Architectures Of Knowledge

Knowledge Architectures reviews traditional approaches to managing information and explains why they need to adapt to support 21st-century information management and discovery. Exploring the rapidly changing environment in which information is being managed and accessed, the book considers how to use knowledge architectures, the basic structures and designs that underlie all of the parts of an effective information system, to best advantage. Drawing on 40 years of work with a variety of organizations, Bedford explains that failure to understand the structure behind any given system can be the difference between an effective solution and a significant and costly failure. Demonstrating that the information user environment has shifted significantly in the past 20 years, the book explains that end users now expect designs and behaviors that are much closer to the way they think, work, and act. Acknowledging how important it is that those responsible for developing an information or knowledge management system understand knowledge structures, the book goes beyond a traditional library science perspective and uses case studies to help translate the abstract and theoretical to the practical and concrete. Explaining the structures in a simple and intuitive way and providing examples that clearly illustrate the challenges faced by a range of different organizations, Knowledge Architectures is essential reading for those studying and working in library and information science, data science, systems development, database design, and search system architecture and engineering.

'Architectures of Knowledge' demonstrates that a recognition of the importance of the role of knowledge in economics may lead to a new conception of the firm or business enterprise, and public policy.

A software architecture manifests the major early design decisions, which determine the system’s development, deployment and evolution. Thus, making better architectural decisions is one of the large challenges in software engineering. Software architecture knowledge management is about capturing practical experience and translating it into generalized architectural knowledge, and using this knowledge in the communication with stakeholders during all phases of the software lifecycle. This book presents a concise description of knowledge management in the software architecture discipline. It explains the importance of sound knowledge management practices for improving software architecture processes and products, and makes clear the role of knowledge management in software architecture and software development processes. It presents many approaches that are in use in software companies today, approaches that have been used in other domains, and approaches under development in academia. After an initial introduction by the editors, the contributions are grouped in three parts on "Architecture Knowledge Management", "Strategies and Approaches for Managing Architectural Knowledge", and "Tools and Techniques for Managing Architectural Knowledge". The presentation aims at information technology and software engineering professionals, in particular software architects and software architecture researchers. For the industrial audience, the book gives a broad and concise understanding of the importance of knowledge management for improving software architecture process and building capabilities in designing and evaluating better architectures for their mission- and business-critical systems. For researchers, the book will help to understand the applications of various knowledge management approaches in an industrial setting and to identify research challenges and opportunities.

"Foqué establishes a general design theory based on the axioms of pragmatic thinking, a crucial unity between experience and the process of learning, and between conceptual thought and situational consciousness. Building Knowledge develops a theoretical framework and practical instrumentation to establish a knowledge base for the discipline of architecture. Part one of the book presents design methods as a third way of investigating reality apart from scientific methods or the conception of art. By describing thescience-philosophical context, Foqué extensively analyses the nature of design activity and the design process, its inherent characteristics, and the differences between science and art. As such, it is argued that design processes have a research dimension an sich, which are essentially contextual and action driven. Foqué offers an integrated and comprehensive perspective to understand design activity both from an epistemological and practical standpoint. This results in an expanded discourse about the true nature of architectural design processes. Within this theoretical framework, part two explains how case study research is a primordial means to establish a knowledge base for the discipline and profession of architecture. From this premise, Foqué compares case study research in law, medicine and business administration and develops a practical and comprehensive approach to case studies in architecture. The methodology offers a solid and general framework wherein a consistent body of knowledge regarding architectural design processes can be generated. This promotes deeper insight in the complex relationship between context, product and process, which governs every design process on the one hand, and between the several stakeholders involved on the other hand."--Publisher.

The volume addresses the hybridisation of knowledge production in space-related research. In contrast with interdisciplinary knowledge, which is primarily located in scholarly environments, transdisciplinary knowledge production entails a fusion of academic and non-academic knowledge, theory and practice, discipline and profession. Architecture (and urbanism), operating as both a discipline and a profession, seems to form a particularly receptive ground for transdisciplinary research. However, this specificity has not yet been developed into a full-fledged, unique mode of knowledge production. In order to dedicate specific attention to transdisciplinary knowledge production, this book aims to explore (new) hybrid modes of inquiry that allow many of architecture’s longstanding schisms to be overcome: such as between theory/history and practice, critical theory and projective design, the adoption of an external viewpoint and a view-from-within (often under the guise of bottom-up vs. top-down). It therefore offers the reader a mix of contributions that elaborate on knowledge production that is situated in the (architectural and urban) profession or practice, and on practice-based approaches in theory.

What is essential knowledge for architecture? This frequently posed question targets fundamental principles of design, those basic criteria and priorities through which disciplinary stability is ensured. Yet, insofar as relevance is a core value of architecture in both theory and practice, the contingent nature of the future guarantees that some forms of knowledge not presently considered essential will eventually become indispensable. With that condition in mind, (Non-) Essential Knowledge for (New) Architecture collects projects that envision possible futures for architecture through speculations about new disciplinary knowledge. Asking what specific methods, materials, or understandings—tools, ratios, formulas, properties, principles, guidelines, definitions, rules, practices, techniques, reference points, histories, and more—not presently considered essential to architecture could, or should, define its future, this new volume of 306090 serves as both a gauge of contemporary concerns and a manual for emergent theory and practice.

In architecture, tacit knowledge plays a substantial role in both the design process and its reception. The essays in this book explore the tacit dimension of architecture in its aesthetic, material, cultural, design-based, and reflexive understanding of what we build. Tacit knowledge, described in 1966 by Michael Polanyi as what we ‘can know but cannot tell’, often denotes knowledge that escapes quantifiable dimensions of research. Much of architecture’s knowledge resides beneath the surface, in nonverbal instruments such as drawings and models that articulate the spatial imagination of the design process. Awareness of the tacit dimension helps to understand the many facets of the spaces we inhabit, from the ideas of the architect to the more hidden assumptions of our cultures. Beginning in the studio, where students are guided into becoming architects, the book follows a path through the tacit knowledge present in materials, conceptual structures, and the design process, revealing how the tacit dimension leads to craftsmanship and the situated knowledge of architecture-in-the-world. Contributors: Tom Avermaete (ETH Zürich), Margitta Buchert (Leibniz-Universität Hannover), Christoph Grafe (Bergische Universität Wuppertal), Mari Lending (The Oslo School of Architecture and Design), Angelika Schnell (Academy of Fine Arts Vienna), Eireen Schreurs (Delft University of Technology), Lara Schrijver (University of Antwerp)