 |
Part
2 in a continuing series about the evolving digital tool system for
architecture
According to the biologist Alfred Lotka, among
the fauna that have evolved on this planet, only the human species
requires "exosomatic devices" for survival and, hence, for
evolution. These devices are the tools and artifacts that surround
us our entire lives?devices that humans designed and made with
resources available from the earth. Human beings use tools to make
the artifacts that serve their needs.
Tools are more than just utilitarian objects,
however. They are integral to the creation of our social and
cultural systems, sanctioned and supported by society as necessary
for its existence. Tools co-evolve with culture in a symbiotic way.
Completion of a usable tool system hinges upon the culture's
values, education, acceptance, support, economics, marketing,
utility needs, cognitive models, and other attributes.
Currently, we are witnessing a major paradigm shift in the
attributes of tool systems. The core of this shift is in our
ability to control and manipulate data and information in a new and
historically unprecedented format?electronic and binary. Thus, we
are changing our way of storing information?from an analog format
(via writing, drawing, printing, and painting) to a digital format
(via computers, magnetic storage media, software, and mice). As in
any co-evolving system, we are inventing, designing, and using
these new digital tools as they evolve.
Thus, the professional rub.
As suggested in the last issue of EDGES, tools
such as our traditional drawing instruments are like biological
species that changed slowly and steadily in a reasonably stable
cultural system (the "phyletic gradualism" theory of evolution).
However, our new digital tool systems are more like species that
evolve rapidly into new forms (the "punctuated equilibria"
theory).
Properties of Tool
Systems
This article outlines the possible properties
of tool systems in general and digital tool systems in particular.
Based on the current level of knowledge, debate, and discussion, we
can deduce the probable final form of the digital tool system for
the architecture and building industry?the Building Information
Model (BIM), a depository for digital, three-dimensional
information and data generated by the design process and
simulations. The BIM will exist for the life of a building and can
be used to manage the asset.
There is no absolute certainty about this, of
course. We are, however, beginning to discover the theoretical and
tool limits for the application of digital tool systems to
architecture.
Because we are discussing and commenting on this
new tool system, we will need to look at its diverse set of
properties. A system is defined as a set of interrelated,
interdependent, and bounded elements. Most discussions of digital
tools address the attributes of a particular piece of hardware or
the functionality of software program. This series of articles aims
to identify the elements of the digital tool system and discuss
their properties. We will try to examine the change in how
architects work as holistically as possible.
First, we must identify the many elements
involved in the development of the digital tool system, including
the following:
- Marketing
- Tools as cultures
- Paradigm shifts
- Professional education
- Design skills
- Design process
- Modeling and simulation software
- Building Information Models
- Interoperability
- Professional practice
- Professional ethics and values
- Redefinition of architectural practice
- New understanding of architecture
- Adaptive strategies
- Support
- Economics
- Utility of architecture
- Cognitive models
- Skills
- Hardware.
The elements are highly diverse and may not seem
related or interdependent. Future articles, however, will discuss
each element and show how it relates to the whole.
Awareness and Participation Needed
What is truly
interesting is that we are not cognizant that we are participating
as users in developing an evolving tool system. The participation
is unique. In contrast to humans' participation in developing the
earlier tool system (which evolved incrementally and without much
conscious intervention by the users), users should be actively
engaged in designing the tool system to meet not only the needs of
the design team but also those of the owners, builders, and
managers of architecture.
Why bother with the effort to actively
participate in the design of the tool system? Obviously it will
take time, energy, and resources to contribute to the tool design.
However, it is the responsibility of the profession to actively
shape the tools that we use. Only we as the users can ensure that
the tools truly meet our needs. It can be enormously frustrating,
wasteful, and discouraging to proceed through a series of false
evolutionary starts for the tool system. Although the emerging tool
system will not be perfect and robust, we need to clearly envision
the tool properties that will be the basis for future design and be
willing to tolerate the development issues that architects are
confronting.
Financial, Environmental, and Human Welfare
Responsibilities
Architects must
consider a larger fiduciary responsibility as well. Whether we like
it or not, we must respond as professionals to emerging data,
information, and social issues. The "health, safety, and welfare"
charge that is the legal rationale for our licensure is expanding
because of this expanded knowledge and awareness.
An example of this enhanced responsibility is
the emerging interest in sustainable design. If a variety of
entities adopt the LEED (Leadership in
Energy and Environmental Design) Green Building Rating System?,
the design team will need tool systems that enable it to quickly
and actively design alternative solutions that will optimize LEED
design constraints. The constraints would include not only the
sustainable design goals but also the need to optimize the building
costs and life cycle costs. To design a project within budget and
with the additional constraints, the traditional tool system cannot
support the effort under the existing fee structure. Only
interoperable modeling and simulation tools can provide the means,
methods, and processes to efficiently design projects under these
new constraints.
An additional responsibility is the
incorporation of emerging research in several fields in the health
sciences. As architects, we are looking not only at physical health
but also at the psychological and neurological impact that the
built environment has on human beings. Architects will have to not
only understand but also consider the formal impacts on
architecture of these emerging data. It is interesting to note the
recent creation of the Academy of
Neuroscience for Architecture, the Legacy Project of the AIA
2003 National Convention in San Diego. Why establish such an
academy? What information and data will the academy develop that
would affect the architectural design process? How will the data
and information be introduced into the design process and
evaluated? The evolving digital tool system for architecture just
may provide the tools to incorporate these new criteria into
architecture.
About this Series
In upcoming issues
of EDGES, we will discuss not only the theoretical
implications of the digital tool system elements listed above but
also examples that illustrate and explain those
elements.
As stated in the first issue, EDGES aims
to move beyond the "techie" discussions of software and hardware.
As architects, we need to discuss how this new tool system will
affect all aspects of the profession and the architecture we
design. Please comment by sending e-mail to TAP@aia.org. Your insights are
valuable and will be published.
Lamar Henderson, AIA,
is chair of the EDGES Newsletter Task Team of the Technology in
Architectural Practice PIA, a Knowledge Community of the AIA. In
addition, he is chair of the Architectural Domain of the IAI-North
America chapter, a member of the National CAD Standards Committee,
and a practicing architect associated with Reena Racki Associates
in Washington, D.C.
|
