From rough to final designs by incremental set-inclusion of properties

Design of buildings is a complex task in which ideas are sketched and communicated, by representations that are incrementally elaborated from the early rough sketches to the final design. We claim, that today’s model-based design tools are restricted from fully supporting this process as they are founded on the principle that objects are instances of static types. Such systems do not offer work with objects being incrementally specialised according to their properties, and neither do they offer dynamics of the underlying type system. The present paper elaborates on a property-oriented approach as a foundation for design tools facilitating incremental design based on set-inclusion of properties. We emphasize the formal foundation for incorporating such dynamics, and we specify requirements for tools facilitating incremental design and offering improved semantic support.