garethace

One paragraph, I see your point. Does look neater indeed.

I guess one thing, the Bryan Lawson book may have dealt with better is regional variations of the architectural practice. In the States, Canada, England perhaps the idea of architectural practices with in-house experts/specialists is quite common. In Spain, even the relationship of Architect and client is very different to what it is in Ireland. I have heard that in America, the projects are designed/built on a completely different timescale to over here.

While projects might drag there butts in Europe, and architects tend to be laid back most of the time. Perhaps the visualisation profession, as a specialisation has grown up in America primarily, along with 3DS VIZ etc, for a very different model of how the architect works, designs a building and eventually builds it – since Architects regularly out-source alot more, and have all kinds of experts working for them.

In America, there are alot of places where you can do a five year course in Planning. And some Architects possess a degree in Planning and in Architecture. In Europe, it tends to be just the Architect and perhaps a few technicians if you are lucky. Everyone else is considered and opponent, and the respect for the planning profession here in Ireland is very little from the Architectural profession.

I have heard alot of English practices in particular employ in-house graphic designers to do web sites, and cg artists to do visualisation moreso nowadays. This move toward better relationships between various specialisations – and closer working relationships – is very slow here in Ireland.

Find a task where the exceptional abilities of the computer excel in, and invest the time, money and effort into developing a computerised system for dealing with that.

I guess Frank O. Gehry, is a classic example of where computers really did make sense in practice. He is one of the few though, and as someone pointed out, Frank, ususally designs with physical models etc – computers are just something all of that design is ‘fed’ into.

Some stuff here too you might need to think about:

https://archiseek.com/content/showthread.php?threadid=2244

https://archiseek.com/content/showthread.php?threadid=2209

Some of the posters did come up with interesting viewpoints.

I cannot even imagine what computers must have looked like in the 1940s! 🙂

Isn’t that when the British first invented a computer of some sorts to decode messages during the war? Something made of bulbs and tubes, and bits of strings? 🙂 LOL

I heard the young ladies used to find it great for drying their underwear!

When one considers how far the technology has come since 1940s, I used to have lecturers in college which were that old! 🙂 And i am only 28.

If the computer evolves as much in the next 50 years as it has done in the last, i guess it is very, very, very hard to imagine how an architects office will look. And perhaps even a bit futile to try and imagine.

BTW, i think the Brits just broke up that old computer in 1945, so that the world wouldn’t understand the scientific principles behind it. It wasn’t until the 1960s i think, when Michael Ventris had finished working out Linear B, that the AA asked him to study how computers and architecture should combine.

There is a good book available about Ventris too.

Originally posted by sw101
your arguement isnt holding much water. an architect isnt defined as (s)he who knows all and can do all and can be all. an architect is someone who can choreograph great works, with an understanding of where to go to get the right players at the right time. [/B]

I have read over some of the feedback in the Information and Architecture thread last night. I found the points you are making about orchestration etc, do make alot of sense to me now – reading them again. I am just beginning to get the picture of what yourself and the other posters were in fact talking about.

Now, for my next query.

The following contains an example of the architects ability to ‘outsource’ duties as you put it. All of us have worked in offices and have been good at a certain aspect of the profession, and perhaps found ourselves very good at some particular aspect, perhaps even too good. But ‘outsourcing’ computer-type tasks to younger people in practice is not without its problems, i assure you.

Perhaps in this case the architect has been just a little bit too ingenius at out-sourcing – developing students of architectural with a sort of Artificial Intelligence, rather than a real intelligence. The AI side to their personalities, eventually becoming the one that is despised by the ‘real architects’.

I was just watching that movie by Steven Spielberg last night called AI. And i must say, his closing remarks on the film were very good indeed. He stated how the human race is making things, which two years ago would have seemed impossible. That is the danger – our own genius.

Like the electric toothbrush, may eventually speak to you in the mornings and give you advice etc, etc. But the thing with all this technology, is not what it gives back to the human species, but we must be very careful what parts of ourselves we put into technology. Some day, will we feel pissed off, to come home and find the dog has swallowed the electric toothbrush, like a part of our lives has been lost?

3DS VIZ/other CG software is similar to the electric toothbrush for the architect. It is not what 3DS VIZ gives us back, but what parts of ourselves are put into it. Paradoxically nowadays, i find it strange that because very young people ‘are good’ at computers and IT, it is they who are often burdened with the responsibility of ‘putting part of themselves’ into 3DS VIZ. Yet, it is the older practicioners, not the young people who have the experience, the knowledge and the firm foundation in architectural design.

I have this incredibly dark vision of the story of David in the film AI, being like young architects using 3DS VIZ nowadays. Where you fool the young AI kid into thinking ‘Monica is my mom’. You train these machines into presenting themselves in the most attractive way possible to their prospective employment market – be it Lover meccas, Child meccas, Nanny meccas, Teddy meccas…. etc. Then fast forward to the ‘Flesh Fair’ scene, where all of them are rounded up and pulverised eventually.

Notice the contempt and disgust shown ‘by the real human beings’ for the artificial ones. They ask them which ‘company’ did they could from, Cybertronics…. David, who is practically real, finds it the most difficult to accept his faith as merely scheduled for extinction.

This is my whole point about young people using VIZ – it is okay to use VIZ, provided you leave a trail of bread crumbs behind you, so in future you always know exactly how to find your way back to being ‘a real architect, who can draw like a real architect, think like a real human architect’.

Otherwise, you might find yourself getting into some rather deep discussions over the morals of whether a computer programme, written by another person – is not a generic code, which repeats itself. Like the one between myself and Doozer, where he said that using computer software, is the ultimate delegation.

That in fact, as an architect you are merely delegating the ‘act of really drawing’ using a pencil and your hand/eye/brain – to the ‘Cybertronics’ company, or which ever company wrote the software to begin with. That is the worst possible senario indeed – but if you have a very firm foundation of ‘what a real architect does/is’ to begin with – then like all the great photographers who have converted to Nikon Digital SLRs, the rock bands who have converted to digital sound systems, the movie directors who make Shrek…. using digital isn’t as much a risk. ‘Of not being able to find your way back’.

That using computer software, is the ultimate delegation – i would disagree – i think, it is what you put of yourself into the technology, which is important. The trouble is young architects shoved too quickly into the ranks as VIZualists, in my personal opinion have absolutely no trail of bread crumbs left, to follow back again!

The major reason that what urbanists do and talk about, is so, so, so crucial to my perception of myself as an architect being – is that it gives me that very necessary trail of bread crumbs back to reality, back to humanity, back to feeling like i could be a real architect eventually – not an AI machine, due for extinction at the Flesh Fair of Architecture. I find the urbanist’s emphasis upon real people, situations, environments etc, etc – has real value for me as a digital architect, rather than a pencil welding one.

Mind you, i would love to explore the pencil drawing aspects, the Santiago Calatrava type of ‘architect being able to speak through drawing’ idea too – rather than discount it entirely.

I think one cannot discuss something like Le Corbusier’s five points of architecture, without looking at the impact of moving pictures and movie theatres at that time, upon the general public. Even today, our first experience of new ways to travel, of great urban spaces, of the shots of crowds in cities etc, is all through the medium of cinema, television and video/DVD.

It is impossible to go back now, and to imagine what it must have been like for the young Le Corbusier growing up in Switzerland, being energized by these visions of a New Modern World, beyond the pastoral laid back Swiss Cantons. A place where things moved faster, people moved faster and no distance, height or obstacle seemed too large. You only have to look at Ver Une Architecture to see his fascination with this new technology.

But just like the young architects fascination with Information technology nowadays, the young Le Corbusier needed to be able to find his way back to what architecture really is. He must have been able to analyse what the core elements are – to be able to simultaneous jump from the world of smooth curves, hard edges etc of mechanization and huge mass production – back to the world that is architecture. He had to define himself extra carefully as an architect – because with all of this technology, is very easy to get lost, and not be able to find ones way back again.

Le Corbusier explored the ‘New High Tech World of the 1920s’ through painting and writing literature. By immersing himself into the brand new, mass producing, fast moving Parisian culture back then. He loved to spin around in his blazingly fast ‘twenty mile an hour’ Citroen beast, with his hair flying in the wind! Just like young architects nowadays love to surf the web, with their blazingly fast Intel Pentium 4 box and broadband superhighway – i think the mouse in the Eircom ad is a very appropriate analogy here indeed.

I think i will photography my first Villa at garache with a Dell box in front of it! 🙂 What we are experiencing nowadays is the speed of travel of information, not cars. I know of a couple of Citroen addicts in my old architectural college, who would really want to update their architectural symbolism to the 21st century, as oposed to the 20th century. In the 19th century it was railways etc, and grand big cast iron train stations. This IT world is the world the early 21st century architect is faced with.

Le Corbusier also thought about how people live, in his grandiose schemes for Unite, La Pessac and Ville Moderne. His urban ideas were perhaps all bolder-dash, but it allowed him to very quickly jump between different views of architecture, environment, culture, art, science and technology. Don’t forget he even designed chairs etc, which are still popular fashion icons – so he really was immersed in everything – a real Leonardo Da Vinci character.

However, for those of us with less brain capacity than Einstein, travelling between the worlds of 3DS VIZ, pencil sketching, urbanism and architecture is one fraught with danger and pitfalls all over the place. I just find it interesting how 3DS VIZ is infact the same tool used by the directors in Hollywood to create movies – and how that that mirrors with Le Corbusiers early 20th century, cinematic view of a new world in motion.

Brian O’ Hanlon.

Could you be more specific and i might be able to help?

Oh and perhaps refrain from the personal insults, architecture is meant to be a profession and should enjoy the relevant curtesies.

Yeah, i really feel ‘taken’ under the wing of this ‘profession’ alright. ROFL 🙂 But i am extremely glad for you, that you have found such a comfortable relationship with the profession all round, i always wanted to have the same. 🙁 Tell us, what’s your secret?

“why should my brush lie to you, just because my eyes lie to me”

I guess like Jackson Pollock spilling paint all over the canvas, people found it difficult that not using a brush was painting. I guess, this whole thing with VIZ now, is a bit like that discussion. Poor old Jackson, went to bits though in the process of figuring out the answers. You should all see that movie.

BTW, it is no coincidence either, that his art happened with the backdrop of America in the 40s and 50s. The atom bomb, fast airplanes and cars etc. This discussion, we are talking about, has happened against the backdrop of more new technological ‘disasters’.

when it comes to it, a building is a series of 2d drawings, legible and decipherable to constructors, who then construct. youze are all fancy pants.

Two points to you as architects:

One, “Any idiot can own a business”. Just because you are a great Architect, Scientist, Planner or Programmer does not mean that will translate into knowing how to best run a company/firm/design house. Other skills are needed that are outside the normal skill set. (One of them is about knowing when to admit you don’t have the skills needed and finding some one who does!)

Two, and this might break your heart. Most of the time what people get in the field from the design house is not what ends up in the real building. Even on huge multimillion £ projects that have to be signed off on and approved have minor to moderate changes on them that the personnel in the field never bother to send back to the design firm to get the changes approved. Some times there are even MAJOR problems with the drawings and the people work with out them while they wait for them to be fixed. And by fixed, drawing what the people in the field say will work.

I am not sure if you work with mechanical drawings or with design drawings, but in my experience the problem with mechanical drawings is that the people doing them do not have any real experience out in the field with the way, that things really work/fit together/look/or match with other contractors needs/demands. That being the case it is easier to fix it your self out in the field than trying to explain it to some one who lacks the real concrete experience to understand.

brian, where did you go this year? your theatre was cool

I had to spend some time, learning to distinguish between what me own eyes were in fact telling me, the 3DS VIZ visualisation i would have done for that theatre would have looked fabulous. But then when you read a chapter like Ching’s chapter about circulation, i wondered, in the euphoria of learning VIZ and working for architects doing visualisations – what dimension has my eyes, been forced to suppress. I would hate to spend the next 20/30 years of effort searching for architectural finesse in 3 dimensionals, when the architecture is really to be found in the dimensions of space and time.

I feel that education has managed to hide certain aspects of architecture from youngsters, as oposed to revealing them. I needed to understand the lessons of that first project, the spatial exploration project – to respond to it intelligently from a purely architectural standpoint. I feel i have come out the other end of that journey now, and have tried to share some of it with the professionals, undergrads etc.

Whoever does ‘write the book’ on architecture and information, it will not be me. It still awaits its theorey of relativity. I have simply been far too ‘marginalised’ by my architectural profession now in my own country now, than to worry about what happens in future as regards information and architecture. The profession doesn’t employ people qualified in both information management and architecture.

But at some stage in the future, someone will write the book i am sure, and it will be something along the lines of the draft i have shown you up above. I consider that post merely as a time capsule, for future generations to discover what ‘the early days’ were like for young twenty-somethings.

It is quite a scary, but also uplifting moment when you finally nail your colours to a certain post. I feel i have done that now, and it is more than enough for me at least. My Dad is a writer, and he told me the world is full of ‘pregnant writers’. I will not fall into that trap myself.

This diseased profession just isn’t ready to deal with the big dog of technology yet, you mean. I doesn’t have the people qualified in both fields of information management and architecture – to be able to deal with the tranisition.

Anyhow, thankyou for responding so honestly and in such a timely fashion. Perhaps in another ten years, alot of this might sound like couple tripe. Still, i know i am right though. I just hate that.

Hector, do remember this – we see with our brains, not with our eyes – it is all an illusion.

Originally posted by doozer

By the by it seems strange to me that you would mention Jennigen and his small hands-on practice while trumpeting the wonders of technology. In reality isn’t computer based design the ultimate delegation?

I think i had better deal with this a little bit better – since people are obviously entirely unaware of the concepts at work in softwares like AutoDesk Architectural Desktop, ArchiCAD, Nemetsche All Plan FT, CATIA, AutoDesk Revit, Bentley Triforma and other BIM approach programs.

I remember a story told, by a professor about Foster building the Shanghai bank, before the arrival of computers. (So this might answer your point a bit Hector) Foster and Assoc. employed a separate team of architects out in Malaysia, whose task was to do nothing else except cross-reference the drawings done by Fosters, using tracing paper overlays, so that no mistakes could occur.

The whole list of softwares listed above, allows (an engineer mostly at the moment) but also an architect to do exactly the same as the Malaysian firm did for Fosters way back when. Except now, you just pay for the software, systems and the training.

BTW, the current addition/renovation to Heathrow is done using ADT software with 3DS VIZ, which proves that these programs are becoming more proven to work in the field.

So here it is quite simply, 2-Dimensional drafting has one huge draw-back. When you make a change to one line in one drawing, you have to suddenly go through 120 other drawings to see if you have to change that line anyplace else! You have to sit down and speak to the whole design team at regular intervals, and explain what changes to which lines you made, and which sheet no’s the changes occured in.

Then you have to allow your design team to come back to you, and inform you if that change to that line, will make problems for any of them! So basically, your whole life in 2D CAD drawing becomes a series of meeting about changes, and meeting about changes to changes. And literally involves the wastage of much too many man/woman hours working.

Because once you have made any change to any drawing, you have to start the whole process over and over again, of checking, re-checking….. it is a nightmare on larger projects. That is what Jennigan, Gehry and all the rest of the guys are getting around, by using CATIA or ArchiCAD or Architectural Desktop 3D BIM models, rather than the 2D/Pencil/Word Processor analogy.

Because in 3-dimensions, the various engineers don’t have to meet all the time to ‘talk about changes to the drawings’. Because you can see in realtime, if a change made to the main building model has affected you. Engineers and architects can work side by side as it were, but could be miles apart across a country, collaborating on a web based information portal like Bentley Projectwise, which stacks up all the revisions,… made to one Building Information Model. Who made them, why, what date etc, etc. And who what everyone else thinks about those changes.

You have a complete and easy to reference record, of everything that happened in a large multi-disiplinary building design project. The concept is simplicity itself… and yet deathly efficient in terms of information coordination and management. Since there is only one sourse of information to look at, but many, many collaborators. Engineerings have managed to twig this much, much quicker than architects. And architects will find it difficult to cope with larger projects without having these skills under their belts.

Now, you don’t have to go through 120 pages of numbered sheets periodically, since all the 120 sheets are generated from one single source of information – the Building Information Model. So you see, it is rather simple – the computer CATIA model of Frank Gehry may not be the same cardboard model that he made, sat on, and rolled around in, to achieve his beautiful shapes.

But without, the Building Information model, there would be no possible way, that Gehry could build the buidings he builds now. So literally, i don’t agree that the computer is just a ‘mere’ tool in the process. There are very, very, very simple and practical reasons why 3D is becoming more common as a form of CAD now.

My only gripe, is when the people using one form of CAD product or another, get an political about ‘There product being the best’. Since the notion of 3D CAD of any description ever becoming a true vehicle for 4-dimensional experience is completely fantasy. It took for forever, and a day, to finally cut through all the marketing bs, and see that much.

Speaking from the point of view of a sad, deluded 3DS VIZ user. But again, to underline, this is why i believe that architectural colleges must understand that the ‘lure’ of 3DS VIZ, has prevented many, many, many young architectural students from defining architecture within a 4-dimensional, as oposed to a 3-dimensional conceptual framework.

The 3-dimensional visuals just looked so seductive, as in the U2 competition, that really, what is the requirement to think about ‘walking around a building’ while experiencing architecture in both the dimensions of space and time. Computers do not capture the short-term time element, that of the days and nights, hours and minutes. Neither do they capture the long-term time element, that of trans-generational planning design, outlined in Strategic cities essay.

My point about communication, is just that architects are going to find it harder and harder, as time goes on, to talk to the backs of peoples’ heads, over there shoulders, and while suspended diagonally across a table to point out something on a screen. Unless they learn to drill home their point, from the optimum position – the desktop on the screen. Mind you that could improve:

http://www.alias.com/eng/products-services/portfoliowall/index.shtml

However I would consider visualisation technology something akin to language, it simply communicates the thought, it does not form it. I understand the arguement that ‘the means by which we choose to communicate defines the parameters of what we choose to communicate’ but could you elaborate on exactly how you see this link and what you believe may lie ahead.

https://archiseek.com/content/showthread.php?threadid=2209

Could the recent trend towards information technology improve the standards of communication, within architectural practices, provided architects could come down from their egocentric heights and establish cluster based work groups in practice. That is a very intelligent focus for this discussion indeed, since the idea of using information technology and the organisation of people and how we relate to each other, are issues which have become very much inter-twined indeed. I think the answer is yes, information technology can improve communication in work groups in architectural practice, but some qualifications are needed also.

The architects ability to draw, means that he/she is completely portable – his/her very own Compact Flash storage medium, application software, display hardware, A1 printer, scanner, digitizer and all in one very handy, neat 5 foot nothing and a half package of designing ability. A bit like the sharks roaming the ocean floors, the architect is nature’s own design – pound for pound they are all predatory natural aggressive instinct, raw muscle, sharp teeth and streamlined fins. They are on top of the information food chain for a long, long time now.

He/she simply doesn’t need a computer since he/she is simply way too far ahead of them. The wonderful thing is, they get up every morning, boot into work mode, never pay upgrade license fees, never have to be re-booted, never crash when you change channels, never run out of battery power, get viruses, or become obsolete. Only the 10 million dollar IBM mainframe computers can rival them in longevity. However, the bottom feeders nowadays are all IT based, and if architects actually want to communicate with them, it does take alot more than verbal language nowadays.

Architects hate getting too committed to digital – as you need some information point to access and collaborate. This is difficult given the physical and time constraints imposed by an often very tumultuous, dynamic lifestyle of the architect. Design is concerned as one famous architect put it “with smelling the landscape, and touching the earth lightly”. Not with spending hours interfacing with nerdy IT, geeky kinds of gizmos.

Nevertheless, in the past 10 years, a lot of Architects forced the younger generations to ‘go computers’ at work. Young architects are spending a greater proportion of their time in the exchange, synthesis and gathering of knowledge through the means of IT. While still trying to exercise the necessary natural instincts they are trained to use. I often compare architects having to use information technology to putting wild crocodiles into captivity.

Just like the natural environment of crocodiles, the natural environment of architects is fast disappearing. That environment, to which the architect was suitably adapted, has been swallowed up by vast rows of ‘robot-type’ people, who sit all day long staring at display screens. In the old days, architects used to look at their teams of workers drawing lines on a drawing board, or building a model from wood/cardboard in front of their eyes. Now all they actually see is the backs of peoples’ heads staring at screens all day long. The idea of using computers to communicate doesn’t look promising so far, but maybe that is just another challenge.

Every time the architect turns their back, computers have gotten faster, cheaper, cleverer. They are becoming increasingly available to a wider audience and people are using them to do new and sometimes strange tasks. Computers and the web will continue to consume more and more information about us, and our lives. Every day another small piece of our privacy evaporates, never to be regained again. In three hundred years or so, not much of the privacy we now enjoy and take for granted will be left.

Charlie McCreevy has bought JD Edwards data mining software, which sends AI bots scanning their way into the vastness of taxation records, peering around for all kinds of glitches and sending back reports. No place will be left unchartered by the march of information technology! Even the small cheap systems which architects hope will furnish them with an easy to manage, formula for doing everyday tasks are becoming more ‘connected’ and more powerful everyday. They do leave a trail behind them a mile wide, stretching across continents. But never have architects been so close to their employees and design teams, but yet so far removed from them.

Some people say the pencil is an extension of the architects hand and brain. The next Playstation will become more powerful than most desktop systems are today – kids will grow up wearing the web like some prosthetic third limb, which they have trained their conscious brains not to reject. While their physical state devolves back to that of a mollusc. With this proliferation of technology, it is not difficult to imagine nature or evolution making that critical leap to where machines actually gain intelligence and the desire to reproduce – humans eventually being suspicious their toasters might be conspiring against them!

The computer technology and software industry is very dynamic by nature. How do architects keep their position as top of the food chain in this information saturated environment? At the moment they are merely hanging onto a desperate struggle against complete extinction. It is like being the only vegetarian at a barbecue.

One solution, and the one most adopted in practice, is merely to allow hundreds of years of natural evolutionary ‘shark- like aggression’ to be unleashed in the direction of information technology. This is my point about architects being too perfectly evolved, like the Great Irish Elk was during the Ice Age. It is hard for them to adjust to quickly, because their horns have simply grown too long. Will architects become the great Irish Elks of the Information Age. Will the archaeologists and scientists, years from now discover their remains while sifting through the digital archives?

The trick to survival is actually to remain a generalist, since they tend to survive. It is to ignore hardware and IT completely, which are only decoys. Brighly coloured lures, which distract the sharks focus away from the main prey, by appealing to that same natural aggressive, predatory instinct. Architects love to be the centre of attention; they crave for peoples’ approval and admiration. Like the cute cuddily family pet dog who suddenly reverted back to being a vicious wolf, when the new born baby arrived in the household. The arrival of shiny new Intel powered information points, did spark off more than a little bit of deep-seated insecurity within the profession.

The profession must invest the time becoming familiar with the new vocabulary of knowledge management. In order for the architecture species to remain competitive and to survive, it must learn to deal with this.

The most fascinating thing of all about technology is how data can became manageable, valuble and shared amongst many co-workers. No one will even remember the IT infrastructure used to capture knowledge in 5 years time, but the data remains as valuable. So the notion of capturing the knowledge wealth of a company becomes important to us today. Instead of knowledge being stored in the human brain as the architect is used to. It can be captured and shared within and outside an organisation. It can become an actual form of business capital, and can be bought or sold.

If a partner walks out, dies or retires, everything isn’t suddenly lost with that person’s untimely departure.All organisations today, and not just architects are finding the leaking of valuable knowledge capital too heavy a loss to bear nowadays with employees not committing for very long. The science of knowledge management is all to do with addressing this issue. Trying to integrate architecture and computers into a team based collaboration solution.

In other words, people cannot retain the amount of information held in the databanks nowadays, and to try to do so is merely futile. Years and years of evolution in learning how to communicate merely through face-to-face personal discourse will have to be unlearned. Those horns have just become too large to carry nowadays, there isn’t enough plentiful meadow grasslands to feed on. Being replaced by the forest of Information Technology. Indeed, the trauma of this change in environmental conditions, has induced amongst the species has not helped either.

What is it that makes the work load of the architect so elusive to computerisation? I managed in true IT fashion to download an MP3 of Bernard Tschumi speaking in a lecture at Columbia University in New York. It set me thinking in a certain direction as regards information technology and architectural design. In order to investigate the nature of that problem, I was forced to explore architectural design as a four-dimensional problem solving activity. This critical but elusive fourth dimension of architecture is seldom even mentioned in any of the schools today.

I believe this extra fourth dimension is the answer to how eventually architects might integrate in some useful fashion with computer technology in future. But for the time being we have just got to work around the limitations of the current technology. Four dimensional file formats are just the stuff of Steven Spielberg movies.

I spent endless hours looking at what information is now being captured in the 2D/3D CAD file format. I noticed that real people are actually quite small physically in relation to the scale of a building or institution – say on a 1:200 scale drawing. But this is actually rather deceptive, and a vastly oversimplified way of looking at peoples relationship with their physical environment. When people move, even on foot they tend to cover miles – you can track it on a map at 1:2000 scale. When rail lines are introduced, the spatial relationship changes again, and so forth.

I point you here to a reference, Noel Brady’s Building Material magazine essay called ‘Strategic Cities’. http://www.irish-architecture.com/aai/journal/five/strategic_cities.html

It is not such a tragedy that current 2D/3D CAD technology, doesn’t capture a fraction of the whole picture of what architects do. As long as one accepts that rather than try to deny this very real limitation of current technology. I would point you here to another reference, a book written by two Finish professors, Helmer Stenros and Seppo Aura called Time, Motion and Architecture. Where they proceed to destroy the notion that architecture can be effectively communicated in any form of drawing, model or visualisation.

Le Corbusier, Richard Meier, Steven Holl, Bernard Tschumi, James Stirling, Tom Mayne, Tadao Ando and others have explored the idea of the ‘movement’ of people in their projects. So the job of an architect is always to define a relationship between a human being and the physical conditions of their environment. The one they work, play, socialise, travel, protest, marry, pray and finally die in. Everything from the hospitals where we are born, to the cemeteries where we are buried, and everything in between. Time is the fourth dimension of architecture.

The problem is the vocabulary changes from one end of the design process ‘journey’ to the other. The dynamism of individuals circulating inside a building can be articulated by means of natural light, materials, colour etc. Time at this scale is measured by the sun changing its position in the sky, by the people going for lunch breaks or driving home at the end of a long hard day. At the other end of the scale, we are talking about transportation, infrastructure and planning vocabulary. At this scale, time is measured in generations and government administrations. I will point you here again, to that most wonderful reference, the ‘Strategic Cities’ essay by Noel Brady.

Architecture is like a trip on the great old Orient Express train. One has to move through a whole continent full of different customs, tribal variations, cultural contrasts, changing terrains, and dramatically changing sights, sounds and smells. The architect tends to be unique in knowing something about it all. The Indiana Jones character being a flamboyant but useful analogy to draw here. I believe architectural design to be a four-dimensional thought process – and one that is almost impossible to capture in today’s digital file formats. The notion of the body moving through spaces, of negotiating the physical reality of the environment is not going to be simulated using today’s technology.

At some point the computer will actually connect right into our brain, in some kind of matrix way, or Star Trek holo-deck fashion. So you can spend the whole afternoon walking around and experiencing a simulated reality of a project. Imagine explaining to a client of loosing a valuable member of your practice, or even a whole design team, owing to a glitch in the holo-deck software! Instead of the information becoming lost to the architect, the architect becomes lost inside the information – fascinating.

A time machine would also be very useful to explore the planning scale of time. A trilogy of films that comes to mind here is Back to the Future. See this post here by Markitect for a better illustration: http://www.cyburbia.org/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=7218&perpage=25&pagenumber=3

As ridiculous as this all sounds, it does provide another clue to using information technology effectively. Notice the naturalness, ease and accessibility of interfacing with the information. With current technology it is simply a struggle to retrieve any form of digital content relevant to a project.

Working in three dimensions does allow one to capture more information relevant to a project in digital format. It is not inputting the data that is hardest. It is the subsequent efficiency and logic of retrieval of that information for whatever purpose, which causes the problem. Architects always blame the ‘computer’ for being too slow – the information just doesn’t come back fast enough, or without a wrestling match. Despite faster processing speed, new software features, availability of cheaper, faster storage space and broadband internet connections.

Despite better training and awareness of how to use 3DS VIZ technology, IT appears to be much too slow and energy consuming. Like our friend the high-tech humanoid robot, the complexity level rises and eventually we hit into a complexity barrier. Although technology does impose many restrictions upon interfacing and communication, lets just look at some of the more promising developments.

All the emails, time sheets, animations, video clips, photographs, models, drawings, voice recordings associated with a particular project should be available from all computer terminals, to everyone in the whole organisation. Bill Gates has guaranteed to solve that question of ‘Where is my stuff’ in his next generation operating system called Longhorn. But even today some third party products do exist such as Scopeware’s Vision software. http://www.scopeware.com/

The ultimate reference on this kind of thing is by Susan Conway, a book published by the Microsoft Press called ‘Unlocking your Knowledge Assets’. http://www.microsoft.com/mspress/books/sampchap/5516.asp

Project wise is an entirely web-based collaboration software tool from Bentley, which tracks the various stages of the scheme as you design it. So it is possible later on to recall certain changes that were made during the design process. It says who made the changes, and what people thought of those changes at that time. You can decide to go back to an earlier version of a scheme and work it up in a different direction – exploring ‘what if’ type of questions. Indeed, it enables separate design teams to explore alternative designs for a scheme simultaneously.

The current situation of architects being unable to retrieve any form of digital information whatsoever about a project, is unsustainable. The best thing the profession could do, is admit this crisis of information management and to confront it head on. I have seen often myself, forty and fifty-something year old architects, just picking up two week old plots in their own practice. And then proceeding to spend an entire day, at £75 an hour correcting this out-of-date information. Rightly so, these principal architects point out it is not their fault when someone realises their error. Is this how architecture firms need to be run today?

Communication? Perhaps speaking the same language might help! Drawing was an international language, one that travels across the world. IT based communication between employees in architects, doesn’t yet appear to be capable of travelling between different rooms in the same building.

It is not uncommon in large practices, not to know what is going on all around you. A project tends to be just done and dusted, put away and you just go onto the next project. There is an unspoken awareness that all the knowledge capital that was created during a project is solely kept in the minds of certain employees. But in this merry-go-round of IT, digital files, valuable knowledge resources are squandered endlessly.

The following is an excerpt from http://www.cadenceweb.com/2003/0803/coverstory0803.html

ArchiCAD is one of the first computer-aided design tools to utilize building information modeling. The virtual building is built from the beginning in 3D with plans, sections, and elevations, available as different views of the building. The software also serves as the building database throughout the lifecycle of the project.

The five principals in Design Atlantic are all hands-on ArchiCAD users. The company works in civil projects and more recently with the U.S. Coast Guard. Jernigan is a strong believer in the virtual building model and in maintaining a design database of building information from the get-go. His firm has also started an alliance with other smaller firms to take on larger projects. But part of the litmus test they use as they screen potential partners is whether the firm’s principals are hands-on CAD users, or willing to become hands-on.

“Building information modeling pretty much requires the designer to work in the software,” he says. “It’s more than just pretending a computer is a word processor. Rather than drawing lines or producing prints, this approach is based on databasing all the information in the building process.” Because senior designers are responsible for this information, he says, they’re more likely to want to be involved with technology in a BIM approach.

All architects are hands-on at his firm, fully utilizing the ArchiCAD virtual building model. “The small size of our firm and the concentrated experience of our principals allows us to take active hands-on roles in every project,” he says. “It’s our philosophy to remain a small firm since it permits us to practice rather than to direct or ‘delegate’ to less experienced staff.

Another interesting approach to using computers in architectural design is that of Frank Gehry. Frank believes that in the twentieth century, the architect did not in fact, ‘protect’ the clients financial interests in a project, as is so often said. Instead the builder normally went to the client, behind the architect’s back and just said ‘Hey, if you straighten out this wall, It will save you 1 million bucks’. So the building contractor became parental in the equation, whereas the architect was the child.

Using his highly developed CATIA based design process, Frank Gehry now hopes to reverse this equation. By doing a lot more of the work traditionally done by a builder – the choosing of construction materials, components, sizes and specification – Frank Gehry in effect now does a lot of the building contractors work for him. And the contractors love him for that, but his insurance policy makers are currently stumped as to how to ‘cover him’, and his lawyers cannot properly say where he stands legally in relation to all of this.

As Frank himself will admit, the parts do not dovetail together properly as yet, and maybe that is why he is the only person doing what he does today. So getting back now to everyday practice in this particular country. There are a lot more barriers to communication in practices nowadays, some of which I will deal with finally.

My final point has to do with the perception of young graduate or under graduate architects in college or in practice. A very common phenomenon nowadays, is to see architectural technicians studying for degrees to become architects. While being involved in a group-based project in one Irish architectural college, I offered my services to do some 3D visualisations, or even to help do some of that work with the group. However, that group already contained a qualified architectural technician with computer skills. I was informed that the technician, and only the technician would be doing the 3D visualisation work. If this is how the kids play in the playgrounds, this how are they going to behave in practice?

While working in practice, I was booted off a job completely because my furniture in a set of apartment CAD drawings was the wrong colour. Somehow, architectural technicians in offices don’t like to see students of architecture competing in what they see as their own territory. I will not even get into the full set of working drawings I did for a large apartment block, which mysteriously disappeared from the main file server. Even though the contractor had already laid foundations! I was merely expected to keep my mouth shut, while a brand new technician in the firm re-did all the drawings again from scratch.

I wouldn’t actually mind if these were unfortunate accidents, but they are becoming the norm today. It doesn’t really affect the principals in offices, as they are only too pleased to pass the ‘donkey-work’ off onto the CAD monkeys, but I feel it is a real problem now for younger graduates. I reminds me of the Dead Rabbits versus the Natives, in Martin Scorsesse’s recent film, The Gangs of New York. With young architects everyday having to ‘go into battle’ with the architectural technicians, “Prepare to receive the true Lord!!!”

And I can assure you all, in spite of being a young architectural undergraduate I have had to put a few notches on my stick too. The profession increasingly reminds me of the ‘Boss Tweed’ character in that film, merely hiring one gang to stamp out the other. I am curious to know how the architectural profession is going to deal with this ‘turf war’ going on in the offices presently over rights over who has information access and creation rights of digital content for the project? I think personally, it would be a great tragedy to see young architects completely banished from all possible contact with their medium – that of drawings – or more to the point, that of information access rights. Information that is relevant to the projects they are doing.

I would hate to see the young architects being used as the ‘Dead Rabbits’ in the Five Points of Architecture.