I vaguely remember reading his book which you may remember for its blinking led lights in its cover, which was fairly weird then for a book on architecture.  It was a pleasure to hear him speak in the design conference in Nov. In such conferences there are often the established and known – their views are known and often they have nothing new to say.

Then you have the cutting edge folks – whose presentations sound like teenagers discussing sex, “I did that this and that, and then…..”  listened intensively by an equality excitable audience ready to applaud the weirdity of the resulting forms. Generative design, has sadly become the means through which such hi-octane forms are effortlessly created, leaving little room for restfulness or reflection. Hey, for the younger folks who are reading this, just want to say that this may be an age thing.

As thoughtless forms take over the screen and as I hear newly spun design philosophies blurted out with the accompaniment of architectonic lullabies thankfully provided me the perfect time for a conference catnap, only to be woken up by Prof.Frazer. His lecture was delivered with the thumping energy of a British steam engine. You can see him live in an AA lecture. The things he had to say were of interest to me and perhaps I thought, to the readers of this blog. So I approached him after his lecture and kindly, he agreed to be interviewed.

I started with a carefully prepared set of questions starting with the evolution of CAD in which he had a hands-on role for he started in days when the CRT screens were still only blinking and few lines and ink pumped plotters could injure your hand.  But as the interview progressed I was hitting the limits of my ameture interviewing skills – I could not note down all what he was saying, not sure if he noticed that, but in the midst of it he said to my great relief “ I thought this was to be a conversation” and so it was, from then on. Here is what I learnt from it:

The story of CAD

While we may all remember the period of heroic architecture – when architects were the champions of modernity, re-shaping the world after World War II with radical thoughts and revolutionary designs. Computers one would imagine, would be their natural accomplice. It was apparently not so.

CAD as it emerged, was pushed on to architects – not initially wanted by them. It was thrust upon them, with the promise of relieving them of the tedium of drafting. It was only a promise. The reality was that it could not do most of what draftsmen could do effortlessly without going through 1000 pages of manuals at the expense of thousands of dollars. The early CAD companies need to be congratulated here, for flogging upon an unprepared profession an expensive dream that would take a few more decades to realize.

In this context, it was left to the CAD companies to develop the tools that their salesmen could sell – automated drafting systems – with the sole promise of saving labour (also the current marketing mantra for BIM). This is not to be condemned, but in this great opportunities were missed to structure CAD in intelligent ways. Because, no one apparently wanted it that way.

Architects are boozos

He did not say exactly that, but the same, in better English.   “They are victims”  he said ” of their over estimation of their intellectual abilities” . Only British academics I thought to myself, can deliver insults with such finesse.

Forget design technology Look at environmental issues, he said. “ How many architects were concerned about it till now ?” . People like Buckminster Fuller were not taken seriously when they hit upon critical issues in the 70s. So “Complacency with the use of computers” is a relatively minor issue within a greater malice – the erosion of intellectual rigor and lack of critical debate not only within the profession but also within academia.

He pointed out that unlike other industries, the building industry does not require much capital investment and therefore does not invest in research – guaranteeing for itself a high level of backwardness. But this is changing, as the funny forms now created in milliseconds require massive investments in terms of machinery to fabricate, resulting in the building industry becoming more of a manufacturing industry.

The missing generation

The birth of computers was accompanied by very divergent thinking. It was a time when everything was thought to be possible. The thought that computers can be used as creative tools, did occur to many. The fact that nature computes was also known, as both Alan Turing and Von Neumann both pioneering figures behind the development of computers, owe some of their inspiration to biological computational process. Yet, it seems that the great promise of computers as creative machines capable of assisting architects in tasks other than the most mundane – is only now gaining some credibility.

There is a “missing generation” he said – that failed to yolk the great possibilities of computation to architectural design. He also pointed out, that since Buckminster Fuller there does not seem to be a techno-visionary architect using technology as a primary driver for design. There are no buildings that are a result of visionary computational thinking though we see a flood of forms enabled by design computation.

For the lack of a metaphor

The biggest hurdle that plagued the history of CAD usage in architecture according to Prof.Frazer was the lack of an appropriate metaphor. The lack of a mental anchor for this new medium. Instead the metaphors of the desk(Autodesk), the drafting board, pencil marks (sketchup) and dustbins (Mac) where brought to the fore – to give the architects a sense of continuity and the assurance that nothing really has changed. This, he says, is continuing on to the new wave of change where scripting is replacing drawing with typing – without any underlying change, on how forms may be generated using computers. Buildings he said should be grown out a pack of seeds instead of being built with a bunch of bricks. The idea of growth I found to be central to his thinking but it’s an idea that has not also got off the grounds for decades now.

No real answers

I had a lot of respect for Prof.Frazer’s realization of the existence of potent natural design processes – in sharp contrasts to lead academics of his time who where obsessed with applying ancient ides of order on new possibilities brought about by computers. Prof.Frazer is not a cotton wooled academic. He is one of the earliest architectural code developers starting off in days when there were no computers or software to buy. Everything had to be built from scratch. He was also an entrepreneur credited for developing microprocessors based graphics. I had expected him to be less of an academic. I had expected him to be well on his way, cracking  key issues in taking natural design process out of the cauldron of academic publishing and into the real world. In this account, I was most disappointed. Despite a series of illustrious PhD students, this seems not to have happened. The reasons appear to be complex. His efforts seemed to be now aimed at influencing architectural design processes rather than re-inventing them as practical methods based on the philosophies of design evolved in nature. A personnel disappointment here, as I continue to think that it is possible to replicate natural design processes within contemporary CAD environments. Having studied some of this early work closely I realized the gap in translating cellular type of generated arrangement into complex architectural form particularly by Patrick Janssen his PhD student – without a clear explanation of the processes. An exceedingly difficult task, that would require in my opinion, some form of understanding of how things are put together – a possibility now made easier by the advent of BIM. Prof.Frazer too sees this possibility. But the bridge between cellular arrangements and built forms seems to be a bridge too far.

The limitations of nature

I was most surprised by his view on the limitations of natural design processes. And perhaps in this lies the most difficult dilemmas of computation design. He had well articulated views on this.

Nature he said “has no foresight. It does not know where it is going”  and therefore it’s not possible to introduce “design intentions”. Its inability to generate entirely novel solutions (without an evolutionary history) and its inability to pass on preferred traits he argued were serious limitations of natural design processes. Also in natural design processes every step (stages of development) has to be gone through and they have to work throughout those developmental stages.  You cannot also introduce Lamarckian strategies that would reinforce desirable behavior, nor could you affect embryogeny. You cannot pass back, knowledge or experience. You cannot do unnatural selection. You cannot interfere with the genetic makeup midstream. You can make the environment affect the genetic makeup in ways you can do with design processes. But Prof.Frazer went on to say that we could do all this with a new unnatural design process, based on the natural, but extending it to overcome these significant problems.

I found them to be valid and potent arguments against the replication of natural design processes. It’s perhaps the awareness of these issues that prevented progress that development of the new kinds of design processes that I would have like to have seen him propose. Despite my own views on the direct applicability of natural designs process being shaken by this conversion, I pressed on. I asked him why, despite the details of implementation why evolution has failed to make an impact on architectural design thinking.

The lack of critical thought

Prof.Frazer has been a lone voice challenged by both religious fundamentalists (creationists) and bio fundamentalists for making an unholy connection between design and biological design process. I believe that such views remain deeply unpopular with most designers whose minds like marbles would readily slider over the curved forms that they fashion, forging a very public alliances to nature while maintaining their enmity to and ignorance of natural design processes. After all, Charles Darwin figured out the basics of natural design processes a centuries ago.  Should we not at least be at that stage now – aware of a great design process, not knowing exactly how it works ? Not in architecture. The head start that they had in computational design seems to have been squandered. Computational scientists and engineers seems to have gone much further along these lines. Genetic algorithms, ant colony optimization algorithms along with a host of bio inspirited methods are now used in practice to resolve complex optimization issues. I guess the key difference in architectural academia is that nothing needs to be proven, making it possible to build self referential circles that grow and collapse in predictable order.

He also pointed out something else, that I was unaware of. While natural design processes where known for quite some time, developmental biology is of recent origin. Its only in the last 10~15 years he said that we have been able to understand how genes affect formation – which he points is critical; because, it holds the key for translating genetic information into life forms. A similar understanding is needed if we are to build forms out of computational seeds. Now that the computational mechanics of biological design process is better understood, the chances of developing workable methods are greater. He also regretted his failure in realizing the early impact of Dr.John Holland’s work in the seventies when genetic algorithms were first proposed.

I was wrong

What I admired most in talking to Prof.Frazer was the “I was wrong” part used in so many turns of our discussion, in sharp contrast to “ I am right the rest are wrong”  flavor of his lecture. He left me with the feeling frustrated with my attempt to trace the evolution of CAD – into a writable story. Its messier than I thought. Talking to him, I felt that the design world has been hit by a computational Tsunami with so many overlapping technical, social, professional and educational upheavals in which we are still sinking and swimming at the same time. It seemed that he knew in great detail, the mess we are in. He also had an admirable sense of direction but not the answers.

The great leap forward

It is hard not to notice a long standing bitterness when talking to Prof.Frazer. The failings of the architectural community as a whole in embracing computational methods seem to have created this. In his part, I noticed a greater failing to notice that this has radically changed. What he called “The Push nature of CAD”  has now changed.

Many of the new generation of architects can code. They are developing and sharing code – a welcome reversal that is empowering them to experiment and develop their worn ways of working and thinking. They are no longer looking at academia for direction. They seem to be developing for themselves skills that are needed for mastering new design process that are still emerging in the great evolutionary environment which is the internet – which seems not to be noticed by most academics and Prof.Frazer, as he made no reference to this in his lecture. But he did notice the intimacy that the new generation enjoy with their new found tools, which he himself relished in his early days when everything was possible and nothing was pre-built.

It was that intimacy that distinguished him from those who make a profession out of making theoretical propositions for the sole consumption of the academic world.  But in discussing its future, I sensed a great sense of optimism from this  veteran of computational design.

I must say here, that I have some rare respect for his passion and his conviction of the relevance of natural design processes to architectural design – which sadly’ he is still struggling to convince academia of 153 years after the publication of  ” the origin of species”, which pretty much unraveled natures design process despite its mechanics was not understood at that time. I wondered if he had squandered his lies energy attempting to convince academia ? on the other hand, in his time, he would not have had a dogs chance in convincing  a backward looking profession; such are the dilemmas of a man well a head of his time.

The interview by now, had thankfully digressed into more interesting areas and had taken longer than planned. As I had not interviewed anyone in life, I was advised to end it with a question that would be of interest to my readers whom I discovered to be mostly PhD students. So,  I landed this one :

Interviewer : “ So what advise do you have for PhD students pursuing research in computational design ?”

Prof.J.Frazer : “Don’t do it”

Interviewer : “….hmmm……hmm….”

Prof.J.Frazer : “If you still want to do it, do it with me”

Thus ended a very interesting interview.

That’s all for now.

Christian Derix, director of Aedas R&D Computation Design Research (CDR) group seem to be close to cracking a rather long standing problem. A problem that obsessed early design researchers from the end of world war 2. Architects returning from the war seem to have been keen to shake out the “irrational: image of their professions. Their engineering colleagues got back to peaceful production and were focusing their efforts on improving production and making it efficient. 50~30% of production costs are attributed to what is called transport cost, or the cost of moving material from one place to the other.

This problem has been researched over and over again – till the cows come home. If you search journal articles on the layout problem  you will find a great abundance of them with 100s of different methods. You will be even more surprised with the range of applications ; from laying out factories, container yards, chips on circuit boards and even for arranging cows for efficient milking. These methods seem to work generally well if the problem is focused on optimizing a single dominant criteria, which is  often the minimization of transport cost.

These methods can theoretically be applied on multi-criteria problems – but only theoretically. Only if you know for sure what those criteria are. Only if you can measure them accurately. Only if you can then balance them all with a magic formula – which in an immensely engaging theoretical exercise in itself. But that does not seem to dissuade researchers. Because the application of their methods is left for lessor beings who remain adamant for decades not to use them. But if you wish to for some reason publish that one more paper on ” multi-criteria optimization of the layout problem ” -  there is a way around it. All you got to do, as many research do; start with a lamentation in your introduction “ that despite the many decades of research, and many methods proposed by researchers, it is well known that these methods are not used by industry ” . You are then excused to propose yet another method with the same fate.

One would imagine that in  engineering environments where measurable conditions of efficiency and cost reign, that these methods will be used – apparently not. Management, maintenance and many other mundane  issues seem to throw in the spanner making factory layout the cherished skill of a few experts.

A designerly approach

A better approach is accept the nature of design problems – with some honesty; that we really do not know the criteria we use, let along measure them. But we can jolly well recognize a potential solution when we see one emerging of out of our scribbles. Let us accept that we keep changing our mind during design. We should – because we develop a better and better understanding of the design problem that the related issues as we develop our designs.

Another researcher Mark Syp  is working on an ” advancement of the bubble diagram ” and is developing to a parametric conceptual tool to quickly organize and understand complex architectural programs in three dimensions.

So the answer lies  not in eliminating the human designer, but in assisting the designer by managing the constrains and the requirements that evolve through out the design process. Physical simulations engines are good at this. Many of them are  now seamlessly integrated in to most CAD packages. Generative design too can play a role here to create some initial configurations which the designer can further manipulate and refine. I have experimented with this approach and works superbly. This is certainly the way – that conceptual layouts will be solved in the future.

It seems now that we are closer to cracking the long standing layout problem. The conceptual stage of architectural design will benefit greatly from it,  thanks to the inspiring efforts of those like Christian Derix and Mark Syp.

The symposium on the last day had the usual cocktail of presentations from practicing architects showcasing their current work and work processes, academics discussing issues that are more relevant to the academic world as it struggles to connect to the real world. Also present were those who connected random thoughts to random words illustrated with equally random images. Noticeably absent were the representatives CAD companies. Perhaps because they are convinced of the irrelevance of the rest in a game that is now defined, led and played entirely by them. While some CAD companies rely on strategies that depend on the capabilities that they have developed or acquired, some rely more on the energies and abilities the vibrant communities that they have nurtured around their offerings.

The symposium however was interesting and here is what I learned from it.      

Winds can shape form

Streamline of wind flow and pressure

Not only are the dunes of deserts but buildings too can be shaped by winds. Wind can be a generative force. An interesting presentation by engineer Peter Felicetti based on collaborative research with Prof. Mike Xie and JIWu Tang showed how twisted shapes can drive wind upwards and provide an aerodynamic lift that works against gravity. In tall buildings, even though wind forces are significant they  are only a fraction of gravitational forces, still they can help shape them.

Rough & inaccurate tools are still very useful

The results of the 4 day projects that preceded the conference were also presented. Results from various CFD tools of two extreme kinds were compared. Whiles the tools like Vasari reduced the complexity, they were discovered to be less accurate than more advanced analytical tools such as ANSYS that are usually operated by experts.  However, tools like Vasari were found to be useful despite their limitations and misuse by the “Jonny English of CFD” as a presenter described himself, because they can be fixed quickly with a bit of timely expert input. It also seemed that the loss of accuracy was mainly due to Johnny English effect . Those with better understanding of CFD could drastically improve the results over Jonny using the very same tools. So this way, Johnny is in the game. He has his role and the experts have thiers too.

Navigating Geometric search space

Hugh Whitehead from Foster and Partners emphasized the importance of team work and the unsuitability of the optimization methods (especially genetic algorithms) in seeking to optimize multiple criteria design problems where the complex conditions and goals that are constantly evolving.  Kristoffer Josefsson, a young mathematician, now working for Fosters proposed an elegant mathematical way of representing geometric search space. The potential breakthrough is the ability to explore geometric form variations through natural representations of form, rather than the tweaking of individual parameters. Though I did not understand the structuring of this process, I am going to follow it with interest.

A dignified headache

Much of the discussions by mature practitioners were about “Managing Change Propagation” – a dignified term for a perpetual headache caused by ill-structured design processes. There is a known need to continuously stitch together processes between different types of design activity, mainly because of the lack of ways of structuring design intents digitally, except through drawing, drafting and quantity survey tools developed separately by CAD vendors; while CAD companies are busy stitching them all back together.

Scripting moves to center stage

No more presentations on Shape Grammar or the virtues of ancient geometries. The glorification of Euclidean geometry within Euclidean CAD systems through the rationalization of ancient grammatical rules seems to be thankfully over – at least in this new continent. Scripting seemed to have entered the center stage. Unnoticed by academics, it entered academia through the back doors for student usage, thanks to tools such as Grasshopper. Perhaps because it had no known association to any ancient ideas of orders, it remained unnoticed by academics though now some may wish to authenticate it belatedly, given its current dominance.

Scripting happens to be the nature’s choice for designs exploration -

because she designs with code and not geometry. In her language, geometry is the result of code and not vice verso.

Architects are now increasingly addicted to the richness of form authored by code. Scripting is most definitely here to stay.

From the presentations I saw, it appears that Grasshopper is becoming the preferred platform for early stage digital design exploration, due to its fluidity and connectivity to various other plug-ins that are now available. It is increasingly becoming the medium through which early stage designs are expressed in exploratory and generative form.

Externalization of a thought process

Modelling was interestingly described as “Externalization of a thought process” – which I thought to be a powerful way of thinking about modelling and central to much of the discussions that we need to have.

Prof. Tom Kvan discussed the problems of implicit and explicit representations. Design is described as a process that stretches between the implicit and the explicit. While a sketch is an implicit design model, BIM is an explicit construction model. What was felt to be clearly missing was ways of creating appropriate digital representations that could be central to digital design development, which is capable of transitioning from implicit to explicit representations that have the unfinished quality of sketches, encapsulating multiple possibilities and high levels of uncertainties.

A noticeable gap

In conclusion, I felt that the discussions revolved around a single dilemma: the dilemma of early stage design. How to represent ideas and concepts in digital form – before the fancy forms and details of design processes take over. Disappointingly, except the lecture by Peter Felicetti and Prof. John Frazer, none of the lectures or workshop presentations went beyond sophisticated tool use – perhaps, for a good reason.

We really don’t know how to use these increasingly powerful tools of analysis to shape architectural forms in their conception.

Now, that is a challenge for generative design.

National level studies were carried out in the US,UK & Japan resulting in the  finding that “ estimated amount U.K. consumers as a group spend on consumer product development is actually more (144%) than what all commercial enterprises as a group spend on consumer product R&D in the U.K.” places consumer innovation as something that business cannot afford to ignore. The study however concentrates on developed countries with strong industrial and R&D focus.

What about the rest ?

A passing a comment is made of the rest ” Probably much less money is spent by individual consumer-innovators in lower income countries.” Perhaps so. But necessity is the mother of invention and the quality of invention does not necessary correlate to investment – it appears to correlate to the lack of it.

Hands free set. Who needs blue tooth ?

Mobile Lock Stand. Park where you please

Hot or Cold - chiller cum dispenser

Anti-tearing onion peeling guard

Arial Chillers

Anti life-recycling devise

These pictures are from India. I am sure that the spirit of consumer innovation is  very much alive in Africa, Latin America and the rest of Asia .

Are the Architects ready for the cloud?

The answer is ” No”.  But, will they get there? ” Yes”. Most likely, in the  same wrong way they adopted CAD – to replicate the drawing board with CRT screens  – without consideration to the true potential of computers. This was a big jump for many architects. It happened  only because they were assured that the Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) was better than the drawing board. Companies such as Amazon, Microsoft, Apple and Autodesk are all now busy building the rail roads in the kingdom in heaven – in which platforms of great promise will dominate the next era of human dependence on computation. So, everyone will get there for sure.

But what will design be in the cloud ?

I believe that the cloud will  initially be used in the same way that computers were used to replace existing PC based practices. PC bound CAD systems will soon be operating on cloud platforms. Speed and connectivity bonuses are good enough to lure most CAD dependent designers. But once they are all there, it is likely to transform the practice of design in way that it was transformed by the PC/CAD revolution. But then, without them realizing it, the clocks will be turned back on them. Design processes will go back a few billion years – to where design began.

Design will be – as in nature

Nature in itself  is a massive computational environment that has evolved over billions of years. Its key virtues of building complexity based on shared code and ability to explore possibilities through random exploration using highly evolved strategies and methods will come to dominate the art of design – orchestrated by human designers, the way humans have harvested the potential of natures design capability to turn grass in to wheat and rice and wolf into dog; primarily by manipulating a highly evolved refined and structured design processes.

Design as it is now

Before we consider the lofty heights that clouds can take us to, let’s review where we are with CAD now. The turbocharged drafting machines now connected to data-bases powered graphically by games technologies have got us quite far. A diverse set of capabilities and professional work practices – are now slowly coming together; but mostly at the back-end of the design process. But here it is too late, as all the important designs are already made and opportunities to make significant improvements are limited. It is known that more than 80% of decisions and commitments are made in the early stages of the design process (shaded in green) where now computers play a very limited role.

The codification and comodification of CAD

Most CAD packages now handle the drudgery of 3D manipulation fairly well. The dark regions shown – is dominated by code that reduce design labor ( most CAD companies have similar capabilities in this area). The push now, is into early stage design, where significant improvements can be made. Software like Grasshopper and platforms like Vasari are now extending the reach of CAD into early stage design. Further up stream is generative design.

What the clouds mean for generative design?

It is like asking what gasoline means for your car? Generative design can drink it all – all the computational capabilities that the cloud can provide. It will soon be possible to roll apparently dumb, random and computationally intensive approaches that nature has chosen in its great wisdom. Hopefully, it will be based on an open and shared genetic infrastructure – so that knowledge generated will not be lost but be shared and built upon.

The fundamental change will be the ability to consider multiple possibilities in virtual environments. In sharp contrast to the singular and somewhat perturbed linear approach mastered by designers on account of their limited mental processing capabilities. The design processes now used by designers are based on the limits of the processing capability of the human mind and its ability to consider only a large but limited number of possibilities. Kasparov is no longer the champion of chess.

The maturing of many CAD technologies has already greatly reduced the human labor in taking early stage concepts to reality that is close to real, making it possible to consider multiple possibilities of great maturity – instead of dumping them at the end of a doodling process as part of an ancient design ritual.

Parametric play is now enjoying its day in the sun.

While parametric approaches to design are being formulated and built into work processes, something even more interesting is beginning to happen. Architectural geometry is now going through a post parametric revolution.

For a long time in architectural history, proportioning played a pivotal role. Proportioning is the precursor to parametric play, where the overall structure of the design is formed and fixed while its proportions are altered to find the most desirable form. It is powerful and useful. But limited in its capacity to create diverse forms in terms of topology. CAD packages could easily implement this, because they are driven by parameters anyway. But there was something else about CAD packages that remain hidden – perhaps for a bit too long. But remember, in the early days  it was difficult to get designer to use CAD, you had to give them the impression that nothing had really changed and that they can now do in a screen what they used to do with pencil and paper.

After CAD, all geometric forms were inevitably authored by programs. But these programs were hidden. CAD companies went out-of-the-way to provide a veneer that kept the designers minds in the era of paper and pen. Perhaps, they did not guess that they will grow out of it. Perhaps this guess was right, particularly in Industrial design. But it is not so in architecture.

No more shame

The new generation of cutting edge designers now seem comfortable with code. Add-ons like grasshopper have made it much more easy to author code. Code has made it easy to create complex and repetitive forms.  These forms can even compete with spaghetti in terms of geometric complexity.

Most cool designs are now authored by scripts.  We are now at the end of simple parametric play. As the programmatic nature behind the construction of the geometry is exposed, it is natural that designers will start re-arranging bits of scripts to create more interesting forms. This is beginning to happen.

In fact, this is how we were designed. Biology works this way. We are constructed with codes scripted in our genes orchestrating  a well evolved build sequence. This sequence may be conservative, as it is shared across species. But small differences in code form us differently from other species around us. As you can see, the overall template of development seem to remain the same. Here, the details of growth plays a significant role in the formulation of  form. It appears now that architectural design practice is evolving in this direction. There is magic and efficiency in this. A good example by Erick Katzenstein of how hundreds of hours can be taken off creating parking patterns  is worth looking at.

Parametric play has had its day in the sun

We are now into post parametric design.

May I try to define it :

Post-parametric design is about the  ordering of code that orders form.

The important distinction here, is that the order has changed. Parametric design was largely about ordering of  from – with code and post-parametric design is about ordering code that generates form. Some designers have now masted the art of post-parametric design. It is  primarily those who practice design outside the  more ancient Euclidian mental, aesthetics and computational frame-work. These are people who have dumped conventional CAD – for design development and exploration. conventional CAD will live on to support the mass production world married to simple Euclidian geometry. It will remain handy to order, manufacture and put them in position in an architectural world that is fast transforming mainly in overall shape, but where components that make it – are well within the reach of conventional CAD. It will also be driven my market forces in a ” we can do that too…” direction – but without spirit and vitality that is driving the changes that we are now seeing.

What does this mean for generative design ? 

It too will move beyond the simple tweaking of parameters into more exciting and more potent stuff. It may involve the shoveling of code – something practiced by nature,where changes are made in build history and not on final form. For this two more things have to happen. Genetic templates of form and objects have to evolve and they have to be shared. When that happens, Generative design will not only be about tweaking parameters but will be about

the choreography of code; acting upon shared and evolved templates of form.

.

Bacteria under observation

We are now reaching a new threshold in computation and sensor technology – where what we do, how we behave and to some extent how we feel can be computationally modeled. Your credit card company and Google have been doing this for some time. They can predict many aspects of your behavior as accurately as a biologist can predict the reproductive behavior of bacteria. The acceptance of our collective behavior is difficult for us humans, as  we wish not to degrades our status to that of  bacterial blobs. While we live in  denial, we allow street cameras, credit card companies and Google to monitor the most intimate aspects of our life. Monitoring our behavior within buildings in comparison  is much much easier.

We behave within buildings in predictable ways. Buildings make us behave in predictable ways. Perhaps this is the purpose of buildings. If we then invert the concept, and model our behavior, instead of just monitoring, it may open interesting possibilities. We will be able to design our behavior in an entirely different way. We may be able to induce certain behavior and from it satisfaction of the kind we desire.

Daniel Hambleton is onto something. The attempt to yoke experience and form is likely to re-shape the future of architectural design. Crowd simulation seems to be a mature technology now. ( another video on of crowd simulation).

From the design of form to the design of experience

Architecture (particularly western architecture) has had a historic lock-in with form. Eastern architecture (especially Japanese and Chinese) gave much higher priority to experience, perhaps due to the influence of Buddhism which placed human experience at the pinnacle. Perhaps it is such Buddhistic outlook that drove Steve Jobs to focus on the experiential qualities of devices instead of form design. He realized quite rightly, that people bought experiences and not devices. The results are remarkable and devastating to those who were selling designed devices. He ruined their business prospects built on a much older world view -  the pleasures of ownership of goods, that we acquired as we transitioned from agrarian civilizations obsessed with having enough to eat, into an industrial civilization obsessed with producing and owning things.

While the bulk of magazine architecture is focused on form, great contemporary architecture gives due priority to experience. The Standstead airport designed by Sir Norman Foster is a good example of design that was primarily driven by the experience of the traveler – from the entrance to the plane. The building form is exquisite but what makes it work so well here is the design of the experience. Great architecture of the past always married experience to from. The pressure to design unsuitable forms without giving due consideration to end-user experience seems to be a trend of recent origin, driven perhaps by the desperation of harnessing attention – mostly from outside the building.

Sensor Technology

An interesting attempt by Deb Roy to monitor his child’s development ended in the creation of the largest home video, which recorded right from the babble of the baby from every single roof of his house, containing quarter million hours of video of over three years.

So not only can we design for experience, we can also monitor it. Monitoring will help to close the loop on modeling, making it soon possible to design predictable experiences. Will these abilities not change the nature of architecture? If it is possible to computationally derive the experiential qualities of the user, will architects not be tempted to design experiences instead of forms?

Experience is everything

It need not be argued that much of the new economy is about the delivery of experiences. The “experience economy” coined by Joseph Pine and James Gilmore is not a fad. It is a new realization. As the service economy takes hold, goods are increasingly seen by business as secondary. Most consumer companies are now struggling to deliver engaging experiences. Architects are yet to come terms with it. They are likely to see themselves as creators of experiences. Forms will be designed to deliver experiences. In this context.

Should generative design then be used to generate experiences instead of forms?

End of the road ?

We are now amidst an interesting change. The era of automating the drawing board seems to be drawing to a close. The architecture of today is increasingly difficult to draw with straight lines. There are many repeated components of various sizes. Fabrication companies are now  able to crank out shapes that were not possible before. The cost of customisation is also continuously reducing. The virtues of straight line – sung by the modernist architects inspired by an ancient geometric legend, seem to interest nobody. It has now lost its rationality and more importantly its appeal.

The rise of curvitecture

What’s interesting about design are trends. Because each trend destroys a previous trend and with it, the tools designed to author it. Curvitecture is primarily a result of reaction to an Euclidean trend that swept the world – as the “modern movement” which imbued mass manufactured forms with aesthetic and rational qualities.  Its overwhelming success,  the mass confusion of what is considered bio and curved and overriding attention seeking goal of architects  has helped fuel a trends that have now wrecked the Euclidean sense of Geometry. It s forms, rationality and aesthic will soon be buried in architectural history.

Anything is possible now

Being creative is about moving to the edge – especially the edge that is being extended by new technology, engineering and manufacturing capabilities. Architects entertain the attention deprived world by authoring unseen shapes of great complexity – which mostly do not relate to increase in performance despite their significant cost.Being and looking “bio” is certainly a justification that works, because now being bio is being good and also being efficient. So there is a case for funny forms.

Why programs need to draw

It is impossible to draw a rat’s nest on AutoCAD. But it is possible to do so using programs that can handle the geometry of individual elements. Each element has common attributes that can easily be created by programs. Incidentally, we were built that way. We are a result of genetic constructional programs that told our cells how to and when to design themselves. Drafting board-inspired CAD packages are unable to handle the complexity of the kinds of shapes that are now being authored. A reassuring reaction is that only a small portion of building are funny shaped and the bulk of what is built can still be drawn with a drafting board.

In the name of efficiency

The era of the turbo-charged drawing board is not to end too soon perhaps the way drawing boards themselves vanished from design practices. To prevent is pre-mature demise, a late but smart decision has been made to marry it to databases so that it can better handle the grunt work of design. This strategy seem to be working. BIM is breathing new life into old CAD. It is bringing obvious ways of working with computers (long obvious to companies like archiCAD) into mainstream use.The assocaited cost savings makes it an easy sell. The advantages are significant and architects are too busy either singing its praises or getting on board. But the age gap is catching up with them; because the next generation designs very differently.

Cheap, smart, socially authored software

The design schools of today will give you a better glimpse of the future of CAD in architecture. They are now skewed towards scripting based tools – where designs are more transparently authored by programs. In the case of grasshopper, these programs are disguised as drag and drop boxes – giving late teenagers the thrill of connecting them with wires. The network around the grasshopper community is a global collaborative R&D team that is continuously developing new ways of authoring design. Many of them can program too.

The turbo-charged drawing boards, though now newly married to databases, and renamed  BIM certainly is a late stage marriage of significance to the those who are in mature practices, whose choice of CAD is skewed towards realizing designs . But those who wish to use CAD as a creative tool  need to look elsewhere.

Interestingly, the work processes of  this engineering firm was inspired by seeing students use grasshopper in schools of architecture. Grasshopper is now reaping the benefits of its open approach (the ease of interfacability  for pumping data in out to various analytical packages)  and large and dedicated user community. So architects and engineers can now share same early stage geometric data and build on it.

Tools like grasshopper are now making the very same transition that open sourced software made. People asked the same questions. Would you run a commercial application on free software ? Whom can I call if I have a problem ? This stuff is good to play around, but would you build a building worth millions of $ with it ?  The answerer is yes, and it is happening now.

Once engineers start using it, it will acquire an aura of reliability and respectability (despite its insect name). When engineers ask architects to provide them with grasshopper models architects will assume that this is serious stuff – this is good not only for sketching but also for building stuff, analysing stuff and further along the line for contracting stuff. But there is nothing to get excited, it’s all still parametric play (mistakenly called generative design).

I can see these engineers highly amused by what they can now do with the tools  they picked up last year. They are yet to see what is to come. Such cleverness will soon be commonplace. Cleverness will soon be about using the cleverness of computers. Getting computers to explore, instead of them driving the designs . But we must thank these folks because they have taken the first step in demonstrating what can now be done.

Cloud computing is now a reality, providing reliable and scalable computational power to many enterprises without the associated costs and internal IT teams. But what does it mean for Generative Design ?

It is simple. It will remove the major bottleneck – computational capacity. It will open the flood gates, making  massive amount of computational capacities available for the computational exploration of design. It is a blessing. Design exploration requires computational horsepower. Generative design needs lots of it. Lots and lots of it.

Applications in design

Initially, this massive computational horse power is going to benefit rendering. You can now use 100’s of CPUs to render realistic images. DreamWorks has begun to use it. Fujitsu too has launched its “EngineeringCloud” for  computer-aided design (CAD) and analytic software. So has Autodesk. Both Vasari and Centuar are cloud based platforms along with Neon, a rendering service, Butterfly, an online CAD editor, and Photofly,a service that allows you to create 3D models from digital camera pictures. The advantages are obvious

“By designing Inventor into the cloud our users can consider many alternatives” saidRochelle. “These computer simulations have been restricted on the desktop due to the hardware limitations.”

What is next ?

Now, that is an interesting question. There are two major advantages in using hi-octane computing. Increased computational power with the ability to deal with massive amount of data is likely to drive serious design out of the hands of those who are tied to single CPUs. The advantages to those who are well prepared for cloud based design will soon be obvious when  performative efficiency gains and drastic improvements in design quality become apparent.

Are architects ready?

The simple answerer is no. Architects have only recently discovered parametric design and are too excited with stuff like BIM – which were there long ago, but remained obscure. For now, there are only parametrically driven design exploration methods which can be used for creating variations. These variations are driven by the designer. They are created one at a time. Generated manually – by the designer. The resulting squiggly shapes are routinely passed off as generative design. So why bother.

Generative Design is yet to happen. We are yet to use computers for automated or semi automated design exploration. Systematic methods for setting up generative schemes are yet to be formulated. Decades of academic research and millions of $ or academic research funding in architecture is yet to produce noticeable results – in using computers as generative tools, capable of exploring design possibilities, unguided by the brilliance of the designer.

Proof of the pudding

Is likely to come from improving measurable performances like energy cost and carbon foot print that will create significant and meaningful advantages. Vasari – Autodesk initiative is certainly a step in  the right direction. What is lacking however is generative design –  ways and means of setting up design processes for creating design variations many of which are now analysed for measurable results, using the vast computational capabilities opened up by cloud computing.

The combination of cloud computing and generative design is likley to create performative gaps between buildings designed with generative design and those that rely on experienced guess-work.