A theory of space allocation in architectural design is presented. The theory is completely independent of the shapes of the spaces. The problem is broken down into four hierarchical levels of abstraction. The top level is the number of spaces. The second level consists of the adjacencies between the spaces, represented as abstract graphs. The third level is concerned with the different planar embeddings or geometries of the adjacency graphs. The bottom level is represented by labelled bubble diagrams. At each level, the number of design alternatives is finite and it is shown how they can be systematically enumerated.
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