Design is situated. “Situatedness” in designing entails
the explicit consideration of the state of the environment, the knowledge
and experiences of the designer, and the interactions between the designer
and the environment during designing. Central to the notion of
situatedness is the notion of design situation and constructive memory. A
design situation models a particular state of interaction between a design
agent and the environment at a particular point in time. Memory
construction occurs whenever a design agent uses past experiences and
knowledge within the current design environment in a situated manner. This
paper is concerned with the development of an agent-based computational
design tool that takes into consideration the notion of situatedness in
designing. A key element of this tool is a constructive memory system that
supports the dynamic nature of designing. Memories of past experiences are
constructed as required by the current situation, and past experiences are
refined for future utility according to the current interactions between
the agent and the environment. This latter case of knowledge improvement
is illustrated through a series of experiments that demonstrates the
effect of grounding on the operating modes and responses of a constructive
memory system.