The process of collective architectural conception: Characterizing cognitive operations of conception specific to an agency

Abstract

This paper aims to study the process of the collective architectural conception. We propose to analyze the collective practices in architecture through the exploration of various situations of collective design. Otherwise, we carried out an architecturological study of the architectural design process of some artifacts observed within three architectural agencies. In order to describe the model that characterizes the agency, we question the recurrent cognitive operations from an architecturological analysis grid that allows to identify the repetitions between the processes. Recurrent methodical and representational operations have been also identified; together they characterize the “architecturological style” of the agency. In the same way, organizational and graphical recurrences have been decrypted from the analysis of the empirical charters set up in architecture agencies. All of these recurrences constitute signs of the existence of a designer’s collective signature that we suggest to name “collective style”.