Decoding the Post-Analysis Stage in Design Process: Proposing a Framework of Form Synthesis Strategies

Despite the diversity of methodologies and approaches in architectural design process, there are a shared agreement on the inevitable existence of the stages "analysis" and "synthesis" as norms sequences during the process. Synthesis is looking for an invention of embodiment to the data from analysis, and generating design ideas. Surprisingly, this stage is remained with a very scare studies and least discussions, although it is "the most crucial and most difficult aspect of designing, and indeed the most intimidating to a fledgling designer". Leaving the stage to the free well of designer intuition and personal creativity. This tendency has engendered two conflicts, firstly the intuitive creativity is unreliable and far from satisfy the elementary demand of methodical approach. Secondly, the freedom margin turns to a place of incompetence and confusion leads to random actions to synthesize the intended form, which put the product under the suspicions. Decoding the post analysis stage becomes an argent appeal, thus the main aim drawn for this research is to synthesis an explanatory framework exhibits set of shared and accepted form synthesis strategies, to become as normative map for designers that can broaden their conceptual capacity and inform their decisions during the post analysis stage in design process. Creating such inclusive framework acquired to unify all the form design theories in one plateau and connected them by appointing a formulation criteria dissolving the theories to their basic design ingredients. The Logical argumentation research method basic condition tends to pick a group of previously unappreciated disparate factors, then reconnected them to reveal a unified framework. The literature survey on the area of descriptive form design theories that take the mold of framework, revealed a 45 form design theory distributed in 9 different frameworks. The classifying of the previous findings established among the different texts, resulted 34 form design theories, 4 among them were addressed in the same name by different authors, while the other 30 showed differences on terms and descriptions. Correlating the fragmented theories together by affiliating the conceptual descriptions obtained by them, enclose the 34 form design theory into 9 inclusive form design theories. After the relabeling process the result are: Theory of Deep Structure Transformations, Theory of Layering Meaning, Theory of Deformation, Theory of Form Performance, Theory of Information, Theory of Metaphor as Generator, Theory of Pattern Language, Theory of Transformation of Specific Type, and Theory of Space as Generator. The design theories dissolved by an analytical device developed from Salama's Design Ingredients Theory. The result unfolded the design ingredients for each Form design theory as Strategy, Technique and Tool. Finally, the proposed framework was synthesized and presented in a diagrammatic organization, exhibited verified and accepted theories among the authors, thus they can reach the extent of being norms for form synthesis. The framework holds of the ability to provide a conceptual clarity via offering multiple start points, which broadening Designer's conceptual capacity to answer the demands subjected from the variety of design tasks. Not to forget the reason of adoption that attached to each strategy allows Designer to place himself exactly in the right selection to tackle the task. Keywords: Form synthesis process; Form generation process; Design methods; Design theories.