Beyond the Crawley's FCF, a new paradigm for architecture elaboration and conceptualization

Abstract

Prof. Edward Crawley has stated what an architecture is through the so-called FCF paradigm: "Architecture [..] consists of: Function, related by Concept, to Form". This definition has the merit to be simple, operative and applicable to all kind of engineered systems. However, by reviewing it thoroughly, we may expose some limitation, especially when trying to set-up a framework for architecture conceptualization, elaboration or evolution. Thus this paper will propose an enhanced paradigm of Crawley's FCF model, by bissociating it with Gero's FBS model. We conclude with an illustration of the application of such a new paradigm.