Design Archives

[garethace]

This is probably one of the best, well written and relevant, hard hitting articles written about computing and design I have actually read in a long time now.

 

http://archrecord.construction.com/features/digital/archives/0405dignews-1.asp

 

Archiving project information was once merely a matter of collecting, organizing, and filing away paper drawings, each one created anew as design progressed. But what about records of the iterative steps that illustrate a design team’s thinking and the creative prowess behind a successful work of architecture? Saving this sort of historical record takes forethought to keep intermediate digital documents files from getting overwritten in the crush of new work. The almighty “delete” key makes it far too easy to eradicate the evolution of a design even before the project is completed.

 

Archivists are now taking action to make sure these steps aren’t lost to the ages. Early last year, the Department of Architecture at the Art Institute of Chicago began a comprehensive study to find the best ways of collecting, archiving, and exhibiting digital design data. Chicago architect Kristine Fallon, FAIA, president of Kristine Fallon Associates, heads the project, which involves a team of architects, academics, museum curators, and technology experts who are reviewing the challenges of maintaining digital archives and will ultimately provide recommendations for best practices.

 

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

intermediate archiving for a monograph or something of the like might be best done with jpeg's, tiff's and pdf's, or something of the like. this way you create a clear separate document that can not be modified as the cad and design work continue. once a file structure is set up for cad drawings, reference files, and so forth become intertwined. drawings change, get renamed, modified, ect all within the file structure that is created to eventually produce the final documents. if you create clear separate files that are not designed to be modified for the purpose of continuing the design, then you may stand a better chance of having a working record of the process and design ideas that developed your final product.

 

i think design stages are probably more commonly documented when you are developing the design with digital models, than if you are developing the design with cad. this is only because we produce image files to present the ideas, and usually save these files after we are done with the presentation. to often cad files are printed for a presentation, but then the file continues to be modified as the design develops.