Integration: Master [Planner | Programmer | Builder]

The development of modern computer-based design systems and advanced manufacturing methods have progressed to the point where the promise of mass-customisation and the establishment of the ‘designer as integrator’ are being realised: the former implies that designers can now act as creators of systems which produce infinite possibilities, and the latter that the convergence of designer and manufacturer, through common technologies, is enabling a reunification between design and construction processes. This paper discusses the symbiotic relationships of these paradigms within design research, practice and their commercial implications, and the significance of the integration of new design tools and production methods for architects and designers. 1. The Architect as Designer Since the Renaissance, and particularly over the last century, the role of the architect has become increasingly marginalised within the overall design and construction process. At the same time, the emancipated figure of the ‘designer’ has emerged, whose work is maintained pure and detached from the mundane toils of fabrication and construction. Indeed, the designer’s role as a champion of aesthetics, as a virtuoso of the spatial arts, has allowed architecture to emerge beyond its roots of a tradeand crafts-driven endeavour to become the abstract art form it is today, capable of expressing abstract concepts and shaping man’s environment with complex expressions of thought that go beyond simple utility. While this is highly desirable, it is equally true that this development has, over time, resulted in the architect’s loss of touch with the immediacy of ‘making’, resulting in a linear building process in which realisation of a project is downstream, and almost secondary to, the architect’s original vision. As the architect Rem Koolhaas once put it, the result is that the architect has often de-facto been reduced to a three-dimensional ‘decorator’, an early and marginal role in an inscrutably complex building process that is increasingly governed by developers and contractors. This paper does not recount the history that has led to the current state of affairs, nor is its purpose to explore the current condition of the ‘architect’ in his present role. Instead, we are concerned with how modern technologies and practices may help the architect regain a central role in the design, fabrication and construction process, and thus return to his rightful place as the hub about which the building process revolves. War is a useful, if somewhat grim, metaphor for the change being advocated here. Starting with Julius Cesar, during Roman times and through the middle ages generals rode with their troops into battle – their front-line contact with war was immediate, dirty and direct. There was no possibility of misrepresentation of the necessities of battle – results were tangible, and plans were drawn up in camp directly next to the battlefield, and enacted the next day. Yet this immediacy of the Feldherr, the strategist-warrior or field-general, dissipated as war planning became a more complex, state-coordinated affair. Drawing-room generals from the 18 to the 20 century pushed models around on giant maps or revised battle statistics, communicating with troops through an elaborated chain of command that kept battles abstract equations to be solved. Communications were slow, and wars became long, laborious, drawn-out affairs. It has been through the employment of new communications technologies that the generals have been able to re-establish a new, if different, immediacy with the reality of war: Battle strategies are continuously coordinated through conference call, simulations and online intelligence capabilities. Real-time video of ‘smart bomb’ hits provides instant confirmation of attack success that accelerates the war process many times beyond that of ‘dispatches’ of the past, and the ability to instantly pin-point targets through the same laser-guided weapons means more efficiency and destruction with less waste of ordinance. It is this kind of transformation through technology, resulting in renewed immediacy and control, that is advocated in the architectural process. 2. Programming and Toolmaking The architectural scholar, teacher and critic, Jeff Kipnis, has stated that the role of the architect will evolve from that of the Master Planner to Master Programmer. Programming in this context refers not to the distribution of spatial programme in the traditional sense, but to the fundamental paradigm shift in which instead of crafting a single solution, the designer can now create systems, which can produce countless variant solutions from rules, and mechanisms that respond to particular conditions or intentions. This does not literally mean that architect becomes a programmer in the sense of producing computer code, although some designers today have in fact turned to producing their own computer-based tools. Programming in this case means the creation of a machinic process, which enables the generation of a solution that incorporates the designer’s intent. In other words, a result-driven paradigm is replaced by a process-driven paradigm, in which results are the inevitable outcome of the process, but where the true power lies not in the product but in the system that creates it. By changing, guiding or optimizing the process, the product can be consistently improved, diversified or focused as required by specific circumstances. This emergent paradigm is becoming reality through the application of computing technologies and methodologies. Until recently, the assistance granted by the computer to the architect has been limited to First-Generation design tools, otherwise known as ‘CAD’ systems. While these systems have been almost heroic in ‘digitalising’ what is conventionally a very physical profession, they have become gloriously infamous by not moving beyond their original paradigm: the electronic equivalent of physical tools such as pen and drawing board. Second-Generation design tools may be deemed those that are increasingly available today, permitting collaborative design processes, complex document management and increasingly complex geometric operations and representations. These are certainly a great improvement, but in general still try to emulate, while greatly facilitating, those activities which otherwise take place in the physical world. In short, computational systems are becoming great assistants but have yet to become real interlocutors, where the designer and the computer form a partnership of complements, each contributing specific abilities and knowledge to the overall task of architecture. John Frazer, a renowned architectural scholar and pioneer of adaptive and interactive computational systems in design, often tells the story of why he became increasingly interested in computational possibilities in the 60s and 70s. According to Frazer, this was due to his lesser enthusiasm for the toil of producing architectural drawings – indeed, an architect may spend as little as 15-20% of his time doing actual designing, and the rest of it either producing drawings, or representations of that design, or managing these. Regrettably, any architect in practice today will know that even though drafting table and ink-pen have gone, the production time and toil is very much the same, even with the more sophisticated tools available today. Thus Frazer was searching for the perfect architectural partner – a system that would free up his time for creative endeavours – designing – by understanding his (the architect’s) desires, intentions and prerogatives, and respond through engaging in a dialogue with the architect by (1) producing plausible design solution and variants and (2) by mechanising the actual design representation process –drawings, manufacturing instructions or otherwise. In short, Frazer advocated a systemic design tool – one that can be instructed by the designer with rules, procedures and desirable goals, and which will proceed to generate viable options and Frazer and several of his disciples, including the author, have gone on to further study and implement a series of these design tools. These ranged from intuitive, tactile (haptic) interfaces to the computer through the automation of drawing production, to the most advanced and abstract concepts drawn from nature and its form-finding processes, including evolutionary morphogenesis and generative design techniques. The latter ones, in particular, leveraged the concept of the computer as a muse, where the designer expresses his creativity by selecting, breeding and manipulating design constructs generated by the computer using rules specified by the designer, while converging on functional requirements specified by the design task. It is clear, thus, that the advent of Third Generation design tools will require not just the ability to leverage design intention and strategy, but will emerge through the designer’s expanded role as a Toolmaker, where the architect creates tools, which in turn generate the solution[s]. As hinted above, this will in turn require an expanded knowledge where the architect has an understanding of systems theory and principles of logic and computer programming. A new generation of tools is thus envisaged to achieve the Third Generation paradigm in question: these can be understood as pure tools in the sense that they operate on a completely different basis of understanding than conventional CAD tools. These tools will enable the architect to approach the task of design in a completely different manner; not by functioning as graphic translators or organisers, but by requiring input in the form of rules, gestures, goals and parameters, and a defining grammar which governs the combination thereof. This is of course a highly idealistic scenario, even at the dawn of the 21 century: most architects have difficulty in accepting the idea of having to digest com