About time Part II

[garethace]

The background to my thread

 

I held a rather good discussion about the subject of architectural practices and licensing/attitudes towards 3D software here: http://www.cgarchitect.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=2;t=000239;p=1

 

This is part two of the discussion, i have had a chance to reflect, and sort out a fairly cohesive document here, about my opinion of architects and information technology - of which 3D software and techniques are just one part.

 

Architecture practices and numbers of people.

 

In my view, if you pay an architect to design a 1 million house, you should demand as a client the 1 million service, with visuals and all the add-ons. When an architect suddenly becomes negative about visualisation, it may not be the fault of the visualisation artist – rather an expression of the architects loss of confidence. It can also be a lack of confidence by the principal partner in trusting his/her underlings to do work, without him/her looking over peoples shoulders all of the time.

 

Therefore, it is possibly a requirement for good deployment of a 3D software in any architectural practice – that first of all the office is team based, rather than highly ‘principal based’. In the principal based system – an awful lot of the work has to pass through the main partner before being approved. Hence the requirement to stick to simple plans, sections and elevations – to make the job of the principal to survey everything that is going on as simple as possible.

 

I.e. the people in the office aren’t really independent, free-thinkers, but rather just agents of the main practioners wishes and desires. This happens a lot in practices where the main partner is overly suspicious of his/her own staff – and is unwillingly to make the transition from a small 2/3 person firm, with very tightly knitted organisation and collaboration – to a larger 20/30/40/50 person practice, where the principal architect cannot see everything that goes on.

 

Unfortunately, architectural practices do have a real habit of exploding in size – i.e. starting off from a two architect small firm winning a competition or two – and suddenly the firm becomes 50 people strong – but the architect still wants to run it the same way as in the beginning. So the necessary pre-production work, to allow 3D softwares to be introduced into a practice is never done - the principal architect being the major obstacle in that process.

 

It is properly even a fault in the architectural education, more than anything else, that architects are taught to be too rigid perhaps in their total control and over-seeing of projects.

 

Bryan Lawson has written a very good book called ‘How Designers Think’ which describes perfectly how different practices vary in how the principal relates to his/her own staff, clients and design process.

 

Competition architects and client architects.

 

One of the things architects claim to do better than anyone, is to coordinate large flows of information between various people within the design team. But what better tool one may ask, than Information Technology for the purpose of doing this? Hence my curiosity why architects as people, in my experience still remain some of the least computer and IT literate professions I know. I have had to show many of them the simple procedure of sending emails, and downloading digital photos – but normally they would rather have someone to do that for them.

 

Supposedly the architect stands there in the midst of all this confusion keeping track of what is going where, what issues are showing up, how to resolve them and in what way. I think the architect has used the rolls of 2-dimensional plans as a window into the project for themselves. But all too often, the final reality is the first glimpse of what he/she had/hadn’t envisioned. Perhaps sometimes the architect does suffer from information overload - but in the case of IT, i believe the solution to the information Tsunami, has been to attempt to dry up the ocean - that will not work.

 

I am not 100% comfortable with this reliance upon the trust of a client in the process – very often architects lose, or have trouble with people/clients owing to a lack of communication – people do not read plans/drawings as well as they can read visuals. Architects have their own reasons for their suspicion of CG, but for a lot of ordinary people paying big money for buildings I think they deserve much better communication, and feed-back for the architectural profession.

 

The odd time an architect is forced to present outside their small circle of other architects, to a wider public perhaps – they tend to feel very defensive about the whole matter. Some architects hate being in a situation where they are expected to envision projects prior to their being built and completed. It is much, much easier defend something that cost millions to build and is completed, than a visualisation on ink jet paper – which according to the architect cannot convey their vision.

 

By the way, these types of architects generally hate having to do competitions to gain work. And only do so with great resentment and enormous amount of suspicious of the final winning scheme. Some of this suspicion I am sure is well founded, but it makes for endless hours of conversation, argument and debate, over whether a certain architect should/shouldn’t have won a certain commission.

 

Payment for use of digital products, services and property.

 

To be honest, I don’t think very many architects will ever use VIZ full time. But I do think that an architect might want to use it for a project once a year perhaps. Perhaps only that one big ‘once a year competition’, which is done for the prestige factor alone. Then the CG Artist is very much appreciated, and very much sought after by professional architects to give the best possible look and feel to their competition entries. But having reached that stage, won/lost the competition the CG department can go back to being the dog-house.

 

Generally that one project, doesn’t warrant the purchase of a license and hardware, or a dedicated professional CG Artist trained and experience in visualisation – I think that AutoDesk should really consider selling VIZ to registered architects under some official agreement through the architectural institutes – some agreed taxation or fee per year – and get an upgrade every time, to this one copy per architectural practice. Or perhaps even allow architects to rent the program for a sum of money per quarter or something. After all that is how digital Ordinance survey maps are licensed to architects all the time.

 

Then at least guys on the ground like me would be covered, and could enjoy using a very good product without having to deal with the whole ‘cloak and dagger’ situation. I was in Amsterdam once, and smoked a hell of a lot of pot – why? Because it was available over a counter just like any normal product. I could get the stuff in Ireland no problem at all, and my friends do indulge, but I could never ‘do pot’ in Ireland – because the whole ‘cloak and dagger’ thing gets up my blouse a bit too much.

 

If I want to invest any time/effort into using a software product in practice, then I want the respectability and recognition of using that software – to be just as open, honest and public as using my qualifications as an architect. I really do think, that AutoDesk should target the Architectural Institutes, and license the VIZ product to architects through the Institutes.

 

Data coordination

 

The problems of keeping track of many different data files, many places to ‘go wrong’, to miss something or forget to coordinate something are very well documented indeed in the areas of both engineering and architectural design. It is simply curious how one profession – that of the engineering has seen fit to employ 3D software and hardware, to avoid potential problems, conflicts and lack of foresight – whereas architects have in fact managed to see 3D technology in the exact opposite way – as a potential pit fall for mistakes, and trouble. The engineers design for a new crankshaft or gearbox, may be a straightforward enough problem – but if a tiny mistake is made, the exact same mistake is repeated throughout a whole line of products.

 

On the other hand, the architect has only to build one of a particular building – and often takes a chance that it will be all right, relying mainly upon instinct, good organisation, trust in good staff and a decent builder to fabricate the structure. The only buildings or structure presently where I can see 3D taking off big time, is in the field of life cycle management of factories, power stations and all sort of processing plants – where the client receives a full digital model of the whole complex to enable proper maintenance of the place throughout its life cycle.

 

But on the other hand, if a client can afford to spend 1 million pounds building their dream house – I think it is very arrogant of architects to assume what they clients do/don’t want to see – it may not be my computer/software etc I am using at work. But neither is it the architects money that is paying his/her fees and ultimately the building of a new home. What is the cost of VIZ and training in the context of a 1 million pound once-in-a-lifetime home? I mean to say, even if the visuals proved to be no help at all – it still wouldn’t put much of a dint into the budget, and who knows it may help either the architect or the client to notice something about the design they hadn’t considered to begin with.

 

I think the architect telling the client to move his/her chair, if a leak occurred in the new home – comes to my mind here a small bit. Or Mies van der Rohe’s famous words to Mrs. Farnworth, that she had got the greatest masterpiece of architecture of the twentieth century, in the Farnsworth house! You really have to live amongst these architects, and really know their arrogance first hand, to understand this distaste they have for using a technology, which could potentially improve the economics of a building design. Some of these architects are in fact afraid, that if the client sees too much, then the architect’s nice architectural features might be cut out too early. While there may be much validity in such a point, I don’t think that hiding behind the ‘difficult to read’ standard plans/sections/elevations is entirely the right solution.

 

Read this series of articles for better appreciation of the problems

 

Hybrid 2D/3D Environments

 

http://www.cadenceweb.com/2003/0203/vpoint0203.html

 

Hybrid 2D/3D Environments--Part 2

 

http://www.cadenceweb.com/2003/0303/vpoint0303.html

 

3D File Management in Hybrid Environments

 

http://www.cadenceweb.com/2003/0403/vpoint0403.html

 

 

Conclusion

 

I have touched upon four very relevant issues here in this particular post - team working, information, licensing and data coordination. I am sure there are more issues involved too. Apologises to the architectural profession for a negative argument presented here. I am sure there is just as strong a counter argument to all of what i have said. But in any good debate, it is important to listen to both sides.

 

I am still not fully convinced however, that like alot of the dot.com madness, that architects were sitting on the fence as regards to new technological methodologies. That perhaps, they employed the services of some very enthuasiastic young students/professionals who invested a large portion of their own time and energy into a project - 3 dimesional visualisation, and saw absolutely no recognition or certification of that work/effort whatsoever. I am aware it was probably not the first time, older established architects have sat on the fence and expected younger ones 'to test the waters' first of all.

 

[ August 13, 2003, 07:48 AM: Message edited by: garethace ]

[garethace]

I have just got around to reading the article linked on the front page of cg architect today:

 

http://www.cadenceweb.com/2003/0803/coverstory0803.html

 

And already i have managed to find some flaws in the articles arguments.

 

Lachmi Khemlani, who earned her Ph.D. in architectural CAD from UC Berkeley and does consulting and writing about computer-based architecture, notes that in general, many larger architectural firms today are still run by designers from a pre-CAD era who honed their non-CAD skills over many years. Today most are immersed in the business side of architecture and leave the details of CAD to their more junior and younger, CAD-conversant employees. Smaller firms, notes Khemlani, have less of a technology divide and fewer resources, so principals there will do more hands-on CAD.

As i have pointed out in my post above, the smaller practices often suffer from the 'solving information Tsunami by drying up the entire ocean' approach - that of simplifying the amount of digital data down to such a degree. I.e. All very simple 2-dimensional data files and hardcopies, so that the principal in the small practice has less places to look for changes/co-ordinate the project.

 

On the other hand, where a good team based approach is fostered in a larger practice - where individuals learn to be responsible for themselves - not having big brother survey everything they do, i think the enlargement and increased complexity of the data stream, as a result of moving to 2 dimensions, isn't as big a deal.

 

I.e. In small practices, many principals can find 'they are losing their grip on complete data surveillance' if they find 2D/3D/Design people all working together, thinking and producing output. This loss of control, is simply more than many principals in small practices can take. And in my own experience, produced a negative reaction away from 3 dimensions, as oposed to a positive one. Small isn't always best.

 

And i didn't need any PhD from UC Berkley to figure that out! Anyhow, it is very well documented that the dot.com companies too, only survived best of all, where the necessary distribution networks were already in place - all it took was a new method of ordering stock online, to increase business, efficiency and gain new markets by as much as 25% in some cases. Groccery stores and airlines come to mind here.

 

[ August 13, 2003, 09:11 AM: Message edited by: garethace ]

[garethace]

Very, very, very, very sad guys, but this is in fact the new me, computing guy!

 

http://www.cgarchitect.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=2&t=000249#000001

 

Check out that savage baby of a workstation - ohhhhhhhh! It runs MiniCAD reasonably well, sends email and may even run VIZ with software render!!!!