A model of cross-disciplinary building knowledge supporting collaboration

This paper provides a model for representing and managing knowledge in the cross-disciplinary building design process, that is the basis of software developments supporting collaborative design and collaborative cross-disciplinary education. The model is based on an innovative representation of the entities involved in the building design process. It is structured so as to have them distributed into several Specialist Knowledge Structures and into one Common Knowledge Structure. It allows collaboration among designers throughout the design process by linking any Specialist Knowledge Base to a correspondent specialist actor's Private Design Workspace, while all are connected to a Common Design Workspace.