Rivka Oxman
Encyclopedia
Rivka Oxman is an architect
, researcher, professor, and author. She holds graduate and undergraduate degrees from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, where she is Vice Dean for Academic Affairs at the Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning.
Rivka Oxman has been a Visiting Professor at Stanford University
, USA, Delft University of Technology
, The Netherlands, and held research appointments at MIT and University of California, Berkeley
, U.S.A, and other universities. She has been involved with research and teaching activities with the University of Sydney
, Australia; and Kaiserslautern University of Technology in Germany.
She has been invited to deliver keynote lectures around the world in leading
conferences, including USA, ACADIA
2000; Europe, CAAD Futures 1997; 2011; South
America, SIGraDi
2004, 2009; Australia, CAADRIA
2011; Asia; as well as universities
and institutions. She has published more than 100 papers in numerous leading
international scientific journals and scientific conferences books and invited chapters
in books. Her work is widely cited and influential in this area.
Rivka Oxman is an Associate Editor of Design Studies (Elsevier
) - the international
journal for design research in engineering, architecture, products and systems. She
is also a member of numerous editorial boards of leading international scientific
journals and conferences on design research and theory and on digital design.
In 2006 she was appointed as a Fellow of DRS - the Design Research Society
for her established record of achievement in design research
, and attainment of peer
recognition as a researcher of professional standing and competence.
She has received the Design Research Society and Elsevier Science Award for the
best paper of the year in Design Studies: (“The Thinking Eye: Visual Re-Cognition in
Design Emergence”) for her contribution to the understanding of cognitive aspects of
visual reasoning in design emergence.
She has been a Jury Member in the yearly Feidad - Far Eastern International Digital
Architectural Design Award from 2001–2007.
Recently she has co-edited with Professor R. Oxman a special issue of the Architectural Design
(AD) journal
on “The New Structuralism: Design, Engineering and Architectural Technologies”. The New Structuralism has broad
implications for the way we conceive and undertake architectural design. It describes
the convergence of design, engineering and architectural technologies as a new
material practice in experimental architecture. In this pioneering publication, this
important shift is fully defined as a highly dynamic synthesis of emerging principles
of spatial, structural and material ordering integrated through the application of
materialization and fabrication technologies.
and methodology exploring their contribution to the emergence of
new paradigms of architectural design and practice.
Rivka Oxman has explored experimental methods and formalized various design
paradigms that are founded on concepts and methods in Cognitive Science and
Artificial Intelligence such as Rule-based Design
, Expert Systems
, and Case-based reasoning
. Over the years this approach has provided a foundation for
the understanding and theoretical formulation of design knowledge, of the
significance of design representations and of the types of design reasoning.
Beyond these theoretical contributions, Oxman’s work has also established a
methodological basis for the development of computational formalisms and tools
and for their application in design systems. Furthermore the theoretical and
applied research work on design systems has together made a profound impact on
design education. Her work on digital didactics is the culmination of many years of
experimental work in design studio education. Her experimental design studios are
currently integrated with seminars that provide an opportunity to experiment with
a research-based pedagogical approach to education in the digital design studio.
focus of Oxman’s work in the field of artificial intelligence
in Design. In the development of the PRODS system, emphasis has
been on the representation of generic and typological knowledge, characteristic
forms of domain knowledge in architecture. This knowledge is collectively referred
to as “typological
knowledge" These forms of design knowledge are frequently
considered among important classes of knowledge and reasoning processes that
are gained by designers through personal experience. Among other work, Oxman
has developed and implemented a hybrid "shell" composed of frame-based systems and rule-based systems (Oxman, 1990 "Design Shells: A Formalism
for Prototype Refinement in Knowledge-Based Design Systems") and implemented a system that contained knowledge of an architectural type.
knowledge that designers are able to reuse in current design situations. This
knowledge is frequently referred as design precedent knowledge and is a
form of reasoning referred to as Case-based Reasoning by the larger
scientific community. Rivka Oxman was among the first researchers to apply
these ideas to design; she developed a new approach to the formulation
and modeling of the prior knowledge of designs. She demonstrates in her
work how this significant type of knowledge, associated with experiential
reasoning, is gained from prior solutions. Her seminal paper (Oxman,
1990 "Prior Knowledge in Design, A Dynamic Knowledge-Based Model of
Design and Creativity") is employed
widely and highly cited by other researchers. Her original work, built on the
theory of case-based reasoning was termed Precedent-based Design
and was considered to be one of the first works in this area (Oxman,
1994 "Precedents in Design: a Computational Model for the Organization of
Precedent Knowledge")
formalization, and reuse of such prior design knowledge has become an
important component of design research agenda since the growth of the
internet. The representational formalism of design precedent knowledge that
Oxman developed was termed the ICF Formalism. The formalism presents a semantic network
(conceptual
network) of design Issues, design Concepts, and Formal solutions.
In considering the formalization of the knowledge of design precedents it has
been necessary to accommodate the fact that design knowledge is both textual
(conceptual) as well as visual. The recognition of the hybrid nature of the
conceptual and the visual as dual processes in design was explored in classifying
and defining two of the central paradigms of design: refinement and adaptation
(Oxman, 1997 "Design by Re-Representation: A Model of Visual Reasoning in
Design"). Her work was an important contribution to the formulation of the duality
of conceptual and visual reasoning
which also exploited the ICF formalism. The
ICF formalism has subsequently been applied in various fields of design. Among
other work, Rivka Oxman and her students have employed this formalism to
acquire domain knowledge of emerging practice in the field of digital architecture
(Oxman, Sarid*, Bar Eli* and Rotenstreich*, 1997 "A Conceptual Network for
Web Representation of Design Knowledge"; Bar On and Oxman, 2002 “Context
Over Content: ICPD, A Conceptual Schema for the Building Technology Domain”; Oxman and Rotenstreich*, 2005 "Conceptual Content of Design Paradigms in Digital
Architecture").
processes of the designer, or the cognitive foundations of design. This work has
important implications for the theory and practice of design education. In addition
to this general theme of exploiting knowledge gained from design research (e.g.
the growth of understanding of design knowledge) as a basis for new approaches
to design education, Oxman has attempted to update these theories as the digital
age has begun to create revolutionary changes in design processes and design
practices.
A strong relationship between cognition
and computation
has been developed
in Oxman’s work on the education of the designer in general, and since the
growth of the significance of the digital impact on design. Design thinking
,
or the "Designerly Thinker" is a subject of key significance and is one important
orientation of many of her papers. (Oxman, 1999 "Educating the Designerly
Thinker”; “The Mind in Design - A Conceptual Framework for Cognition in Design Education”)
The theoretical/methodological work has also established a strong theoretical basis
for the development of computational formalisms and tools and for the subsequent
application of such tools in design education (Oxman 2003 “Think-Maps: Teaching
Design Thinking in Design Education”). Both papers, which are highly cited by other
researchers, present and argue for a structured approach in design education which
exploits representations of design knowledge in order to allow an explicit definition
of the knowledge employed in design as a theoretical basis for design education.
visual reasoning
in design has contributed to a new focus in the field of design
research with respect to emergence
and creativity
. In Oxman’s research on
design emergence it was found to be based upon certain important mechanisms:
among these, the process of design as re-representation. Her papers in this field
are highly cited by other researchers (Oxman, 1997 "Design by Re-Representation:
A Model of Visual Reasoning in Design") and the processes
of visual cognition (Oxman, 2002 "The Thinking Eye: Visual Re-Cognition in Design
Emergence”). This latter paper received the Annual Design Studies Best Paper Award, granted by the Design Research Society and Elsevier Science.
-or the design in, or of, virtual world
s. These include subjects such as how
domain knowledge in architectural design can be applied in virtual design. In her
work she defines, models and evaluates the architectural and design contributions
to the strengthening of the sense of presence
in virtual environments and,
particularly, the role of human behavior in these environments. The following
topics are currently being investigated in collaboration with her graduate students:
Designing presence (Oxman, Palmon*, Shahar and Weiss, 2004 "Beyond the Reality
Syndrome: Designing Presence in Virtual Environments"); and the Evaluation of Virtual Environments for Barrier-Free Design (Palmon*
Oxman, Shahar and Weiss; 2005 "Virtual Environments in Design and Evaluation: An Aid for Accessible Design of Home Modification").
classify the significance that the new digital media
have upon design processes
and methods; this has also to accommodate a theoretical and methodological
foundation for digital design
. Theories and methods of digital design can no longer
be conceptualized as the merging of CAD tools with conventional formulations of
design. Given the growing amplitude of issues and subjects in digital design as
witnessed by both practice and academia, Rivka Oxman has formulated a research
framework that is suitable to the subject. Her proposed framework contributes
relevant theoretical and methodological structure to the field, pivotal issues and
definitions that are both characteristic of the field and powerful in their predictive
ability.
Her research since 2004 has attempted to address these challenges. She has
worked to define and formulate these new phenomena in an international workshop
at MIT (Oxman et al.; 2004 “Cognition and Computation in Digital Design”) and in a first special issue of the Design Studies journal on
the topic 'Digital Design' (Oxman, 2006). Oxman has also
explored these issues and other theoretical concepts of digital design in papers
(Oxman, 2006 “Theory and Design in the First Digital Age”) The definition and the
conceptual mapping of this emerging body of concepts is the subject of a critical
reader scheduled to appear in 2011 and to be published by ‘Taylor and Francis
’ (UK)
under the title of “The Digital in Architecture”.
in the emerging theory of digital design; among these are significant novel concepts
such as such as Performance-based Design (Oxman, 2008 "Performance
based Design: Current Practices and Research Issues");
Morphogenesis
; Form-finding and Parametric design.
concepts of design thinking and design education in the framework of an
experimental digital design studio at the Faculty of Architecture and Town
Planning at the Technion (Oxman, 2007 "Digital Architecture: Re-thinking Theory, Knowledge, Models and Medium - Challenge to Digital Design and Design Pedagogy").
(RP) and Fabrication Technologies today are absorbed into practice and are being recognized as significant technologies for design. Oxman and Sass have attempted
to formulate questions and issues of fabrication techniques as a design medium that
supports the full spectrum of digital design as a paperless process. These issues
have been the resultant of early experimental and hands-on involvement with RP
and fabrication technologies in research and educational environments. They
have demonstrated a process of design situated between conceptual design and real-
world construction. (Sass and Oxman 2006 “Materializing Design”).
between architecture and its structural properties. The changing definition of the
symbiotic relationship between structural engineering
and architectural design
may be considered one of the formative influences on the conceptual evolution
of tectonics in different historical periods. Recent developments in the field of
morphogenesis, digital media, theories techniques and methods of digital design
have contributed a new models of integration between structure, material and
form in digital tectonics. Oxman in her research work proposed and defined
tectonics as a model of morphogenetic process. Her paper Oxman Rivka (2010)
“Morphogenesis in the theory and methodology of digital tectonics“ identifies and presents the manner in which theory and emerging concepts of morphogenesis as well as digital models of design are contributing to this new model. The paper analyzed the historical evolution of tectonics as a concept and characterizes the emergence of theoretical framework reflected in concepts and terms related to morphogenesis.
Structuralism: Design, Engineering and Architectural Technologies”. The New
Structuralism has broad implications for the way we both conceive and undertake
architectural design, as its impact starts to emanate not only across education
internationally, but also through architectural research and practice. It describes
the convergence of design, engineering and architectural technologies as a new
material practice in experimental architecture. In this pioneering publication, this
important shift is fully defined as a highly dynamic synthesis of emerging principles
of spatial, structural and material ordering integrated through the application of
materialization and fabrication technologies providing the foundations for a new
theory of structuring in architecture.
Design Cognition and Computation; on Digital Design; and on Design
Education for Digital Design in the following international conferences and
symposia
2011
CAAD Futures 2011, Liege
, Belgium
- The New Structuralism
2011
CAADRIA 2011; Newcastle
, Australia
- The New Structuralism as a Material Practice
2009
DIA Dassau Institute of Architecture, Germany - Content and Media in Digital Design International Symposium on Design Education as a Research Laboratory,
2009
Design Modeling Symposium, Berlin, Germany - Digital architecture as a challenge for design pedagogy: theory, knowledge, models and medium in Concepts beyond Geometry
2009
SIGRADI 2009 the 13th Iberoamerican Congress of Digital Design, From Modern to Digital: The Challenges of Transition, São Paulo, Brazil - DDNET Conceptual Structures of Digital Design
2008 IASS 2008 Symposium, in Acapulco, Mexico Morphogenesis in Archi-Engineering 'Morphogenesis' - the 6t International Symposium on Structural Morphology
2007 International Symposium Shape to Fabrication Rhino for Architecture in association with London Metropolitan University, London, UK - Digital Design Theory and Methodology
2005 Universidad de Chile; under the MECESUP UCH-0217 initiative, Celebration of the 155 year anniversary of the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism, Santiago, Chile 8–9 July - Digital Design Paradigms
2004 SIGRADI 2004 the 8th Iberoamerican Congress of Digital Design, Poerto Alegre, Brazil - Theoretical Foundations of Digital Architecture
1997 5th ECAADE Conference Vienna University of Technology, Vienna, Austria, 1997 - The Challenge of Design Computation
Architect
An architect is a person trained in the planning, design and oversight of the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to offer or render services in connection with the design and construction of a building, or group of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the...
, researcher, professor, and author. She holds graduate and undergraduate degrees from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, where she is Vice Dean for Academic Affairs at the Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning.
Rivka Oxman has been a Visiting Professor at Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
, USA, Delft University of Technology
Delft University of Technology
Delft University of Technology , also known as TU Delft, is the largest and oldest Dutch public technical university, located in Delft, Netherlands...
, The Netherlands, and held research appointments at MIT and University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
, U.S.A, and other universities. She has been involved with research and teaching activities with the University of Sydney
University of Sydney
The University of Sydney is a public university located in Sydney, New South Wales. The main campus spreads across the suburbs of Camperdown and Darlington on the southwestern outskirts of the Sydney CBD. Founded in 1850, it is the oldest university in Australia and Oceania...
, Australia; and Kaiserslautern University of Technology in Germany.
She has been invited to deliver keynote lectures around the world in leading
conferences, including USA, ACADIA
ACADIA
The Association for Computer Aided Design In Architecture is a non-profit organization active in the area of computer-aided architectural design .- Mission statement :...
2000; Europe, CAAD Futures 1997; 2011; South
America, SIGraDi
SIGraDi
The Iberoamerican Society of Digital Graphics gathers researchers, educators and professionals inarchitecture, urban design, communication design, Product Design and Art whose workinvolves the new digital media....
2004, 2009; Australia, CAADRIA
CAADRIA
The Association for Computer-Aided Architectural Design Research in Asia provides a platform for CAAD-related academics and professionals to share experiences, best practices, and results in education and research in Asia and beyond.- Objectives :The Association has been created with several...
2011; Asia; as well as universities
and institutions. She has published more than 100 papers in numerous leading
international scientific journals and scientific conferences books and invited chapters
in books. Her work is widely cited and influential in this area.
Rivka Oxman is an Associate Editor of Design Studies (Elsevier
Elsevier
Elsevier is a publishing company which publishes medical and scientific literature. It is a part of the Reed Elsevier group. Based in Amsterdam, the company has operations in the United Kingdom, USA and elsewhere....
) - the international
journal for design research in engineering, architecture, products and systems. She
is also a member of numerous editorial boards of leading international scientific
journals and conferences on design research and theory and on digital design.
In 2006 she was appointed as a Fellow of DRS - the Design Research Society
for her established record of achievement in design research
Design research
Design research investigates the process of designing in all its many fields. It is thus related to Design methods in general or for particular disciplines. A primary interpretation of design research is that it is concerned with undertaking research into the design process. Secondary...
, and attainment of peer
recognition as a researcher of professional standing and competence.
She has received the Design Research Society and Elsevier Science Award for the
best paper of the year in Design Studies: (“The Thinking Eye: Visual Re-Cognition in
Design Emergence”) for her contribution to the understanding of cognitive aspects of
visual reasoning in design emergence.
She has been a Jury Member in the yearly Feidad - Far Eastern International Digital
Architectural Design Award from 2001–2007.
Recently she has co-edited with Professor R. Oxman a special issue of the Architectural Design
Architectural Design
Architectural Design, also known as AD, is a UK-based architectural journal first launched in 1930.In its early days it was more concerned with the British scene, but gradually became more international. It also moved away from presenting mostly news towards theme-based issues...
(AD) journal
on “The New Structuralism: Design, Engineering and Architectural Technologies”. The New Structuralism has broad
implications for the way we conceive and undertake architectural design. It describes
the convergence of design, engineering and architectural technologies as a new
material practice in experimental architecture. In this pioneering publication, this
important shift is fully defined as a highly dynamic synthesis of emerging principles
of spatial, structural and material ordering integrated through the application of
materialization and fabrication technologies.
Research Contribution
Oxman's research interests are related to design and computation, including digital architectureDigital architecture
Digital architecture uses computer modeling, programming, simulation and imaging to create both virtual forms and physical structures. The terminology has also been used to refer to other aspects of architecture that feature digital technologies...
and methodology exploring their contribution to the emergence of
new paradigms of architectural design and practice.
Rivka Oxman has explored experimental methods and formalized various design
paradigms that are founded on concepts and methods in Cognitive Science and
Artificial Intelligence such as Rule-based Design
Rule-based system
In computer science, rule-based systems are used as a way to store and manipulate knowledge to interpret information in a useful way. They are often used in artificial intelligence applications and research.-Applications:...
, Expert Systems
Expert system
In artificial intelligence, an expert system is a computer system that emulates the decision-making ability of a human expert. Expert systems are designed to solve complex problems by reasoning about knowledge, like an expert, and not by following the procedure of a developer as is the case in...
, and Case-based reasoning
Case-based reasoning
Case-based reasoning , broadly construed, is the process of solving new problems based on the solutions of similar past problems. An auto mechanic who fixes an engine by recalling another car that exhibited similar symptoms is using case-based reasoning...
. Over the years this approach has provided a foundation for
the understanding and theoretical formulation of design knowledge, of the
significance of design representations and of the types of design reasoning.
Beyond these theoretical contributions, Oxman’s work has also established a
methodological basis for the development of computational formalisms and tools
and for their application in design systems. Furthermore the theoretical and
applied research work on design systems has together made a profound impact on
design education. Her work on digital didactics is the culmination of many years of
experimental work in design studio education. Her experimental design studios are
currently integrated with seminars that provide an opportunity to experiment with
a research-based pedagogical approach to education in the digital design studio.
Prototype-based Systems and Typological Design
The representation and formalization of domain knowledge has been a centralfocus of Oxman’s work in the field of artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...
in Design. In the development of the PRODS system, emphasis has
been on the representation of generic and typological knowledge, characteristic
forms of domain knowledge in architecture. This knowledge is collectively referred
to as “typological
Typology
Typology is the study of types. More specifically, it may refer to:*Typology , division of culture by races*Typology , classification of things according to their characteristics...
knowledge" These forms of design knowledge are frequently
considered among important classes of knowledge and reasoning processes that
are gained by designers through personal experience. Among other work, Oxman
has developed and implemented a hybrid "shell" composed of frame-based systems and rule-based systems (Oxman, 1990 "Design Shells: A Formalism
for Prototype Refinement in Knowledge-Based Design Systems") and implemented a system that contained knowledge of an architectural type.
Case-based Systems and Design Precedent Knowledge
The knowledge of prior design solutions forms an important class of designknowledge that designers are able to reuse in current design situations. This
knowledge is frequently referred as design precedent knowledge and is a
form of reasoning referred to as Case-based Reasoning by the larger
scientific community. Rivka Oxman was among the first researchers to apply
these ideas to design; she developed a new approach to the formulation
and modeling of the prior knowledge of designs. She demonstrates in her
work how this significant type of knowledge, associated with experiential
reasoning, is gained from prior solutions. Her seminal paper (Oxman,
1990 "Prior Knowledge in Design, A Dynamic Knowledge-Based Model of
Design and Creativity") is employed
widely and highly cited by other researchers. Her original work, built on the
theory of case-based reasoning was termed Precedent-based Design
and was considered to be one of the first works in this area (Oxman,
1994 "Precedents in Design: a Computational Model for the Organization of
Precedent Knowledge")
Conceptual Network, Associative Reasoning Formalism
The formulation of conceptual networks as a basis for the acquisition,formalization, and reuse of such prior design knowledge has become an
important component of design research agenda since the growth of the
internet. The representational formalism of design precedent knowledge that
Oxman developed was termed the ICF Formalism. The formalism presents a semantic network
Semantic network
A semantic network is a network which represents semantic relations among concepts. This is often used as a form of knowledge representation. It is a directed or undirected graph consisting of vertices, which represent concepts, and edges.- History :...
(conceptual
network) of design Issues, design Concepts, and Formal solutions.
In considering the formalization of the knowledge of design precedents it has
been necessary to accommodate the fact that design knowledge is both textual
(conceptual) as well as visual. The recognition of the hybrid nature of the
conceptual and the visual as dual processes in design was explored in classifying
and defining two of the central paradigms of design: refinement and adaptation
(Oxman, 1997 "Design by Re-Representation: A Model of Visual Reasoning in
Design"). Her work was an important contribution to the formulation of the duality
of conceptual and visual reasoning
Visual reasoning
In a frequently cited paper in the journal Science and later book Eugene S. Ferguson, a mechanical engineer and historian of technology, claims what many engineers and technologists take for granted: visual reasoning is a widely used tool used in creating technological artefacts. There is ample...
which also exploited the ICF formalism. The
ICF formalism has subsequently been applied in various fields of design. Among
other work, Rivka Oxman and her students have employed this formalism to
acquire domain knowledge of emerging practice in the field of digital architecture
(Oxman, Sarid*, Bar Eli* and Rotenstreich*, 1997 "A Conceptual Network for
Web Representation of Design Knowledge"; Bar On and Oxman, 2002 “Context
Over Content: ICPD, A Conceptual Schema for the Building Technology Domain”; Oxman and Rotenstreich*, 2005 "Conceptual Content of Design Paradigms in Digital
Architecture").
Cognition and Computation in Design Education
Much of the work described deals with studying and formulating the thinkingprocesses of the designer, or the cognitive foundations of design. This work has
important implications for the theory and practice of design education. In addition
to this general theme of exploiting knowledge gained from design research (e.g.
the growth of understanding of design knowledge) as a basis for new approaches
to design education, Oxman has attempted to update these theories as the digital
age has begun to create revolutionary changes in design processes and design
practices.
A strong relationship between cognition
Cognition
In science, cognition refers to mental processes. These processes include attention, remembering, producing and understanding language, solving problems, and making decisions. Cognition is studied in various disciplines such as psychology, philosophy, linguistics, and computer science...
and computation
Computation
Computation is defined as any type of calculation. Also defined as use of computer technology in Information processing.Computation is a process following a well-defined model understood and expressed in an algorithm, protocol, network topology, etc...
has been developed
in Oxman’s work on the education of the designer in general, and since the
growth of the significance of the digital impact on design. Design thinking
Design thinking
Design Thinking refers to the methods and processes for investigating ill-defined problems, acquiring information, analyzing knowledge, and positing solutions in the design and planning fields...
,
or the "Designerly Thinker" is a subject of key significance and is one important
orientation of many of her papers. (Oxman, 1999 "Educating the Designerly
Thinker”; “The Mind in Design - A Conceptual Framework for Cognition in Design Education”)
The theoretical/methodological work has also established a strong theoretical basis
for the development of computational formalisms and tools and for the subsequent
application of such tools in design education (Oxman 2003 “Think-Maps: Teaching
Design Thinking in Design Education”). Both papers, which are highly cited by other
researchers, present and argue for a structured approach in design education which
exploits representations of design knowledge in order to allow an explicit definition
of the knowledge employed in design as a theoretical basis for design education.
Design Emergence and Creativity
Rivka Oxman’s work on the nature of the relationship between knowledge andvisual reasoning
Visual reasoning
In a frequently cited paper in the journal Science and later book Eugene S. Ferguson, a mechanical engineer and historian of technology, claims what many engineers and technologists take for granted: visual reasoning is a widely used tool used in creating technological artefacts. There is ample...
in design has contributed to a new focus in the field of design
research with respect to emergence
Emergence
In philosophy, systems theory, science, and art, emergence is the way complex systems and patterns arise out of a multiplicity of relatively simple interactions. Emergence is central to the theories of integrative levels and of complex systems....
and creativity
Creativity
Creativity refers to the phenomenon whereby a person creates something new that has some kind of value. What counts as "new" may be in reference to the individual creator, or to the society or domain within which the novelty occurs...
. In Oxman’s research on
design emergence it was found to be based upon certain important mechanisms:
among these, the process of design as re-representation. Her papers in this field
are highly cited by other researchers (Oxman, 1997 "Design by Re-Representation:
A Model of Visual Reasoning in Design") and the processes
of visual cognition (Oxman, 2002 "The Thinking Eye: Visual Re-Cognition in Design
Emergence”). This latter paper received the Annual Design Studies Best Paper Award, granted by the Design Research Society and Elsevier Science.
Virtual Design
Rivka Oxman’s work in design has relevance to subjects related to virtual design-or the design in, or of, virtual world
Virtual world
A virtual world is an online community that takes the form of a computer-based simulated environment through which users can interact with one another and use and create objects. The term has become largely synonymous with interactive 3D virtual environments, where the users take the form of...
s. These include subjects such as how
domain knowledge in architectural design can be applied in virtual design. In her
work she defines, models and evaluates the architectural and design contributions
to the strengthening of the sense of presence
Presence (telepresence)
Presence is a theoretical concept describing the effect that people experience when they interact with a computer-mediated or computer-generated environment . Lombard and Ditton described presence as “an illusion that a mediated experience is not mediated”...
in virtual environments and,
particularly, the role of human behavior in these environments. The following
topics are currently being investigated in collaboration with her graduate students:
Designing presence (Oxman, Palmon*, Shahar and Weiss, 2004 "Beyond the Reality
Syndrome: Designing Presence in Virtual Environments"); and the Evaluation of Virtual Environments for Barrier-Free Design (Palmon*
Oxman, Shahar and Weiss; 2005 "Virtual Environments in Design and Evaluation: An Aid for Accessible Design of Home Modification").
Theories, Models and Methodologies of Digital Design
In her recent work, Rivka Oxman has been attempting to establish, define, andclassify the significance that the new digital media
Digital media
Digital media is a form of electronic media where data is stored in digital form. It can refer to the technical aspect of storage and transmission Digital media is a form of electronic media where data is stored in digital (as opposed to analog) form. It can refer to the technical aspect of...
have upon design processes
and methods; this has also to accommodate a theoretical and methodological
foundation for digital design
Digital architecture
Digital architecture uses computer modeling, programming, simulation and imaging to create both virtual forms and physical structures. The terminology has also been used to refer to other aspects of architecture that feature digital technologies...
. Theories and methods of digital design can no longer
be conceptualized as the merging of CAD tools with conventional formulations of
design. Given the growing amplitude of issues and subjects in digital design as
witnessed by both practice and academia, Rivka Oxman has formulated a research
framework that is suitable to the subject. Her proposed framework contributes
relevant theoretical and methodological structure to the field, pivotal issues and
definitions that are both characteristic of the field and powerful in their predictive
ability.
Her research since 2004 has attempted to address these challenges. She has
worked to define and formulate these new phenomena in an international workshop
at MIT (Oxman et al.; 2004 “Cognition and Computation in Digital Design”) and in a first special issue of the Design Studies journal on
the topic 'Digital Design' (Oxman, 2006). Oxman has also
explored these issues and other theoretical concepts of digital design in papers
(Oxman, 2006 “Theory and Design in the First Digital Age”) The definition and the
conceptual mapping of this emerging body of concepts is the subject of a critical
reader scheduled to appear in 2011 and to be published by ‘Taylor and Francis
Taylor and Francis
Taylor & Francis Group is an international company originating in the United Kingdom which publishes books and academic journals. It is a division of Informa plc, a United Kingdom-based publisher and conference company.- Overview :...
’ (UK)
under the title of “The Digital in Architecture”.
Performance-based Design
In this current work she presents a body of theoretical explication of key conceptsin the emerging theory of digital design; among these are significant novel concepts
such as such as Performance-based Design (Oxman, 2008 "Performance
based Design: Current Practices and Research Issues");
Morphogenesis
Digital morphogenesis
Digital morphogenesis is a process of shape development enabled by computation. While this concept is applicable in many areas, the term "digital morphogenesis" is used primarily in architecture....
; Form-finding and Parametric design.
Digital Design Pedagogy
In addition to this research and writing, Rivka Oxman has also explored novelconcepts of design thinking and design education in the framework of an
experimental digital design studio at the Faculty of Architecture and Town
Planning at the Technion (Oxman, 2007 "Digital Architecture: Re-thinking Theory, Knowledge, Models and Medium - Challenge to Digital Design and Design Pedagogy").
Design and Fabrication
Rapid prototypingRapid prototyping
Rapid prototyping is the automatic construction of physical objects using additive manufacturing technology. The first techniques for rapid prototyping became available in the late 1980s and were used to produce models and prototype parts. Today, they are used for a much wider range of applications...
(RP) and Fabrication Technologies today are absorbed into practice and are being recognized as significant technologies for design. Oxman and Sass have attempted
to formulate questions and issues of fabrication techniques as a design medium that
supports the full spectrum of digital design as a paperless process. These issues
have been the resultant of early experimental and hands-on involvement with RP
and fabrication technologies in research and educational environments. They
have demonstrated a process of design situated between conceptual design and real-
world construction. (Sass and Oxman 2006 “Materializing Design”).
Morphogenesis in Digital Design
Tectonics is a seminal concept that defines the nature of the relationshipbetween architecture and its structural properties. The changing definition of the
symbiotic relationship between structural engineering
Structural engineering
Structural engineering is a field of engineering dealing with the analysis and design of structures that support or resist loads. Structural engineering is usually considered a specialty within civil engineering, but it can also be studied in its own right....
and architectural design
may be considered one of the formative influences on the conceptual evolution
of tectonics in different historical periods. Recent developments in the field of
morphogenesis, digital media, theories techniques and methods of digital design
have contributed a new models of integration between structure, material and
form in digital tectonics. Oxman in her research work proposed and defined
tectonics as a model of morphogenetic process. Her paper Oxman Rivka (2010)
“Morphogenesis in the theory and methodology of digital tectonics“ identifies and presents the manner in which theory and emerging concepts of morphogenesis as well as digital models of design are contributing to this new model. The paper analyzed the historical evolution of tectonics as a concept and characterizes the emergence of theoretical framework reflected in concepts and terms related to morphogenesis.
The New Structuralism – Design Engineering and Architectural Technologies
Rivka Oxman has co-edited with Professor Robert Oxman a new book on “The NewStructuralism: Design, Engineering and Architectural Technologies”. The New
Structuralism has broad implications for the way we both conceive and undertake
architectural design, as its impact starts to emanate not only across education
internationally, but also through architectural research and practice. It describes
the convergence of design, engineering and architectural technologies as a new
material practice in experimental architecture. In this pioneering publication, this
important shift is fully defined as a highly dynamic synthesis of emerging principles
of spatial, structural and material ordering integrated through the application of
materialization and fabrication technologies providing the foundations for a new
theory of structuring in architecture.
Keynote Lectures
Rivka Oxman has been recently invited to deliver keynote lectures onDesign Cognition and Computation; on Digital Design; and on Design
Education for Digital Design in the following international conferences and
symposia
2011
CAAD Futures 2011, Liege
Liege
Liège is a municipality and a city of Belgium. The term Liège or Liege may also refer to:* Liege, a party to the oath of allegiance in feudalism .* Liège Island, in the Antarctic...
, Belgium
Belgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...
- The New Structuralism
2011
CAADRIA 2011; Newcastle
Newcastle, New South Wales
The Newcastle metropolitan area is the second most populated area in the Australian state of New South Wales and includes most of the Newcastle and Lake Macquarie Local Government Areas...
, Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
- The New Structuralism as a Material Practice
2009
DIA Dassau Institute of Architecture, Germany - Content and Media in Digital Design International Symposium on Design Education as a Research Laboratory,
2009
Design Modeling Symposium, Berlin, Germany - Digital architecture as a challenge for design pedagogy: theory, knowledge, models and medium in Concepts beyond Geometry
2009
SIGRADI 2009 the 13th Iberoamerican Congress of Digital Design, From Modern to Digital: The Challenges of Transition, São Paulo, Brazil - DDNET Conceptual Structures of Digital Design
2008 IASS 2008 Symposium, in Acapulco, Mexico Morphogenesis in Archi-Engineering 'Morphogenesis' - the 6t International Symposium on Structural Morphology
2007 International Symposium Shape to Fabrication Rhino for Architecture in association with London Metropolitan University, London, UK - Digital Design Theory and Methodology
2005 Universidad de Chile; under the MECESUP UCH-0217 initiative, Celebration of the 155 year anniversary of the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism, Santiago, Chile 8–9 July - Digital Design Paradigms
2004 SIGRADI 2004 the 8th Iberoamerican Congress of Digital Design, Poerto Alegre, Brazil - Theoretical Foundations of Digital Architecture
1997 5th ECAADE Conference Vienna University of Technology, Vienna, Austria, 1997 - The Challenge of Design Computation