Fabien Girardin‘s Sketching with Data for the Louvre Museum using visual programming environment Impure by Bestiario

Debates on the effects of drawing technologies have been in circulation since the emergence of design education in the mid C19, specifically Dyce’s objections to the pervasive bias of life drawing (Bell, 1963). Despite a fleeting renaissance in drawing, visualization researcher Pam Schenk notes that promoting the benefits of drawing to students has become increasingly problematic. In a recent letter to Tracey, Schenk confirms that due to increased applications of digital media over the past two decades, design graduates lack critical drawing skills. Schenk’s studies into the habits of print, textile and industrial designers over a 20 year period concluded that drawing ‘remains at the centre of the creative and developmental process of design’ for two key reasons; a) to support conceptualization and b) to facilitate communication.¹

Optimizing conceptual and communicative media is clearly important, and drawing skills have remained fundamental in developing some of the latest collaborative visualization tools – e.g. Dorta’s Hybrid Ideation Space, however the emerging fields of environmental informatics and visual programming (above) suggest that as creative design processes become more mediated, intelligent and complex, it may be only a matter of time before traditional modes of sketching become virtually redundant, as Bill Mitchell suggested more than two decades ago.² Citing Mark Burry‘s 1997 paper ‘Narrowing the Gap Between CAAD and Computer Programming’ Boeykens and Neukermanns recognize the need to assign visual programming equal weight within the architectural curriculum:

‘…the relation between programming and design studio assignments is still non-existent in many schools, nowadays… Programming should be part of the main architectural skills, albeit not necessarily in the sense of writing code…’³

Arguments for architects to adopt visual programming (e.g. via Bentley’s Generative Components and Rhino’s Grasshopper3D) are not new. Algorithmic Architecture by Kostas Terzidis (2006) similarly praised the benefits of the computational interface. However, as Flusser reminds us in The Shape of Things: a philosophy of design (Reaktion Books, 1999) a reciprocal dependency remains: ‘the robot only does what the human being wants, but the human being can only want what the robot can do’ (p.48). While I would agree that architectural graduates desperately require a minimum of computational knowledge, the visual programming bias of systems like the ones mentioned above still reduce architects to ‘functionaries’ of their own tools. The nature of the GUI is what needs to be challenged, not the design process itself. This is the fundamental mistake design theorists routinely make when adopting computer metaphor as cognitive model (Dorst, 2007).

1. Schenk, P. (2007) A Letter from the Front Line. Published in Tracey: What is Drawing For?

2. Mitchell, W. J. (1989) The Death of Drawing. UCLA Architecture Journal 2: 64-69

3. Boeykens, S. & Neuckermans, H. (2009) Visual Programming in Architecture: Should Architects be trained as programmers? CAAD Futures 2009 Conference Proceedings

The above diagram by Mark Bew of BuildingSmart and Mervyn Richards of CPIC shows the evolution from what may now be called ‘traditional’ CAD (Computer Aided Drafting) to an integrated and interoperable Building Information Model (BIM or iBIM). The benefits of editing drawings and schedules from within a single unified database offers clear advantages for many aspects of production from construction to post-occupancy. However, while growth in BIM usage has been noted (up to 80% in some cases), the reality is that not all parties elect to use the same tools. With Revit functioning as the primary BIM platform, many other parametric (Digital Project and Rhino) and feedback (Ecotect, Fluent and Simulex) tools are employed to further enable cost reductions.

Such evolutionary transferrence of information from designers to producers (builders) creates significant challenges to the traditional role of the architect as visionary leader, particularly in terms of design ideation. Yet the key advantage of BIM remains centred on its capacity to integrate lifecycles of social interaction, a shift which earlier CAD modelling simply failed to deliver. While early promises of an architectural revolution by W. J. Mitchell and Nicholas Negroponte may have been overly optimistic, in Vitruvius Redux, Mitchell reminds us that contrary to popular belief, digital design media nostalgically clings to the past, adhering to systems of architecture which can be traced back to early C19 design theories of Durand (below) and Guadet:

‘…designers relied heavily upon abstract ordering devices such as grids and axes… guided by this skeleton they would then consider alternative ways to arrange the major rooms and circulation spaces. Finally, they would develop the design by deploying elements from an established vocabulary of construction elements – columns, entablatures, doors, windows, and so on… a recursive process of top-down substitution.‘¹

1. Antonsson, Erik K.; and Cagan, Jonathan. Formal Engineering Design Synthesis. Cambridge University Press, 2001. Cambridge Books Online. Cambridge University Press. 17 November 2010 http://dx.doi.org/