The automated design of architectural floor plans satisfying given topological and dimensional constraints is a challenging field of research. In this paper abstraction is pointed out as an important conceptual tool of this field. A critical discussion of existing plan-design methods leads to the conclusion that the potentials of abstraction as a tool have not yet been fully recognized. The rest of the paper is an attempt to improve this situation by suggesting a new approach to automated floor-plan design. Theoretically, design is viewed as a one-to-many relation; a tree whose lines are directed from the root (the problem) towards the leaves (the solutions). Abstraction is viewed as the inverse many-to-one relation. A particular relation of abstraction is defined, such that the intermediate nodes of the tree (between root and leaves) are themselves floor plans, but are less detailed than the solutions. From the study of this concept of abstraction it is concluded that a design algorithm based on it is likely to have certain useful properties.
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