Technology and the Architect: Empowering the Contemporary Design Process with Digitally Semantic Information

The research presented in this paper takes a stance amidst two fields of study: that of Architecture and that of Computer Science/Information Technology. Beginning with a brief positioning of this dichotomous work in philosophy, this paper goes on to hypothesize that, for the purposes of efficient digital workflows and collaboration, Architecture must develop an ontology capturing the developed semantic knowledge of the discipline. Without delving into the technical details too deeply, this thesis analyzes several ontological examples, both offline and published online, in order to address the current state of affairs pertaining to questions of efficient information-sharing in the AEC industry. Focusing on the proposal of a network of semantic web technologies to support knowledge-based interoperability solutions, the question remains; what should an architectural discipline ontology meant to facilitate data-sharing, but developed on the premise of knowledge-sharing, look like?