Design rationalization and the logic of design: a case study.

This is a study of the reasoning involved in justifying a decision chain from a given design brief (of an architectural competition on site planning) to a given solution (the winning entry). A logical method of analysis is presented and applied to the case data; the resulting findings include various 'sources of credibility' of premises, items of general background knowledge, and several (abductive and deductive) patterns of inference which suggest a possible 'logic of design'. Rationalization of decisions is defined, and many decisions are found not to be fully rationalized, despite the apparent rationality of the reasoning.