A Design Grammar for Identifying Spatial Uniqueness of Murcutt’s Rural Houses

This chapter presents a design grammar to analyse and measure spatial uniqueness within a specific set of Murcutt’s domestic architecture. The research defines the design grammar that consists of four phases and 11 rule sets, from the first rule set generating pavilions to the last termination rule. After examining the tendency of the applied rules in the ten selected cases, each case is then characterised through a mathematical abstraction, so called ‘normalised distance (ND)’. ND enables measuring a group of main functional zones in each design as well as their uniqueness in the language of design. The design grammar can be applied for the creation of new design instances, consistent with their spatial characteristics. This computational approach is thus applicable in the broader design domains to extend other shape grammar studies.