We have and the architects must deal with the spatial aspect of activity, physical, and symbolic needs in such a way that overall performance integrity is assured. Hence, he or she well wants to think of evolving a building environment as a total system of interacting and space forming subsystems. Is represents a complex challenge, and to meet it the architect will need a hierarchic design process that provides at least three levels of feedback thinking: schematic, preliminary, and final.
Such a hierarchy is necessary if he or she is to avoid being confused , at conceptual stages of design thinking ,by the myriad detail issues that can distract attention from more basic considerations .In fact , we can say that an architect’s ability to distinguish the more basic form the more detailed issues is essential to his success as a designer .
The object of the schematic feed back level is to generate and eva luate overall site-plan, activity-interaction, and building-configuration options .To do so the architect must be able to focus on the interaction of the basic attributes of the site context, the spatial organization, and the symbolism as determinants of physical form. This means that ,in schematic terms ,the architect may first conceive and model a building design as an organizational abstraction of essential performance-space in teractions.Then he or she may explore the overall space-form implications of the abstraction. As an actual building configuration option begins to emerge, it will be modified to include consideration for basic site conditions.
At the schematic stage, it would also be helpful if the designer could visualize his or her options for achieving overall structural integrity and consider the constructive feasibility and economic of his or her scheme .But this will require that the architect and/or a consultant be able to conceptualize total-system structural options in terms of elemental detail .Such overall thinking can be easily fed back to improve the space-form scheme.
At the preliminary level, the architect’s emphasis will shift to the elaboration of his or her more promising schematic design options .Here the architect’s structural needs will shift to approximate design of specific subsystem options. At this stage the total structural scheme is developed to

建筑師必須從一種全局的角度出發(fā)去處理建筑設(shè)計中應(yīng)該考慮到的實用活動，物質(zhì)及象征性的需求。因此，他或他試圖將有相互有關(guān)的空間形式分體系組成的總體系形成一個建筑環(huán)境。這是一種復(fù)雜的挑戰(zhàn)，為適應(yīng)這一挑戰(zhàn)，建筑師需要有一個分階段的設(shè)計過程，其至少要分三個“反饋”考慮階段：方案階段，初步設(shè)計階段和施工圖設(shè)計階段。
這樣的分階段涉及是必需的，它可使設(shè)計者避免受很多細節(jié)的困惑，而這些細節(jié)往往會干擾設(shè)計者的基本思路。實際上，我們可以說一個成功的建筑設(shè)計師應(yīng)該具備一種從很多細節(jié)中分辨出更為基本的內(nèi)容的能力。
概念構(gòu)思階段的任務(wù)時提出和斟酌全局場地規(guī)劃，活動相互作用及房屋形式方案。為實現(xiàn)這些，建筑師必須注意場地各部分的基本使用，空間組織，并應(yīng)用象征手法確定其具體形式。這就要求建筑師首先按照基本功能和空間關(guān)系對一項建筑設(shè)計首先構(gòu)思并模擬出一個抽象的建筑物，然后再對這一抽象的總體空間進行深入探究。在開始勾畫具體的建筑形似時，應(yīng)考慮基本的場所跳進加以修改。