Revisiting Gero’s Function-Behaviour-Structure (FBS) framework to articulate fundamental principles and insights

This paper articulates eight fundamental principles of the Function-Behaviour-Structure (FBS) framework, building on Gero’s seminal FBS framework. The proposed principles articulate the advances and insights into FBS understanding since its original inception and addresses some of the theoretical gaps and ambiguities about the FBS constructs. The eight FBS principles include the principles of minimalism, adequacy, derivability, reciprocity, measurability, duality, semiotics, and negotiation. The revised FBS definitions, proposed FBS principles, and insights are based on theoretical arguments grounded in formal logic, epistemology, and social and empirical evidence. The paper positions the FBS framework against other notable design-related frameworks, including Dorst’s core of design thinking based on framing and abductive reasoning, the Design Thinking framework, systems thinking, and computational thinking. In an increasingly data-driven era, the explicit articulation of FBS principles reinforces a qualitative-causal-model driven reasoning that can potentially be combined with fundamentally data-driven statistics-based computational techniques to create synergistic hybrid reasoning approaches that overcome the limitations of using either method alone. The FBS principles enhance explainability and theoretical grounding of the causal relationships by explicating the ontological assumptions and logic reasoning pathways.