support design teams integrally in order to improve collaboration and affecting communication needs to focus better on the process aspects of conceptual design. Such a design management approach should easily link all necessary information and knowledge of the involved disciplines (architects, engineers, contractors). To that account in this paper, a support tool is presented that stimulates members of design teams to use collectively a specific method for collaborative design that incorporates the characteristics of an integrated product model. The aim of the management intervention is to support design activities by the use of a framework for the design process to structure information and knowledge exchange between and with commitment of all participants to optimize design solutions. This method, the so called Morphological Overviews, is based on Morphological Charts. The concept will be explained on its functioning and be discussed by the results and insights gained through a series of Workshops executed in the period 2005-2008 with practitioners from the Dutch construction Industry. Also is discussed how partly, elements of this approach can be used in architectural design management. The paper finalizes with conclusions and recommendations for further research.