Built environment and its parts: towards an integrated study of the construction as a system using an evolving technological knowledge

To consider the built environment as a single system is in contrast with the tendency towards specialization and analysis. Multiple changes are now taking place simultaneously in the planning process, the construction techniques, the organization of a building site, the production of materials and the technical information. All this is driven by a progressive specialization of knowledge and an increasingly important role of data and tools coming from different scientific apparatus. The richness of building methods is always evolving to meet very different requirements in extremely varied conditions and environments. This, however, makes the understanding of the construction and the environment as a ‘system’ difficult and, consequently, all of the various elements that must contribute to forming the system. All this is in a scenario dominated by “Big Data” and computerized processing of information that seem to make natural language completely inappropriate to the task. In this situation and in our role as professors involved in the training of future professionals, we are committed to defining a method for dealing with the processing of information relating to construction within a system that permits operating at the level of analytical details without losing the connection to the system in general. The study presented here is based on the use of cognitive maps to represent the parts as a general whole of the construction as a system, through a coded breakdown of sentences that convey information. Considering the need to maintain all the usual forms that architects use in their design work, as well as relying on known and familiar examples of constructions, we link basic elementary concepts to the most widespread architectural journalism. Essentially, examples of solutions which refer to parts of the construction system empower designers to grasp the essential function of the parts to reach a complete and organic understanding of them in relation to the system itself. Starting from the five main themes that compose the construction system (ground anchoring, structure, enclosure, roofing and systems), we synthesized in a few booklets the basic information necessary for an architect to understand the construction and its parts as a ‘system’.