This thesis presents a way to manipulate architectural data to achieve alternate schematic design proposals. The process is demonstrated within an extended housing context. In the spirit of the systematic approach, a language and computing steps have been detailed allowing a procedure for the construction of alternate programme strategies. A part of this procedure is devoted to evaluating the performance of each alternative with respect to others. From a triple data hierarchy based on activity

more »

... ypes, room types, and attribute requirements, a set of Functional Units is created and constitutes the Architectural Programme. In this programme each Functional Unit has 5 Project Constituents: l) it is place in Sequence, 2) it takes place in a specific Volume, 3) it has a Reference Point and 4) a Direction on the site, 5) it has a Cost. The operations performed to determine those Project Constituents are essentially mathematical computations. However before doing so, a Site Planning Strategy has to be defined regarding the site information likely to influence the Project Constituents. Having established the first schematic design plan, a series of appropriate variations can be developed and evaluated in order to indicated the most appropriated proposal. This thesis does not present the final computer programme to be applied to this system but instead formulates it to be used manually before further investigation. An existing computer program called "INFO", available at the U.B.C. Computing Center, has been mentioned as the potential main support for the data manipulation and maintenance.