Looking Back to the Future An Updated Case Base of Case-Based Design Tools for Architecture

In the early and mid 1990s the idea to apply CBR to the task of designing — in short Case-Based Design (CBD) — led to a considerable number of research initiatives across the world. Several promising CBD tools and prototypes were developed and enthusiastically celebrated within the research community, seemingly announcing a promising future for CAAD. However, because the predicted breakthrough failed to appear, an in-depth evaluation of six CBD tools was conducted in 2001 in search of reasons for this limited success. At first sight the situation has not changed much since then, yet a closer look reveals CBD research still to be quite active, be it sometimes disguised. This observation, combined with our belief in CBD’s potential for aiding professional and student architects, motivated an expanded issue of the 2001 study. This issue determines the position of current CBD research within the CAAD domain and uncovers focal points set by CBD researchers and the tools they created. Additionally it analyses the role of emerging technologies in overcoming earlier identified drawbacks of CBD tools in architecture.