Extended paper for the "Journal of Architectural Education" to be
published late 2002:

 
RECONSTRUCTING THE IMPACTS OF COMPUTERS ON PRACTICE AND EDUCATION DURING THE PAST THREE DECADES
Alfredo Andia, Ph.D.
Florida International University


ABSTRACT

This paper proposes a framework for understanding the integration of design and digital technologies in practice and academia.A compelling narrative is developed based on “contextual inquiries” and “exploratory observations” of a six-year research.The model is devised to submerge the reader into understanding not only how we use the technology, but also how we consume it.


Two parallel stories are presented.One story is that practice has “consumed” the technology to modernize its skills, and then later revamps their design-build work processes.The other story is that an emerging portion of academia is presenting a broader critique.Classrooms are computerized in an attempt to expand the realm of architectural design into the various spatial dimensions of digital phenomena.



INTRODUCTION

How are Architects using computers?What are the real benefits of the technology?How should designers and academicians use computers?These are some of the questions practicing architects and architectural professors are facing today as they implement computers into practice and education.A common mistake, when evaluating the impacts of information technology, is that it is usually seen as an isolated subject related to mere technical competence.But, are computers part of a larger phenomenon, one that will ultimately change the design-build processes, organizational structures, and design cultures?


This paper addresses the “computerization” process of architectural practice and education during the past three decades.The concepts developed here are part of a four-year research effort with the U. C. of Berkeley and Taisei Corporation, Japan, followed by an academic survey and interviews conducted at the University of Cincinnati. During this research, we reviewed existing literature and conducted interviews at more than 140 U.S. and Japanese firms, and universities that are using computer technology in design.The groups visited a range of well-known schools of architecture and design firms such as Frank O. Gehry & Associates, to large corporations such as Gensler, Nikkei Sekkei, and some of the top ten design-build contractors in the world.During this period we have also studied several schools of architecture in the USA, Japan, Latin America and Europe; and studied companies in related design industries such as Sony and Toshiba in Japan and Boeing in the US.


METHODOLOGY

The research began in 1991 in pursuit of an answer to the following major question: How could we discover the discourse of “computerization” in architectural practice and education?Our focus was not on computer technology, but on comprehending how and why architects use it.


The problem with reading the social and practical consequences of technologies, such as computers in any industry or particular social group, is that its capacity and effects cannot be fully identified by any particular observer.The observer usually has to perform an "interpretation" of the phenomenon.And like any act of "interpretation," in research, the results rest heavily on the context and the methods chosen by the researchers.


We have chosen a methodology of research called “reconstructive interpretivism” which is part of one of the most recent trends in the social sciences studies of technology.It is named “reconstructive interpretivism” because researchers in this category attempt to observe and reconstruct, through different methodologies, what is occurring in every day practice (Kling 1991).[i]


Research techniques that are often referred to by anthropologists as "exploratory observation,” "contextual inquiry" (Benett et al. 1990, Bullen and Bennett 1991), or "situated observations" (Suchman 1987, 1988) allow researchers to become immersed in the environments, which enables them to understand how computers are not only used but also “consumed.”[ii]


The observations and analysis of these contextual inquiries provide the basis for developing several leads, which gradually build a "reconstructed interpretation" of the phenomenon.The final narrative and the thesis of the research emerges and is gradually refined as different rounds of interviews and more controlled investigations are performed through visits to trade conventions, product reviews, and literature search.


The purpose of this paper’s framework is not to present a model of the real world.But to assist architects with understanding how they “consume” computers and the available visions regarding “computerization.”As any other categorization, it oversimplifies the information for analysis purposes.We do not believe there is only one clear pathway to computerization.The levels or groups we refer to, in our framework, clearly overlap; but we discovered professionals and academicians will find it useful and will benefit from the conclusions as they compare their own experiences with the developed discussion.It can serve as a heuristic model, one that can lead architects to important questions about their technological strategies.


IMPACTS OF COMPUTERS ON ARCHITECTURAL PRACTICES KILLS (1974 through the early 1990’s)

Initially the introduction of mainframe computers, and later the inexpensive PCs, typically impacted the professional practice of architecture at the "skill" level.We consider these changes to be at the "skill" level because, during this period, computers primarily transformed the way architects produce working documentation such as drawings or written reports.Computers were used to automate routine manual tasks, such as word processing, spreadsheet databases, and drafting.However, according to the study, the story of the computerization of architectural manual “skills” was not simple.The process took more than 20 years in which firms adapted their technological “skills” during three distinctive periods or eras:


First, “The CAD on Mainframe Era”: during this phase, large “in-house” CAD systems emerged during the 1970’s in the Unites States and during the 1980’s in Japan.These firms developed a behavior that tried to buy "the best," "the latest," and "the largest" systems that they could afford.Large systems, in-house programmers, independent information technology groups, and software attempted to be “total solutions” which were predominant characteristics in the early period of “skill” computerization in architectural practice.Typically, the high cost of purchasing and maintaining CAD's mainframe hardware and software, which averaged $50,000 to $200,000 per seat, kept the number of CAD users low and made it accessible only to very few large firms.These factors made it impossible for AEC firms to widely diffuse the technology in their firms.The average percentage CAD was used, for projects, during this period was only 5 to 10%.


Second, “The CAD Operator Era”:as faster PCs and better off-the-shelf software entered the market in the mid-eighties, the large, in-house CAD systems such as “ARK2” from Perry, Dean and Steward, “AES” from Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, and “HOKdraw-HOKimage” from Helmut, Obata and Kasabaum became obsolete.A second era of "skill" changes emerged in the second half of the 1980’s in the United States and early-1990’s in Japan.The information system department and their mainframes were replaced, during this period, with PCs and CAD operators.However, soon architectural offices began to realize the redundancies of this emerging approach; architects and CAD operators would draw information twice, first by hand and the second time using CAD.During this phase, the firms using computers typically drew only 10 to 20% of their projects using the CAD.


Third, “The High Computer Literacy Era”: during this era of change in the "skill" base of architectural practice emerged as soon as firms realized the redundancies involved in having professionals work by hand and later having operators input the same information in the computer.Simply, during this period cheap PCs and easier software emerged from the isolated IT rooms and/or CAD operators hands and where placed on the traditional architect’s drafting desk.Ironically, the transition of professionals into the PC era was easier for smaller firms than for larger ones.The larger firms' sizable investments in large CAD systems made them initially more reluctant to switch to another type of technology.

The major turning point, during this third period of skill change in professional architectural firms, in the United States, occurred by the end of the 1980’s and during the beginning of the 1990’s when most institutional and corporate clients began to require that final drawings be delivered in digital format.Upper management was forced to view CAD technology in their operating strategies.Managers were confronted with the need to distribute the technology among all their professionals.As the labor force was not yet prepared to absorb the demand of computer skilled professionals, firms started company-wide in-house CAD training.Worried senior management became “executive champions” that clearly promoted CAD literacy programs in their firms.Computer literate professionals at the time became the “CAD champions” or agents that distributed the technology within the firms.By 1995 most large and medium US firms had high levels of computer literacy with approximately 75 to 100% of their drawings executed using CAD.


WORK PROCESSES (early-1990’s through mid-2000)

If PC CAD was the most important piece of technology implemented in architectural practices between the mid-1970’s to mid-1990’s, then our study shows that networking technology is the most important development of the decade to come.Organizations have discovered that although operations such as drafting became more efficient with PC CAD, the whole design-build process did not.New methods of networking, sharing, and coordinating information, through computers, will change the ways designers, engineers, and contractors collaborate.The changes will pose new problems as well as provide many new opportunities that will ultimately bring into question centuries-old design-build processes in the Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) industry.Two major types of impacts from networked technology on their every day “work process” began to emerge in the 1990’s:


First, “The Data-Networks” era: from 1993 to 1998, U.S. firms adopted "data networks" such as LAN, WAN, and the Internet, within their companies mainly for the purpose of economically improving computer capabilities such as document management, printer and plotter sharing, system maintenance and better software administration.[iii]These initial "data-sharing" activities encouraged increased attentiveness, to issues of interdisciplinary cooperation, which will become even more critical as the AEC industry continues to strive for better integration.[iv]The rapid expansion of "data networks" and "collaborative environments" technologies led people to believe electronic connectivity would automatically improve organizational effectiveness.A tactical assumption was made in that there was a direct correlation between the quantity, transmission speed and availability of information, and an organization's gains in productivity.However, during this period, which the benefits of computerization in the AEC industry are not directly related to how fast and efficient people are able to connect, but to how effectively designing and building are when performed by professionals.This means improved attention to how professionals organize, perform, and manage the whole design-build processes.


Second, “The Concurrent Design Era”: as the fever for “Data-Networks” emerged in the early 1990’s, a parallel vision of technology began to sweep through many other industries, in the United States.The idea was that computers, by themselves, do not offer major benefits if they are not accompanied with fundamental changes of people’s work process performance.Coined concepts, such as "concurrent engineering," "design for manufacturing," and "reengineering,” became extremely popular throughout the 1990’s in corporate America, and gradually entered into the realm of the AEC industry.The basic idea, of these concepts, was to constantly improve the product time-quality cycle by gradually eliminating coordination problems and communication barriers that existed among different disciplines. 


The goals were to dramatically improve the efficiencies and qualities of the “process” of product development by aligning technological solutions with lowering costs, reducing time to market and improving product performance.In short, the basic idea was to analyze, and evaluate, then later to significantly redesign procedures through which firms executed business and satisfy customers' needs.The premise was that information technology would not significantly improve an organization's effectiveness if it only automates existing tasks.


Although these ideas spread quickly among AEC professionals via conferences, magazines, and meetings with clients; the concepts seemed to be more difficult to implement in the construction industry than in industries such as manufacturing.Business consultants, professors, business gurus, and researchers in these other industries said these efforts should start with a holistic understanding of the business enterprise when implementing computer technology.This means initially considering the overall business strategy, and then subsequently fitting more effective business processes enabled by an adequate design of information technology.The study observed that AEC firms could not develop holistic approaches to redesigning business processes when implementing information technology.The AEC industry structure is very fragmented and seasonal.Products—buildings—are not only individually shaped but are also costumed, managed, and executed according to many varying external factors such as local practices, business realities, legal structures, and traditions.


Instead, business processes, in AEC firms, are transformed gradually through the incremental implementation of information technology in every day practice.Moreover, the study discovered that these changes evolve gradually from particular design-build projects, or tasks, but the new evolving changes take long periods of time to be implemented throughout the entire enterprise.


Among the offices visited, during the research, the architectural office of Frank O. Gehry & Associates is perhaps one of the most important examples of this new period of architectural computerization.The Santa Monica office began using computers heavily during the early 1990’s as a way to solve many of the geometric and construction problems that Gehry’s designs posed.Gehry’s office, during that period, was in the process of a major transformation.The commissions were getting larger and the designs more complex.Initially, the use of computers at Gehry’s office was associated with pushing the limits of what could be built, not about producing traditional drafting documentation.Some of the first buildings in which the technology was pushed in Gerhy’s office were the fish sculpture for the Olympic Village in Barcelona (1992), and the 200,000-square-foot Disney Concert Hall, currently being constructed.The Disney Concert Hall was one of the largest commissions of Gehry’s office.The exterior design included a series of dramatically shaped curvilinear stonewalls.It would have been impossible to describe the shape of stonewalls with traditional two-dimensional drafting techniques.Thus, the usual design documentation was never used for this project.Instead, Frank Gehry's large cardboard models were scanned directly by three-dimensional optical and mechanical digitizers.Once the model was transferred to the computer, Gehry's architects were able to develop the shop drawings for each individual stone using a software called Catia—a numerically controlled (NC) software used in the aerospace and car manufacturing industry.They had learned that the NC software offered them many new possibilities such as sending information to the contractor.They could also send the information to the fabricator running the cutting and milling machines—linking the design directly to fabrication and construction (Novitsky 1992, Novitsky 1994).


After almost a decade of experimentation, Gehry & Associates now routinely use information technology to link the architect much closer to the complete process of building and construction.They have used automated milling and cutting machines to cut the stone and metal directly from the computer models generated by designers.They have also used laser positioning which can be read from digital models, and have placed on the construction site 3D computer models to explain the building process.The effort has also led them to consider new organizational and legal arrangements such as including contractors early in the design process and, in some cases, eliminate bidding post-construction documents.


Virtual design-build studios linked via computers and scattered around the globe are a recent phenomenon, but one that is spreading very fast in design organizations of many industries.Design-manufacturing processes at companies such as Texas Instrument, Timex, and Whirpool have already benefited from these developments.A new breed of B2B solutions deployed by companies such as Cephren, Buzzsaw, and Bidcom are also reattempting to aid AEC firms in their desires of improving not only communication transmission problems but also their “work process.”


IMPACTS OF COMPUTERS ON ARCHITECTURAL EDUCATION:
DESIGN METHODS (1960’s through 1990’s)

The first attempts to build a relationship between the disciplines of architecture and computer science date back to the late-1950’s, when most of these pioneering attempts were born inside academia and were direct descendants of the "problem-solving" or “systematic methods” tradition that dominated the computer science community during the 1960’s (Simon 1969).Computers were seen then as “giant brains;” machines that eventually could achieve human intelligence.In the process of capturing human intelligence, researchers ended up with a large number of models and theories about the rationale of designers, of which they intended to automate (Jones and Thornley 1963).A complete set of research, regarding the “computability of architectural design” can be found in the architectural academic community during the 1960’s and the early 1970’s (Reynolds 1980).The considerable criticism of the old methods like scale drawing, the emergence of a new systematic approach to design, and the development of the field of computers brought a considerable enthusiasm for the emerging field of “Design Methods” in academia.Among the most celebrated were Christopher Alexander's “misfit variables,” Nicolas Negroponte’s “architectural machine,” M. Asimow's design elements, Christopher Jones' “factors,” Bruce Archer's “sub-problems,” Nigel Cross’ “automated architect,” and Horst Rittel’s “issue based information systems.”These academic endeavors generated not only the theory but, in fact, created the basis for many of the first architectural softwares.[v]


However, after almost two decades of increasing expectations, the “Design Methods” projects, theories, and gurus began to quietly retreat to only a small number of courses in architectural and design schools, in the U.S. and Europe, during the second half of the 1970’s.A minute amount of those projects that survived became the foundation for the first commercial CAD systems.


CAD VISUALIZATION: Following the Footsteps of Practice (late-1970’s through today)

From mid-1970 to mid-1980, the computer field was dominated in academia by professors and researchers that were developing software for architects as extensions of “Design Methods” models and/or were working the pioneering in-house CAD software.These efforts were usually very much isolated and separated from design studios or other traditional courses.Ratios of computer station per student during this period were approximately 1:50.To the surprise of the “Design Methods” researchers most of the successful emerging new CAD systems of the 1970’s and the early 1980’s did not have any thought about “systematic” methods in their software.Instead these so called “CAD packages” focused on the computer graphic capabilities of the software.As these new off the shelf software, and cheaper PCs emerged full force, in the late-1980, most academicians in the area were forced to abort their own software development and to adopt the emerging CAD standards.


The first open computer lab began to emerge in the mid- to late-1980.Computer station per student ratios began to drop between 1:30 to 1:20.CAD literacy courses began to emerge as part of schools’ curriculum. However, during the late 1980’s, it was still very much resisted by large proportions of traditional design studio professors.Studio professors’ fears were based in many fronts.Anecdotal accounts report that one of the strongest arguments formulated by these studio professors’ was that computer drawing were taking away the suggestive nature of hand drafting and hand modeling which were very important elements in developing rationalizations and in the design process.Professors hired to deliver computer literacy were usually recent graduates and only a few of them were considered for tenure-track lines.


It was not until the early 1990’s that CAD literacy courses became widely recognized and were included in the core of architectural education in most of the schools we surveyed.Professors and students, in most of the surveyed schools, developed an attitude of “practical realism” as they reacted to what was occurring in practice, since most of the medium and large practices had high computer literacy. CAD proficiency became a requirement in order to receive the first job after graduation.As CAD became more powerful and widespread in the 1990’s, most of the schools of architecture had at least one tenure-track computer position per 200 students.Computer station per student ratios began to drop to an average of 1:20 to 1:10.The “practical realism” attitude among architectural faculties can also be described in the choice software and hardware.Most of these schools have used a hybrid system, however, the most widely used software are AutoCAD, Microstation, and 3D Studio, and the hardware platform of choice was PC stations.As for the integration of computers in studio classes the story again follows a similar trend to what occurs in professional practice.Unlike the previous decade, most design studios are willing to encourage students to engage digital tools into their process.However, more than a century old, studio methods of developing design rationalizations through plans, sections, elevations, and models have been hardly touched by the new tools.Usually, the initial drafting and modeling is done manually when most of design rationalization occurs and computer drawing and rendering are mostly used for final presentations and project documentation.


PAPERLESS STUDIOS (early 1990’s through today)

While the “practical realism” attitude, in many schools, seems to have locked the field of computers in design into the magic of AutoCAD, Microstation, and 3D Studio, a new set of preoccupations have captured the imagination of a handful academic institutions in the 1990’s.Led by the School of Architecture at Columbia, and professors such as Hani Rashid, Greg Lynn and Scott Marble, design studios began to work with high-end rendering software, used by the movie industry for animation, such as Alias/Wavefront, Softimage, and Maya.The paperless studios emerged initially in the early 1990’s and were characterized by eliminating, as much as possible, hand drawn designs, and developing strong dependencies upon the usage of high-end software.Software ability to create fluid diagrams, character animations, and other special effects, first thought to be un-useful in architectural design, proved to be extraordinary tools to test unproven architectural speculations.Circulation and mobility studies, building program variations, quick diagrammatic ideas allowed paperless studio students to explain and experience in a totally new way their design formulations.“The software soon proved to be more useful than a mere rendering tool; it started to inform, and transform, the design process” (Cramer, Guiney 2000).


These paperless academics began to observe that traditional methods of modeling, plan, section, and elevation drafting were based on a century old academic process of form rationalization and communication.Most of that rationalization process created language that was based on two premises: 1. The limitations of Cartesian visualization in the analog world of students in the last century; 2.The physical materiality to which real architecture was constrained in the industrial era.The rationalization language used in the well-established systems of desk and final critics helped professors and students understand and explain NOT what was evident on the model but precisely what could NOT be depicted by these analog modes of representation.In digital systems, the process of academic rationalizations or language, to describe architectural concepts, are less needed.Visualizations and effects can be tested immediately and decisions can be developed immediately (Lynn, 1995).Materiality suffers a similar distortion: “The current generation of (digital) architects is already free.We have already forgotten history, shaken the metaphors belonging to wood, bricks, and steel.We have already seen emptiness.Now it is time to redefine materiality.Let’s rethink materials in relation to organizational structures” (Van Berkel, Boss 1999).


Digital pioneering firms such as Greg Lynn Form, NOX, Reiser + Umemoto, O.C.E.A.N., Neil Denari and UN Studio, built considerable reputations and fame just by publishing their hallucinogenic designs as quickly as they could invent them.The new architectural imagination promoted by these new young firms created a whole range of new adepts across the world.But has also incurred resistance in two fronts.


In the first resisting front, the more professional ranks of architectural academia and practice have distained these efforts as “eye candy,” or just as unbuildable spatial exercises.The lack of built projects has in fact been haunting this generation of academic-architects.The pioneering School of Architecture at Columbia has taken this challenge seriously.In 1999, in an effort to overcome this deficiency, they contracted Frank Gehry to the status of distinguished professor.Gehry, after all, has been the most productive architect in building large non-Euclidian architecture in the world, in the past century.At the same time these young digital pioneers have taken the challenge upon them and are beginning to construct their first amorphous buildings and/or large installations.They are experimenting with an entirely new set of materials, developing new engineering elegance, and finding new intellectual satisfaction in construction.


The second front, of criticism, is emanating from between the same camp of adepts to paperless design and digital culture.The critique says that these efforts far from pushing architectural practice or academia into new directions, they are just locking the discipline into endless aesthetic experiments.No different from the excessive avant-garde formal preoccupations of the pre-computer era.This critique claims that architects that engage in understanding the impacts of digital space must not only get involved into the formal territory but must also observe how the architecture of human activity constantly link the real and the virtual in this new era.“Space is no longer the final frontier, but the porous measure of electronic forms of localizations, digital territorialization, and the legitimation of a communication matrix (Druckery 1999)”


MIXED REALITY AND INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE (from mid-1990’s 
to the future)

The second level of criticism to the paperless studio experience, as previously described, is also part of an emerging paradigm in education, research, and extreme architectural practice today.The premise of this new paradigm is that there may be a parallel way of practicing architecture.A new branch that can create space not only physically but also communicatively and psychologically; an architecture that goes beyond exclusive concerns for buildings and enters into the realm of a mixed urban reality: both real and digital.Adherents of this new paradigm observe that many human activities such as banking, working, studying and shopping, which are migrating from pure functional physical buildings into more distributed hybrid “cyber/real” spaces.They argue that architects can bring more than 2000 years of experience in developing spatial design into cyberspace.Advocates of this view claim that today’s virtual environments, such as the ones found on the Internet, are a very primitive manifestation of digital space.Users tend to surf in random ways; they easily lose their sense of destination and time and seldom can track down or remember the locations of visited sites.


Figure 1.Above is the cover of the September 2000 Architecture magazine.The 1990’s success of blob design is already an architectural myth.Stated in the article: “rarely in any generation does a single academic institution have a sweeping effect on the profession at large, the way Harvard did in the ‘50s under Walter Gropius – and the way Columbia has over the past six years.”Source: Architecture Magazine 2001.

 

Today architects tend to affect urbanity only by constructing single buildings in a very fixed period of time.“Brick and click” architects can affect urbanity over longer periods of time by manipulating image, memory, and usability of real buildings via networked software.The virtual environment, offers a parallel level of reality, one in which space can be manipulates by the user.Once the visitor becomes acquainted with the environment one can develop short cuts, which will allow quick access to the information and events that occur in a particular building.The field of “Cyber/Real Architecture,” “Mixed Reality” or “Information Architecture” began to be formulated in theoretical writings between the early- to mid-1990 (Mitchell 1995, Castell 1989, Boyer 1996, Benedickt 1991, Bradford and Wurman, 1996).But it was not until the late 1990s that it began to emerge in professional practice in works such as Asymptote’s NYSE Virtual Stock Exchange (Guzman 1999) and Guggenheim Virtual Museum, Rem Koolhaas new AMO office (Wolf 2000), ETHWorld cyber/real university campus, ModernCool & 2069, Inc. drive-thru shopping centers (Andia 1998), Trans-ports (Oosterhuis 2000) and Lennon & Associates’ emergency rooms.New technologies such as Web3D and the rise of broadband network give this paradigm an emerging sense of urgency.


Initially in academia, the subject became popular during semester long lecture courses and studios such as the “The Future of 20th Century Architecture” at University of Cincinnati, in 1996; “Theories of Digital Space” and “Internet and Architecture” at Harvard University, during 1996 –1998; and regular studios such as the “
home shopping studio” at Rensselaer Polytechnic, in 1996; “220 Minutes Museum” at Columbia University, in 1999; or “Extreme Shopping” at Florida International University, in 2000. The subject is not only gaining followers but it is also creating new departments and degree programs inside schools such as the “CAAD postgraduate programs and several learning environment” at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETHZ); “infARC” program at Bauhaus-Weimar; The “New Cybernetic Design” program at Universidad Internacional de Cataluyna, Spain; and the “Informatics Architecture” program at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.



Figure 2.Images of some of the finalists for the design competition for a Cyber/Real Campus forETH University, Zurich.The project is an information infrastructure project for ETH Zurich. The existing physical locations, ‘Zentrum’ and ‘Hönggerberg’, will be augmented by a virtual space, which can be regarded as a virtual campus.All members of ETH will have the opportunity to input structure into this virtual space, and make it flexible and equipped for future needs. This information space extends the existing infrastructure and supports research, teaching and learning, as well as service and administration, at ETH Zurich.


CAAD departments inside Weimar and ETHZ have completed almost half a decade of work in this field and are positioned to become the “academic source” of the “Information Architecture” paradigm.At ETH, a large number of Ph.D. students support, with their research highly computerized teaching environment such as “Alterego”.“Alterego” is a web site that supports several courses such as DreamScape, Territorium, Connectionz, and Roomz (Engeli 2001).Each one of these courses lasts approximately six weeks and more than 100 students attend each one.The only software a student needs is a web browser with “cookies” enabled and a VRML 2.0 plug-in.Each one of the students enters the highly automated learning space via the web.A personal agent inside the site guides the students and reflects on their action during the course.Students develop, in these modules, spatial exercises, which resemble the “Graphic Communication” courses in which students, work with cardboard or balsa wood cubes, in traditional undergraduate education.For example, in some of the exercises students are asked to model basic spatial forms based on the word “immersion” or design a small room or house based on an exert from a Jorge Luis Borges novel.Here there are no cubes of balsa wood but there are cubes in 3D VRML, which allows for quick moves and editing.Moreover, the spatial experience is digitally enhanced as one can develop texture and even animation over the surface.The final product is no longer an inert space but a moving environment.The learning space is completely designed at ETH and each teaching environment is part of an ongoing research. The environment does not resemble any commercial software and students therefore have to learn and comprehend the limitations.


The work at these architectural schools raises important questions about this emerging paradigm.Can architects become good designers in both the physical world and the digital world?Will it be possible to become technologically proficient in both?The evidence at Weimar and ETH is that it is too soon to form a conclusion.However, both schools have had experiences regarding the subject for only the past five years.The results, during that period, have been extraordinary, and are bound to attract much more attention in the near future from other academic communities as Web3D and mixed reality technology matures, and broadband internet becomes the most important technological improvement in the next ten years.


VIRTUAL STUDIOS (early 1990’s through today)

The Virtual Studios or Internet Studios explore the asynchronous and synchronous techniques in remote design collaboration.By using technologies, such as videoconferencing (PictureTel, Polycom IP, VocalTec, Cuseeme, Real Audio), Internet publishing, e-mail, Web3D, and digital modeling, students gain an increasing understanding of the new modes of collaboration and media integration in design practices.The experience also enriches the architectural experience since it is able to open studios to different design cultures and to a larger context of design feedback.


The first Virtual Design Studios (VDS) were attempted at the University British Columbia, during the early 1990’s, in collaboration with other schools of architecture such as Harvard, MIT, Washington University, Cornell University, and Hong Kong University (Wojtowicz, 1994).These early experiences relied heavily on asynchronous communication technologies that supported e-mail, bulletin boards, FTP, and Internet publishing.Usually, students publish and share information on the Internet and present final projects via live ISDN and IP videoconferences.One of the greatest drawbacks, of the initial VDS, was that they had extreme technical difficulties in obtaining synchronous communication. Therefore they had to depend on very structured environments to share design work via servers and the incipient Internet.Since structured experiences in design studios are very consuming, for professors and students, usually these experiences lasted only two to three weeks during the early 1990’s.



Figure 3.Some of the automated 3D Internet environment screen images in which ETH students develop basic design skills for the architecture of cyberspace.A six-week long course to create modules, such as “roomz”, “eventspaces,” and “connectionz,” to aid students with the development of spatial exercises that resemble traditional “graphic communication” architectural exercises.However, this time the course is interactive and the projects free from physical materiality.


Between the mid- and late-1990’s, as collaboration technologies evolved and became available to the masses, virtual studios at Florida International University (Andia 2001) and Texas A & M University (Vasquez de Velasco 1998) began to foster more international experiences that lasted a complete semester.Most of the studies report that the cross-cultural and global nature of the experience usually motivates students.Others see this accessibility to design can promote a more “democratic” and “populist” dimension of architecture, an attitude that may help community design efforts in some schools.Also several interdisciplinary experiences emerged in the mid-1990’s as students, from architecture, engineering, and building construction, from institutions such as U.C. Berkeley and CIFE at Stanford University, collaborated in virtual studio experiments (Kalay 1995).


Despite the surge in distance education, in many other disciplines in the United States during the past five years, architectural schools have been hesitant to use this type of teaching methodology.While an increasing number of programs in media, arts and crafts become virtual, Internet Studios remain isolated efforts inside traditional schools, and making it difficult to conduct a serious evaluation of the experience.Perhaps one of the most extraordinary results of the “Virtual Studios,” for academia, is that the participants can quickly witness the design biases of the different schools. Traditionally, architectural schools from all over the world, develop a design culture that evolves very slowly through the years.This new mode of collaboration may help increase the transmission of ideas and architectural progress.One of the greatest negative comments, this type of experience has received, refers to the digital burden that it has placed on the student’s education.The learning of the software and the updating of information usually occupies between 20% and 30% of the student’s time.Another comment usually heard is the need to develop better tools for collaboration.Tools that allow for quick and automated web course management such as Electronic pin-ups databases, programming-tools, and Electronic review spaces.


THE FUTURE.

To complete the discourse, about the “computerization” process of architectural practice and education, it is important to consider also some visions of the future.It is reasonable to believe that the future of the ideology of digital architecture will be greatly related to the “speed” in which the technology matures.One can observe the evolution of computing speed by studying the development of hardware and software power in upcoming decades.In this century digital technologies will enjoy an exponential growth in hardware power.Ray Kurzweil (Kurzweil 1999) describes this acceleration by comparing the power of today’s $1,000 desktop computer and projecting it into the future.A $1000 computer in 2000 “can achieve memory capacity and computational ability” of one insect brain.He estimates that at the current rate of hardware explosive growth by 2020 a $1,000 computer will reach the computational ability of one human brain and by 2060 the capacity of all human brains on earth.The speed of development is much more slow for software, in fact, many argue that in the past decade software power has barely evolved and that trend will continue in the future.

Another way to observe technological evolution is by looking at technological trends.


I would like to propose that two parallel visions 
and technological trends will guide the future of computerization: A. The blurring of hardware and software into new “immersive” and “mixed-reality” devices; B.More ubiquitous cyberspace over gigabit-network.


The first condition refers to the possibility of liberating cyberspace from the computer monitors and virtual reality glasses.Holographic, autostereoscopic, mixed reality interfaces, digital prosthesis, haptic devices, retinal VR and virtual smell are among the prototype technologies that are emerging with strength in the developed world.It will probably take a decade until these technologies reach the level of commercial production.However, as we begin to observe that cybernetics investigation in this area is advancing with speed and has begun to explore more explicitly all five human senses.In Architecture and Urban Planning academia we can find first an emergence of a new generation of design process tools such as “TheOtherSide” and “Built-it” from ETH (Engeli 2001), “Illuminating Clay” and “Future of Urban Planning" from MIT (Ishii and Underkoffler 1999).This emerging work explores new mixed-media interfaces in which designers engage in real time between analog and digital environments.On the Computer Interface and interactive art community there is also an explosion of experiments that began with the MIT Media Lab and without a doubt enter into the realm of mixed reality space design.


The second important trend refers to the need to obtain ubiquity in cyberspace.This can only be achieved with networks that are universally accessible and with high levels of bandwidth.A number of research projects are beginning to emerge in this area such as “Tele-immersion” (Lanier 2001) and “Star Tap” at the Electronic Visualization Laboratory at the University of Illinois (Leigh et. al. 1999) and will define how long it will take for us to have true 3D telephony in high bandwidth networks.


Most visions of cyberspace architecture today and virtual world communities, such as blaxxun worlds or Alpha worlds, are based on the IP paradigm.Current IP networks use one or two flux of information at the same time.For example, in e-mail, the flux of information is only text, in chat worlds is both text and web3D or VRML graphics files, and in a videoconference is both audio and video.In the current IP paradigm architects usually see an opportunity for designing 3D graphics worlds that are manipulated by users remotely; the architectural gesture is thus reduced to the aesthetics and memory impact of the form.



Figure 4.Images from “Internet Studios” between FIU, Miami; UBC, Canada; U. UNIACC, Chile; U. Tecnica F. Santa Maria, Chile; U. Buenos Aires, Argentina; and U. Central de Venezuela.


3D telephony is more complex, it is basically a world in which users can remotely interact and perform events that manipulate the world at the same time.It uses several types of information flux that must be coordinated at the same time.This information flux has different types of bandwidth, latency, security, and tolerances.The organization and administration of this information flux is much more complex given the international distances and the capacities of world networks.As the international network increases to capacities of 40 or 200 Gigabits per second exponentially escalation of problems, algorithms and switches necessary to harmonize the multiple information flux will occur.In 3D telephony environments also increased is the complexity of the interactive experience and space goes beyond form and spatial memory but design becomes essentially “event” driven.


Initial research in academic “information architecture” or “cyberspace architecture” has been based on the current hardware and IP network paradigms.However, in this early research about cyberspace design, we began to observe clear positions regarding several common themes in this emerging field: a positive attitude about architectural principles influencing the “envisioning of Cyberspace” (Anders 1999, Engeli 2001), design must discover usability behaviors, this means to design in space and time to construct not only a form in space but a “place.”This research also encourages architectural designers to consider the issue of implementation of these types of projects.As they become more complex “information architects” will need to exercise a managerial expertise similar to the one exercised in the construction industry today.However, despite the growing enthusiasm about these new visions for architecture, many in practice and academia consider these endeavors outside the realm of the discipline.As the technology evolves the ideological separation will increase and important cultural conflict may affect the profession as it occur at the beginning of the 20th century.


CONCLUSION

Our study recognizes that professional practice and architectural education are developing different discourses of computerization.Professional architects more than “revolutionizing” the profession they are “modernizing” it, by integrating digital technologies to effectively improve all what conventional architecture has represented during the past century.While in academia many support this “modernizing” view, an increasing number of universities are becoming test beds for new visions of design imagination, materials, and the realm of the discipline.


Professional architects are integrating information technology into their practice in two different ways: first, the computer as simply a better tool for doing existing manual work, and second, the computer as a vehicle for changing the relationships among partners in the design process, which in turn may drive new design-build documentation and bidding process, organizational culture and structure.The modes of computerization of architectural practices today are very similar to the discourse developed in other industries, however, the level of change is not as dramatic since the industry is more fragmented, project specific, and organized around very fragile contractual arrangements.


In architectural education there are five interrelated, 
but divergent, discourses of computerization.The first one, “Design Methods Software,” focuses on the creation of intelligent software that can aid, enables, and/or even replaces certain elements of intelligence in the design process.This tradition has a history that dates back to the early 1960’s, to early the beginning of computational history. 


The second approach, “CAD Visualization,” focuses on the development of an architectural education that explores the use of CAD software as “visualization tools” of traditional modes of teaching and practicing architectural design.This tradition is well entrenched in architectural schools and is connected to the long-established vision that professional architecture has had of computers during the past 15 years.


A third attitude, called “paperless or blob architecture,” concentrates on the use of existing high-end computer graphics to transform design techniques, architectural imagination, and influence the built environment with a completely new design vision.This is an emerging popular paradigm in design studios across the United States.This approach is almost entirely an academic phenomenon as most of its adepts have very close ties to schools of architecture.In a way this field grows from the avant-garde tradition in architectural history, which has always resisted a conventional architecture and has searched for new formal expressions. 


In a fourth posture, “mixed reality architecture” or “information architecture,” is seen as an arena to explore the new virtual and physical dimension of urban habitation.It attempts to remove design studio preoccupation from only the physical world of buildings, and attempts to reposition it to look at its relation to virtual architectures.This area emerges from a resistance to the apparently exclusive aesthetic objectives of “paperless” architects and the extraordinary enthusiasm brought by promising new 3D networked spaces.It is born academically with the tools and the cybernetic tradition that promotes a more hybrid nature of urban functions and spaces. 


Finally, a fifth academic experience, “Virtual Studios,” explores a parallel dimension of architectural communication in the digital era.These events have the potential to become agents of extraordinary cultural change in the traditionally protected academic environments in architecture.As in physics or mathematics, these new academic networks can propel much quicker progress and exhaust more quickly any of the computerization experiences described above.





NOTES


[i] The purpose of this type of social study is to achieve a direct impact in key industry discourse about the technology.The idea is to "create a credible and compelling social narrative about the social role of technologies...reconstructive interpretivists can see technologies and associated social practices and structures as temporally solidified, packed and black-boxed at the same time that they acknowledge the artifice in their contextual constructions.Sociologists of technology should be able to legitimately construct compelling narratives about the use of technologies and their social consequences" (Kling 1991).


[ii] "The technique focuses on interacting with people in their own context as they do actually work.The goal of data gathering is to obtain insights through observations, interviews, and interaction.The challenge of this methodology is that it relies on the skill of the observer to report and interpret accurately, while allowing unexpected phenomenon to emerge from the examples studied” (Bullen and Bennett 1991).

[iii]A/E/C SYSTEMS Computer Solutions magazine described how one architectural firm integrated its different data types as follows:
On Bloomington, Minessota’s Mall of America project, the project team successfully shared CAD files during design, construction and leasing.They achieved unusual teamwork and rapid construction but only by moving three-dozen people to the site hundred miles away.What did Plus Four Architects decide to do on the next multi-use mega-plex?Mark Brody, their project systems director, says they are expanding the sharing of data beyond CAD to include one integrated schedule, one document control database, e-mail and possibly cost control.They are creating a “virtual office” with fiber-optic connections from four major sites to a regional server.Is integration paying off for Plus Four? Brody says, “Yes.The more urgently a client needs a finished project, the greater the payback from integration, because integration speeds decisions and delivery” (Stowe, 1993).


[iv]
An example of this emerging attitude can be found in the cover story of ENR magazine in June of 1993: 
The technology offers more than speed.Networks can remove the traditional delineation between design and construction...Joel M. Koppelman, president of Bala Cynwyd, Pa., software vendor Primavera System Inc., says "engineers, constructors and owners will begin to think about projects as an information sharing process so that things get done right the first time.That's were the technology will take us.It will get us away from the adversarial approach [within AEC professions] and the 'over-the-transform' approach.The better and easier you can exchange information the more likely you'll get it done right the first time.The will be less rework and arguing about whose fault it is"(Wright & Setzer 1993).


[v]
Some examples of these earlier computer programs are:
-In 1963 Alexander using an IBM 7090 develops one of the first computer programs for design.The program was based on his model to develop rational city designs.

-Alexander and Manheim develop HIDECS in 1962 and Milne develops CLUSTER in 1970, two computer programs used to compute hierarchically decomposed design problems.

-In 1973 The Design Research at the Royal College of Art in England finished two computer models, SHADO and SIGMA based on a Analysis-Synthesis-Evaluation model of Bruce Archer.

-A computer program was made to aid the AIDA method developed by Luckman in 1967.J. Luckman, "The Management of Design," Operational Research Quarterly4, (December 1967). 

-Maver (1970-72) made a program based on a general model of the activity of design proposed by Markus (1969).

-In 1973 The Hungarian Institute for Building Science find out that it was necessary to develop a system to study the information flow in the design process in order to develop a CAD system for structural design and construction.G. H. Weber, "Computer Aided System for structural design and construction,"Hungarian Academy of Sciences and Hungarian Institute for Building Science (1971) Budapest.G.H. Weber, "A System Study of Information Flow in the Design process," RCA/Hungarian Institute for Building Science (1973).


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