cadd: on reorganizing the practice of architecture

CADD: On Reorganizing the Practice of Architecture

by

Constantin Elias Cavoulakos

Dipl6md de l'Ecole Speciale d'ArchitectureParis, France

1985

SUBMITTED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF ARCHITECTUREIN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS

FOR THE DEGREEMASTER OF SCIENCE IN ARCHITECTURE STUDIES

at theMASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

June, 1987

@ Constantin Elias Cavoulakos 1987

The author hereby grants to M.I.T.permission to reproduce and to distribute publiclycopies of this thesis document in whole or in part

Signature of the Author

Constantin Elias CavoulakosDepartment of Architecture

May 5, 1987

Certified by

Ranko BonAssistant Professor of Economics in Architecture

George Macomber Career Development Professor in Construction ManagementThesis Supervisor

Accepted by OF TECinOnOy

JUA Af~IJI Il \

N1 OJulian BeinartChairman

LIBRARIES Department Committee for Graduate Students

I would like to thank all those who helped, by offering theiradvice and encouragementI especially would like to thank my first advisor at M.I.T.,and advisor of this thesis Harvey Bryan, who has been atrue source of inspirationMy special appreciation goes to Ranko Bon who can be sohelpful at difficult situationsTo Miguel for his advice and care, encouragement andscoldings, his real friendshipTo Carlos for the help that never seem to endTo my parents, Alix, my brother, Chittaranjan, Yannis, andDaphne

Most of the illustrations in this thesis come from WilliamMitchell's "Computer-Aided Architectural Design", in myopinion still one of the best texts in the field.

Acknowledgements

CADD: On reorganizing the practice of architecture

byConstantin E. Cavoulakos

Submitted to the Department of Architecture on May 14, 1987,in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of

Master of Science in Architecture Studies

ABSTRACT

The architectural office of the end of the eighties has been equipped with computersin an effort to anticipate the needs of the modem working environment and to enhancethe informational flow between the various disciplines of modem practice. A basicconcern for the architect in the computerized office is not what is commonly thought, toprobe the limits of the machine or to explore the sophistication of the software in use;rather, it is to grasp how the computer affects performance at work, altering thetraditional hierarchy of our perception and decision making in order to strengthenproductivity by changing the traditional organization of architectural practice.Development of design software enhances the man-machine interface, encouraging thearchitect to work directly on the machine, leading towards a true integration of thecomputer in the practice.

While a small computer team, composed by CADD specialists, initially supportedthe computer facilities in architectural practice, it is particularly important, today, todemonstrate that every professional should be able to access, and work directly on thecomputer, adding to the dissemination of technical knowledge within the team and of thebenefits of the efficiency of the electronic tool. This is beneficial to both the designers,who are able to minimize redundancy in the creation of graphic documents, and to theCADD support team, that can concentrate in research and development of anincreasingly powerful computer-aided design environment.

Integrating CADD in architectural practice depends on the organization of theparticular office. A crucial question for the architect and the central topic of this thesis ishow to put designers at work in front of the screen, and how to control decision makingwithin the CADD environment. I address the various issues involved in theimplementation of CADD in the architectural office, and conducted field interviews tosupport my findings. Computational decentralization is increasingly important, foraccessibility and peripheral control, while parallel support of complementary CADDenvironments enhences efficiency and flexibility of the architectural firm.

Keywords: CADD, Representations, Architectural Practice, Office Automation,Office Organization, Multi-disciplinarity, Integration.

Thesis supervisor: Ranko Bon

Title: Assistant Professor of Economics in Architecture

On reorganizing the practice of architecture

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT Page 3

CONTENTS

PREFACE Page 5

INTRODUCTIONTHE INFORMATIONAL ERA Page 9

PROFESSION: ARCHITECT Page 15

AT THE OFFICE OF WOO AND WILLIAMS Page 27

COMPUTERS IN THE LARGE OFFICESASAKI AND ASSOCIATES Page 37

AUTOMATION FOR INTEGRATIONRTKL Page 45

TOWARD A COMPUTATIONAL ARCHITECTUREDISCUSSING WITH ERIC TEICHOLTZ Page 53

BIBLIOGRAPHY Page 59

Table of ContentsPage 4

PREFACE


Preface

Preface

In the sixties it was science fiction; today it is reality. The architectural office of the

end of the eighties has been equipped with computers, in an effort to anticipate the needsof the modem working environment, and to enhance the informational flow between the

various disciplines of modern practice. In addition, the computer has been perceived as

a device to control labor fluctuations, and to maximize productivity by applying a sound

organization to the architectural tasks. A basic concern for the architect in the

computerized office, is not what is commonly thought, to probe the limits of the

machine, or to explore the sophistication of the software in use, but it is to grasp how

the computer affects performace at work, by altering the traditional hieracy of our

perception and decision making, in order to strenghten productivity by changing the

traditional organization of the architectural practice.

But how does the computer changes the way we work in the architectural office?

More specifically, how can one apply a new organization in order to gain in productivity

and to anticipate unforseen computational needs, assisted by the capabilities that the new

tool offers? And how is the work to be divided in the electronic environment for the

new tool to offer all its power? If we look at the evolution of the computer in the

pioneering large offices, we perceive a tendency to decentralization of the computational

power followed by an intensification of local treatment of information. Networking

peripheral workstations favour the decongestion of the central processing unit, now free

to manage higher level tasks. In parallel, miniaturization and development in production

introduced the computer in the small office, where the designer tends to work directly

on the machine, heartened by the simple organization of the firm. Furthermore, as

development in the architectural software enhances the man-machine interface, the

architect is encouraged to work directly on the machine, leading towards a true

integration of the computer in the practice.

Studying the impact of computer aided design (CADD) in the organization of the

architectural office lends itself to field research. This approach reveales the disparity of

the needs and the organizational solutions found in the practice. My study focuses on

the composition of the architectural team and the accessibility of the design workstation


in the firm; both indicate the degree computers are used in the production of architecture,and show the trend of integration of the new technology in the architectural practice.

This study is divided three parts. First, a conceptual framework is discussed to

address the impact of our representations to our thought (knowledge). Second, the

history of the profession is studied to reveale tendencies and to encourage comparison

of different points in time. Third, notes from my field research to some architectural

offices are offered for further discussion and conclusions.

Prcface

INTRODUCTION: THE INFORMATIONAL ERA


Introduction

Introduction: The informational era

When Etienne Jules Marey invented in the late nineteenth century the fusil

chronophotographique (photographic gun), he invented a new way of perceiving reality.

By introducing the dimension of time, the sequential order, and relying at the

imperfection of human sight, he brought movement and change to the imagery of our

civilization1 . The visual narration introduced in the beginning of our century, brought

about as much change in the thought of our age, as the perspective projection did in the

intelectual and artistic community of quattrocento Italy2.

Reality is not homogeneous, but fractal. Our inability to make precise statements

about complex situations (fractal patterns) is a fact that we have to accept and adjust to.

Representation can be seen as a tool of conceptualization 3, as it is through models

(formulas) that we are able to perceive, understand and analyse the complexity of reality,

and furthermore organize our thought and communicate our ideas. Knowledge consists

of the symbolic descriptions that caracterize the definitional and empirical relationships

in a domain; logic provides procedures for manipulating those descriptions 4. By

transforming the variety of reality into the clarity of the artificial, representation becomes

the mechanism of thought itself. Complexity is associated with the description rather

than being thought of as an intrinsic property of the objects. We may reduce the

complexity of an object, by changing our views about its. Change in our

1 The importance of movement (travel) in our society has probably been demonstrated by theindustrialization of the British provinces, where the entire population has been subject to displacementcaused by regional growth; this displacement would reveal a message, the relationship of capitalinvestment and territoriality. Movement generates a message and there is no message withoutmovement. "Le parcours (voyage) est un discours (message) " (The travel (voyage) is a discourse(message).) affirmed P. Virilio p. 225. In parallel, the cinematographic art creates the message byexagerating the replacement of each frame by the next one (the mouvement of the film through theprojector), forcing each image to disappear.2While our representations inform our perceptions, there is a direct influence of our everyday life to ourrepresentations. During the Renaissance, the enlightment promoted the perspective projection, while onthe same time this new imagery favored change in the society. In his book, The Negatif Horizon, P.Virilio says that perspective is only a hierarchical structure of our perception, and there are probably asmany perspectives as there are visions of the world, or cultures, or conditions of life. An inevitableinteraction takes place between our thought and our representations, and new representations change ourculture, to the extent that our culture influence our imagery.3S. Isenstadt, p. 28.4(Hayes-Roth 1983). S. Isenstadt, p. 22.5(Negoita, 1981). S. Isenstadt, p. 29.

On reorganizing the practice of architecture Page I1I

representational conventions influence our perception as well as our thought,anticipating new solutions and reorganizing our knowledge1.

Drawings have been a central means to communicate design ideas in the practice of

architecture, and have served as material embodiment of both design logics and ideas.

Any representation allows only for selected manipulation of selected information.

Alberti's linear perspective introduced symmetry and order in the architectural form of

the Renaissance Italy. Immitating the organization of the society of the time, the focal

point of the linear perspective gives order and structure to the form, while embodying

the contol of the central power (monarchy). Later, development in the drawing

techniques at the Beaux Arts, encouraged decoration and in a sense provoced the

Rococo movement. At the end of the nineteenth century, the introduction of tracing

paper influenced the architectural thought, by reveiling unforseen evidences and

exposing unknown transparancies. The architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright and the

development of the american highrise building demonstrate the impact of transparency in

the architectural drawing 2 . "Formulation effects can occur fortuitiously, without anyone

being aware of the impact of the frame on the ultimate decision" (Tversky and

Kahneman) 3.

Obtaining a comprehensive description depends on the interaction among various

representations. Reformulating a problem may help to generate a solution; solutions

generated from switching of representations often appear as flashes of insight, but in

reality overlaying representations lends richness and understanding to our conceptions,directing further analysis by approaching and juxtaposing the various representations

1In the film Napoleon, Abbel Gance, wants to represent the exceptional abbilities of the young colonnelto forsee the strategic results of a battle, to understand how an offensive would lead to victory with theleast effort and the fewer casualties, only by looking on the map, reading these strategic maps in a newway. Abbel Gance uses sophisticated montage and animation to show Bonapart's string of thoughts; herelates enhanced understanding and clarity in reading the map to complex representational techniques, andassociates a sequential representation , the very essence of the cinematographic art, to the complexity ofNapoleon's thoughts. Animation, allowing change and movement in the graphic representations,transforms the complexity of reality into the clarity of narration.2 Transparency in the paper introduced the transparency of the form. Could the maison de verre of PierreChareau in Paris been conceived on ordinary paper? Furthermore, the transparent paper, originaly usedby the engineers, introduced the mechanical imagery in the architecture of the twentieth century. Aren'tthe aesthetic mechanisms that consitute the interior decoration of the maison de verre a proof that PierreChareau was using tracing paper, contrary to the Beaux Arts tradition.3 S. Isenstadt, p. 29.

T he informiational era

(models). Overlaying representations control the impact, the inherent meaning each

representation has on reality. Consequently multimodeling helps us find the appropriate

representation in order to ease the manipulation of knowledge. Furthermore,

countermodeling tests structure assumptions, sensitivities and biases by running and

studying strategically altered versions of each model, initiating a dialectic process

between the model and its negation'. Overlaying representations can help prevent any

one model from producing its own meaning while superseding the reality it is meant to

serve.

During the nineteenth century, architectural imagery became the focal point of formal

education, and drawings were serving as a vehicle to the architectural thought; but this

has been neglected in the formal education of today, and importance is placed on

technical knowledge. Introduction of new materials and development in buildingtechniques conrtibuted to that shift of our study to technical knowledge. But our

semantic environment becomes progressively complex as our society moves into the

post-industrial era. Simultaneity of arrival of information 2, has rendered modern reality

very complex. Our culture prefers the complex to the simple, the fragmented to the

holistic, the versatile to the static, the composite to the composed. The architect, cannot

deny the impact of that massive move (departure-arrival) of information, that

characterizes our society. And what is important about this informational flow, is the

rapidity with which the message itself becomes obsolete.

Complexity and sophistication in our imagery enable us to clarify and therefore

understand the reality of the informational era. The architect is in search of new

techniques trying to include more information in his representations, dealing with

simultaneity and conflict, in order to render the complexity of our times. The new

imagery, that has become common practice to help visualize the architectural projects

today, is based on fragmentation (decomposition) and recomposition of the object

(project), reveals unforseen transparencies, disclosing hidden parts and impossible

views and deliberately uses arrays of descriptive vignettes (frames). Furthermore slide

shows and video have drawn attention to sequential presentations, a narrative approach

1(Mitrof, 1981). E + D b p. 274-275.2As Roland Barthes said, images are coming to us from all over the world, unrequested; they appearefrom all directions (or disperse to all directions) p. 33.


to description of the object (project), that make visible changes and transformations of

the thinking process. A new message would emanate from this transparency of the

mental process. The architectural drawing, progressively moved from the deictique

language to the protetique 1.

While all these changes were occurring in the architectural imagery, computers made

their appearence in our everyday environment being the consequence and the cause of

our informational congestion. At the beginning, computers and users experienced

communication difficulties. Most of the information relevant to architecture is

communicated through graphics, which computers didn't understand easily. The

development of commercial television brought about an increasingly cheaper

technology.that was to be the standard.graphic interface: the cathodic ray tube. In the

same time, frame buffers were able to update the graphic information displayed on the

screen in real time. This technology, enabled the computer to display instanteneously

changes and transformations, adding versatility to the graphic object. Thus, the

computer is perceived to be a powerful tool to manage simultaneity of information, and

to generate the new fractal architectural imagery of the eighties.

The new computer images are structuring the way we perceive architectural

representations. The architect, using the traditional graphic elements (points, lines,ellipses and circles) constructs, through geometric trasformations, two-dimensional and

three-dimensional forms (models). The interest in the machine lies on the fact that we

are able to view those forms, once created in the database, in many ways, and with a

unknown ease (never did the architect have the tools to create alternative views so easily

and fast). The transition from one view to the other, that these machines can so easily

perform,becomes more important then the view itself. The superposition and

juxtaposition of these views create the new imagery, the new language of architecture.

The limits of my language mean the limits of my world wrote Wittgenstein.

1In this instance I like to use these greek words in the way Roland Barthes used them; deictiquelanguage refers to the photographic descriptive language, while protetique is associated to forwardmovement and the cinematographic art.

T he informnational era

SKIDMORE. OWINCA x. MIc~pti

New York Chicg S-:n Fn Purtiana

Chicago

Operations Partnership

Control ProjectManagement

Administration Production Construction

Estimating

Accounting Master Planning Civil Architectural Mechanical ConstructionSite Planning Engineering Engineering and Electrical Management

Eng neering

Purchasing Building Structural Heatig, Field OfficesI Design Engneering ventilation and ISAir Conditioninel

Prjuect

Reco Lcping Site Co-ordination Plumbing and ContractsDeve[L J oomen. jFir PrecSpecitications I

Plan Control Interiors Soils and EiectricaL Foundations I Supevi un

Non-Technicai Research ProcessPerontnel

Figure 74. Skidmore, Owings and Merrill. office organizational diagram, 1957. Thelarge American architectural office of the twentieth century was typified by a styleof organization both complex and rigidlv structured.

PROFESSION: ARCHITECT


Profession: Architect


When the king of France Louis XIV founded the Ecole Speciale d'Architecture 1, in

Paris in the middle of the seventeenth century, he somehow understood that the architect

becomming increasingly important in the modem society had to receive formal training

and to aquire professional status, controled by the central power. Not that the architect

was not recognised as such since the antiquity; but it was in the expansion of the middle

class and the development of the technical knowledge that the profession of the architect

whould find its origins.

Since the Egyptian times, the architect, iniciated to the secret of dimensions and the

knowledge of geometry, enjoyed power and estime in the royal court. His ability to

abstract (represent) and to analyse (through geometry), enriched his understanding and

consequently control of the physical world. Throughout the Greek and Roman times,

the architect was the master builder, who knew the building techniques, the available

materials and coordinated the building. His task consisted of conceptualizing the

building in whole and in details, creating the new within a given order2. It is at the end

of the Middle Ages though, that the architect would have to redefine its role in the new

urban society. In the early capitalistic organization the professions would be organized

in guilds; at this point the architect would abandon his intelectual status and adhere the

guild of the builders. During the Renaissance, the humanistic intelectual was an artist,

an engineer, and an architect at the same time.

In the New World, the architect was the master builder until the middle of the

nineteenth century. Most of the construction was done by bright individuals, who

knowing well the art of construction, were able to conceptualize and assemble the parts

of a building. As for the public buildings, most of them were designed by architects

originated from Europe and received professional education there. The first American

architects to receive a formal education, were people that went to Paris to study at the

Beaux Arts in the middle of the nineteenth century. Because of their education and their

1This is the first school of Architecture, renamed Ecole des Beax Arts after the French Revolution; as aconcequence of the student revolt in May 1968, the school was divided into ten Unit6s P6dagogiques, toassure decentralisation of the education and better control of the student body.2 To cite Plato, the architects were not workmen but rulers of workmen, they contributed knowledge, notcraftmanship (Politicus).

On reorganizing the practice of architecture.

personal experiences, they tried to reconstitute the familiar environment of the French

education in their American practice. Moreover, French teachers were asked to organize

the first schools of architecture in this countryl, so that the generation of american

architects that graduated was educated with the same disciplines and shared common

habits of work with the Americans who studied in Europe. Consequently, an influential

model for the American architectural office of the late nineteenth century was the

Parisian atelier, with its caracteristic atmosphere of brotherhood and collaboration. In

practice though, each architectural team developped its own techniques and knowledge

in the closed environment of the atelier and little sharing of information existed between

the architectural offices. In addition to that, when the major architect of a team would

die, the office would face a lot of difficulties to remain active. Therefore little continuity

was there between one generation and the other.

By the end of the nineteenth century, as the projects increased in size and as the

responsibilities of the architect became more complex, these ateliers had the tendency to

increase in size as well, in order to anticipate the growth of work. And as long as the

office remained relatively small, there was no doubt that the shared experience of the

atelier could be the reality as much as the ideal working environment of the architectural

team. But because of the growth in size and complexity of the architectural projects, a

new type of office organization developed almost insensibly in response to the needs of

what was in fact a new type of office. And although fraternity and participation were

still ideal for both big and small firms, it became necessary to specialize in order to gainproductivity; the principals had to devide the responsibilities for the various areas ofwork among themselves and to delegate authority extensively. So the principle of

participation was converted imperceptibly into the practice of separated responsibilities

(division of labor).

The new organization for the practice in the late nineteenth and early twentieth

centuries had to respond to the demand for increased job size and work complexity.

Consequently, the employees become specialists and were expected to spend all of their

professional careers engaged in those activities alone. The specialization in the role

within the office structure, was paralleled to some extent to a specialization of the

1The first pedagog to arrive from Europe was Eugene Letang, at the Massachusetts Institute ofTechnology in 1872.


practice in general, and separation of the various aspets and stages of the work was

followed by a separation of the decision making from the work itself. 1 "...You can't

handle big things unless you have an organization" D. H. Burnham told Louis Sullivan

on their first meeting, showing how important the organization of the office was already

in the turn of the century Chicago.

While those changes occured in America, due to the rapid development of the

economy and the growth of the urban centers, a new movement was developing in the

old world; hostility for the machine technology in 1850, had turned into acceptance in

1900.2 In the post-war Germany, Walter Gropius, already leader of the avant-garde

architectural design, became the leader in progressive education as well; he understoond

that in the geselschaft society3, the complexity of the problems required unification of

diverse skills and collaboration of diverse individuals4 . The principle of cooperative

teamwork could be seen as a distinct contrast to the competitive system of the Ecole des

Beaux Arts. Gropius' ideas found acceptance in the Germany of the 1920s, but the

Americans had little information about the new architecture of Europe, until the arrival of

Gropius at Harvard University in 1937. The Lever House (Skidmore, Owings and

Merrill, New York, 1952) was the first building in this country to embody the victory of

the progressive European ideas in design, while the office that produced Lever House

was shortly to become the largest of all.

By 1950, the office of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (SOM) had come to be the

outstanding example of the particular style of architectural practice that had developed in

America since the beginning of the twentieth century. SOM aimed providing total

1Separation of the decision making from the work would raise the question of responsibility incoordinating the separate work areas; it is with drawings(visual representations), the materialembodiment of both design logics and ideas, that the architect will direct and control the production ofarchitecture. Ed Robbins, 1986.2This idea was developed by Nicolaus Pevsner in his work Pioneers of Modern Design.3I use here the term Geselschaft society (as opposed to gemeinschaft society) to describe the modem,formal organization of our society, where the individual becomes less important than the group, andwhere a formal communication protocol ensures the exchange of information between the individuals inthe team.4Gropius, Scope of Total Architecture: " The Bauhaus was inaugurated in 1919 with the specific objectof realizing a modem architectonic art, which like human nature was meant to be all-embracing in itsscope. Experiment once more became the center of architecture, and that demands a broad, coordinatingmind, not a narrow specialist."


design services to their clients1 ."We are not after jobs as such; we are after leverage to

influence social and environmental conditions" wrote Nathaniel A. Owings in The Space

in Between 2 SOM set out to provide all related professional services within a single

office, make coordination easier and more convenient, while making direct supervisory

control of the product easier as well. The more areas of professional activity that came

under one roof, the greater is the opportunities for increasing efficiency and

productivity 3. This productivity was gained with the division of the office into

independent units, each working from the output of the other in the order of the work,

providing benefits similar to those of diversification in the industy, where even if a unit

had a small amount of work, jobs in the other units could keep the entire operation

running at a profit. Concequently, SOM was not only one of the largest firms in

America, but also the most all-embracing in professional terms and the most integrated

in terms of business operations4 .

Total design was an idea found in the work and mostly in the theory of the Bauhaus,

but what marked the quality of design in the practice of SOM was that total design was

conceived as a device of control as much as of a service, a constituent of the service

package which was the office's product.5 Although the importance of teamwork was

emphasised, a rigid segregation according to task and speciality was found in the

production units of SOM. These specialized teams, organized to facilitate control and to

increase productivity, were incompatible in principle with the multidisciplinary teams

that Gropius was refering to. The work passed from team to team, as from one

individual to another on a factory production line, while the products were intentionally

standardised and anonymous. Success came because of the efficient and therefore

reliable management, together with the strong commitment of the office to uniform and

therefore predictable products. And they are the same managerial skills which

1Total design was conceived (by Gropius at the Bauhaus) as a device of control as much as of service.The more areas of design decisions the office could draw under its control, the more the decisionsthemselves could be made subject to the general aims of the office; from which it followed that the moredecisions the office controlled the more firmly the control had to be excercised.2Spiro Kostof, The Architect, p. 325.3The partners pledged "to offer multi-disciplined service competent to design and build the multiplicityof shelters needed for man's habitat" (N. A. Owings).4 Spiro Kostof, The Architect, p. 327.50p. cit. p. 328.


contributed to the success of the office that created a certain rigidity and contributed in

the loss of individual initiative in the final product.

Large offices in the twentieth century were very similar to large private corporations

in that they were not communities, but structures of power and interest. The

organization of the large office in America moved from generalization to specialization,while the methods of work moved from collaboration to division. 1 As the large

architectural office gradually included more and more specialists in order to be able to

maintain the generalist character traditional to architectural practice, the team lost its

uniting characteristic of collaboration as the coordinating function was taken over by a

new level of management. That transformation in the nature of architectural practice was

general throughout the profession by the middle of the century. And, as the building

process became more complex, it became evident that a major building could not still be

the product of the inspiration of a single individual; only the general public ignorance

permitted that idealised but quite inaccurate vision of the profession. While older forms

of organization, the guild, the apprenticeship, and the atelier all survived until recently,it was evident that only strong organization would enable a firm to successfully control

the growing complexity of the architectural projects. And although the individual

architect did not disappear in the twentieth century, its role in the profession became

something less it once had been. The very small office was the norm for more than half

of all registered architects, it was plain that the remaining with their much larger offices,dominated the field, by controlling a disproportional large part of the professional

activity2.

The range of required technical skills and the modem scheduling of the building

made it impossible that the individual architect could comprise the knowledge and

competence in himself. Knowledge and experience in the variety of disciplines

necessary for the design and construction of a large project as well as the physical tasks

to be completed permited to no individual architect to build anything above the scale of

the single-family house. The new managerial techniques introduced in the practice

during the fifties, helped the large architectural offices control better a complex project,by combining the knowledge and the skills of many individuals on the particular project,

10p. cit. p. 330.2 This refers only to the american practice. Op. cit. p. 333.


facilitated work flow between the specialized teams and on the same time assured a

better understanding and therefore control of each team by introducing the new level of

management and decision making dissociated from the production. In addition,

devision and specialization result of modem business, accounting methods, emphasised

sectional accountability within any business made up of diverse elements. But the

architectural offices never achieved the efficiency, productivity and the profits of the

business world, although the principle in operation was the same1 .

The place of the architect in society was not well defined before the modem era; the

architect was one member of the building trades, until Alberti gave architecture a theory

of its own and the architect came to be seen as someone special. But it was in the

nineteenth century that the profession of architecture came to be the way we understand

it today in imitation of medicine and the law then as now, dominant professional

occupations. Gropius outlined the nature of the profession in the age of industry,

offering the idea of the team that would include as many skills as the job at hand

demanded, to be coordinated by the architect, who would be primus inter pares. The

architect's skills would still be exercised in design, but would futhermore possess the

capacity for coordination, compromise, and negotiation, as much as the ability to

balance competing demands and needs and to appreciate points of view of other

professionals. So the new architect was to see society's needs, propose solutions, bring

together the necessary skills, and operate as a member of a multi-disciplinary team2.

The Architects' Collaborative, the office that Gropius started in order to put his ideas

into practice, consisted exclusively of architects,with few professionals of related areas,such as landscape architecture and planning. Divergence between principle and practice

was revealed in the way the office worked; specialization into groups within the office,never really occured if its not for specialization in various architectural tasks. Little sign

of interdisciplinary collaboration, nor much of sharing or participation, was shown in

the discriptions of The Architects' Collaborative at work; division of labor and

separation of responsibility characterized the operations of the office, as much as those

1In order to survive and maintain itself, any large business had to keep work coming in, to keep theorganization to run at maximum efficiency, in other words maximum productivity and maximumprofits.Gropius The Architects Collaborative : "As we cannot inform ourselves simultaneously in all

directions, a member of a team benefits from the different interests and attitudes of the other membersduring the collaborative meetings...the new information is more easily seen in its proper perspective andits potential value" (p. 24). Op. cit. p. 335.


of other large firms, for example SOM. Growing success brought growth in size, and

largeness necessitated an organizational structure1 . Was the architect alone to integrate

all necessary knowledge, or was he to be a member of a team which integrated all

necessary knowledge through its components?

In the increasingly complex industrial society, the architect was not able to comprise

all the necessary knowledge and to be the sole master of all areas of decision in the

building process; the integration of other disciplines into the architectural team

compensated for the personal deficiencies of the individual, directly inspired by the new

geselschaft society. But the other professionals to participate in the decision making,engineers, sociologists, psycologists, were indeed inclined to be independent, and

demanded a full share of decision making which their professionalism had earned for

them. By contrast, architects whose education did not equiped them to be specialists in

anything were compelled much more easily by the pressures of the economic system to

abandon the image of the architect as a generalist and master and to accept the reality of

the architect as a specialist. Since independent professionals could not be expected to

yield all power to architects, the architects developed specialized capacities within their

own profession, and thus kept control to themselves in the areas of building. In

practice, the architectural profession had chosen to break architecture itself into

specialties2.

In the industrial era, Walter Gropius belonged to a group of men responsible for the

creation of the new art, which aimed for a new humaneness and a new truth; based upon

acceptance, not rejection of the machine, an art aiming at mass-production, not

handcraftship 3. A new conception of building, based on realities, had developed; and

with it has come a new, and changed perception of space. Just as the personal

subjectivity in design had been replaced by the rational products of the anonymous

1"To safeguard design coherence and impact, the right of making the final decision must therefore be leftto the one member who happens to be responsible for the specific job, even though his decision shouldrun counter to the opinion of the other members, for the freedom of the designer in charge must beparamount." (W. Gropius, p. 24).21n thruth, Gropius' ideal of teamwork was not possible; the profession of architecture had become not afree collaboraton of equals, but a business of employer and employee. Op. cit. p. 339.3 Gropius' generation was discovering the immense, untried possibilities of machine art. Pevsner, p. 38.Op. cit. p. 341.


group, so subjective attitudes in society at large were to be replaced too, by the new

Sachlichkeit, (objectivity).

The energy crises of the seventies changed the structure and the thought of the

society, and marked the beginning of the post-industrial era. Breakthrough

improvements in the miniaturization of electronics contributed to the rapid development

of the digital computer. Moreover, invention of new powerfull programming

environments contributed to an unforseen growth of the informational technologies.

Decline in traditional manufacturing and growth in the third sector of the economy,favored the informational organization of the bussiness world. The architectural office,organized similarly to the business world, facilitated work flow due to division and

specialisation of work; with the development of computer graphics, and their appearance

in the practice of architecture, the deconnection of the decision making lies on the

immateriality in the flow of information1 . The work flow of the office of the fifties, is

replaced by informational flow and dynamic management of the conflicts arising in the

process.

At the beginning of the informational era in the architectural practice, the size of the

office was determining the possibility of introducing computer aided design and drafting

(CADD) technology in the firm due to economies of scale. For this reason, only large

firms were able to process electronic information, while their inherant structure, of

division (specialization) and separation (centralization) of the decision making from thework, favored a central powerful computer system2 . The capabilities of immediate and

efficient way to control work flow and design decisions, that the centralized computer

system offered, contributed to its immediate acceptance by the management. In addition

to that, the economic problems that most architectural offices faced by the end of the

1"Graphics as a device with which to explore, present and communicate came into their own with thedevelopment of scale and knowledge of calibration (either geometric or numerical), linear perspective andthe emergence of architecture as a profession in the eighteenth century." E. Robbin. Development inthe informational mode of generating graphics, contributed to the introduction of the computer in thepractice of architecture. The versatility of the new computer generated graphics changed the wayarchitects perceive and use their traditional means of communicating design ideas, the drawings. Staticimages turned into versatile projections, and decision making that was closely related to the productionof drawings (drawings for internal use that gave the architect total control of a project) has now beendissociated from the generation of those drawings and relies on the informational flow that the computerintroduced.2This was made possible by the development of time sharing machines and multi-tasking operatingsystems.


seventies, due to the economic crisis, forced the managers of the large firms to invest in

automation in order to manage work fluctuations independantly of labor1 .

These pioneering automated firms of the architectural practice, started investing in

the new technology not only by adding electronic equipement in their offices, but by

developing software that would perform the required tasks on their specific

environments. So started the first phase of commitement of the architectural firm to the

digital technology. And for the first time the architectural office comprised engineers

and computer programmers working together with architects on the development of the

new tools, in accordance with the ideas of the Bauhaus. In this multi-disciplinary team,some young architects, having been exposed to the new technologies in research and

academic environments, ensured the communication between informational engineering

and the architectural practice, and developed models, and algorithms respecting the

patterns of thought and work in their offices. Once more the architect, finding himself

in a multi-disciplinary team, revealed himself in control and maintained a full share of

decision making, by modelling his own thought, and exploring design meta-knowledge.

However, at the begining only a few achitects will be able to understand the inherant

properties of the electronic facilities of the office. Specific knowledge and specialization

will keep the computer team small and closed, inaccessible to the average designer or

project manager, who will have to rely on another person (often younger in hierarcy) to

imput or retrieve information of a specific project. The resulting uncertainty of control,and the demand for more participation in the decision making by the CADD team, will

isolate the facility from the rest of the firm. In addition to that, the modern business

accounting methods, emphasizing sectional accountability, will discourage the project

manager to use the electronic tools, because of high internal costs, unless required by

the client or the idiosyncrasy of the project. The computer team, on the other hand,

voluntarily pushed itself in isolation, and aimed for the support of the management of

the firm, by developing more sophisticated CADD tools, while trying to demonstrate the

benefits of automation.

1In the capitalist reality, it is not the price competition which counts but the competition from the newcommodity, the new technology, the new source of supply, the new type of organization... competitionwhich commands a decisive cost or quality advantage and which strikes not at the margins of the profitsand the outputs of the existing firm, but at their foundation and their very lives. Schumpeter, 1984, p.84. E+d D. p.


During the eighties, peripheral computation gained popularity, as the hardware

prices dropped, and miniaturization increased the capabilities of the machines.

Decentralized workstations, networked to a central data base, would speed up

information processing at the user end and free the central processor to perform higher

level informational management tasks. Parallel growth in the software industry will

bring the CADD environment to smaller firms. This decentralization of the processing

power will introduce the machine to every architectural unit. While division and

specialization of labor within the architectural practice proved necessary to increase

profitability during the fifties, the introduction of CADD favored the multi-disciplinary

team, and reunified the separated specialists of the architectural office. Profitability in

automation is based on the principle of shared information stored in a common database

and accessed by as many specialists as the task required. The new organizational

principle brought specialists together, in a new multi-disciplinary team, where each

specialist works on his peripheral terminal, exchanging information (dialogue) in real

time with other colleagues and interacting with the common database. This new multi-

disciplinarity revived the ideal of the Bauhaus. The highly specialized design and

technical studios of RTKL in Baltimore will merge into two new multi-disciplinary

studios, during the summer of 1986. The new organization aims to bring to a closer

collaboration designers and technical architects, in order to facilitate sharing of

information. The organization of the architectural office is inspired, in the end of the

twentieth century, by the organization of its electronic tools.

In that decentralized environment, the deconnection of the decision making from the

production is even more evident. Deleguating decision on the particular (specific

project) to its decentralized units, the management of the office is freed from

unnecessary tasks and concentrates on wholistic control of the product as well as the

direction and the policy of the firm. The practice of architecture in the post-industrial era

will follow the organizational patterns of information processing used in the computer

industry, while searching for the new evidence emanating from design meta-knowledge.


I 4v IT

AT THE OFFICE OF WOO AND WILLIAMS


At the office of Woo and Williams


The architectural office of Woo and Williams employes eight to ten architects in

Cambridge, Massachusetts. It is because of the small size of the office that the familiar

atmosphere of the atelier (still vivid in the architectural practice), caracterizes the

structure and the organization of the firm. The office has recenly grown in number of

employees, and the peak was reached when eighteen to twenty architects worked

together for the competition of the Olympic village in Seoul, Korea. This growth,caused by the competition, had little impact on the organization of the firm, since it was

temporary. The office continued to operate in much the same way, although in order to

control the work flow for the competition, the designers had to devide the tasks and

separate design responsibility from the production of the drawings.

The size of the projects that the office had been involved was such that some young

designers that entered the firm at that moment proposed the possibility of introducing a

computer to organize the work and to control the flow of information within the office.

Two designers from the office, that had some familiarity with the machines, proposed to

bring the first computer in the office to demonstrate the capabilities and the speed of the

new tool. The machine would help better organize the work flow by eliminating

redundant effort, would increase the productivity of each designer by facilitating

precision imput and automating repeated tasks and would assure a standard quality in the

graphics of the firm. But the principals were hesitating to introduce the new tool,considering the caracteristic instability of the market of architectural services, and the

small size of the firm, that did not permit such an investment. Eventually one designer,that had bought a computer for personal use, brought it to the office, to demonstrate the

capabilities of the machine in the production of architecture.

This is how the first computer entered the firm. With an IBM PC compatible and an

early version of one of the most successful and easy to use graphics editor, AutoCAD

2.15, a team of two designers had to demonstrate to the principals and to their collegues,that the machine could help automate many tasks and better organize the relevant

information. They aimed to make their work as efficient as possible, avoiding

redundancy in the creation of the graphics, while gaining speed due to easy repetition

and assemblage of standard elements. The goal was to complete a 139 units housing


project, in the same amount of time a large team would have needed. The pressure of

the work was such that the designers organized two ten hour shifts in order for the work

to progress day and night, so that they can meet the deadline. The project was finished

on time; this demonstrated the usefulness of the machine to increase productivity and

manage the production of graphic documents. The office, in the meanwhile, was

experiencing growth, and the principals decided to invest in the new machine to

anticipate the oncoming work. But since the office had no funds for the purchase of

electronic equipments, the cost of the machine had to be concidered as an office

expenditure charged as overhead on a particular projectl. Eventually, a project came in

the office that was large enough to permit such a cost to become office expenditure,while on the other hand a drop in the price of the equipment, made the machine more

affortable.

Investment in hardware is always followed by investment in software; and the

machine can only prove helpful to the extent the available software will permit. The first

decision, choosing the suitable computer for the spesific office, is most important, since

it determines any further decisions about software that would perform the tasks and

organize the process. Compatibility in the environment and the operating system, will

determine which programs are available to the particular machine, and in a sense will

foretell the limits of the performances and the capacities of the system. And while a firm

may afford to change its computer system in order to gain speed, or to improve

efficiency, losing the data generated and stored with the previous system, renders this

change unaffordable.

That first demonstration of the performances of the machine in the office, along with

the increased interest expressed by the designers of the firm, contributed to the provision

of the office with two micro computers, the two workstations that are now placed in the

design studios. The two IBM AT are actually running the new version of the same

graphics editor that the firm chose to work with a year ago, AutoCAD 2.52. An

architectural template (an AutoCAD overlay) is used in order to gain productivity while

speeding up the learning curve of each designer of the office. Special care was taken,

1Concidering a commodity (equipment), expenditure of a particular project, is very advantageous to theoffice, since instantaneous depreciation makes the equipment very cheap to use in other projects of thefirm.


when purchasing the template, to make sure the assumptions made by the programmer

would not obstruct the designer at work, or push him in suppositions that do not

correspond to the working habits of the office. The first computer that the firm aquired,is now used for other no-design tasks, which include word processing for letters and

specs with desktop printing, as well as databases with spreadsheet capabilities forstoring relevant information.

Meanwhile, four designers of the firm are actually familiar with the graphics editor,and do much of their work on the machines. Each architect is responsible for the project

he designs and develops on the machine. Some designers are more at ease with the use

on site of the machines, having more experience and more knowledge, would help their

collegues to learn and understand the system. Collective learning is ideal as much as

reality in the friendly atmosphere of the office, where peer will teach peer! This

exchange of information encourages the less experienced to get involved and work on

the machines, taking advantage of their own knowledge, and simultaneously decreasing

the burden of the computer initiates. This contributes to a real decentralization of power,since each designer working on the machines would be able to solve most of the

technical problems on his own, without having to depent upon the 'computer team',commonly found in the architectural office1. Consequently, the office gains a flexibility

in dealing with computer problems, unknown to other firms. Equality of its members

and mutual respect, contributes to the development of a decentralized structure in the

atelier inspired office.

Sharing of information in the decentralized office is a vehicle of success of the

office. So the computer, that can best handle information is pressing the firm towards a

decentralization of decision and power. New standards and conventions have to be

established in the communication protocol, for the decentralized decision to contribute

directly to the work of the firm. Similarly, communication conventions for sending and

receiving data from other professionals is very important. Compatibility with the

1This 'computer team' would see its power increase as more designers use the computer for theirprojects. Enjoying the admiration and acceptance of their peers, the computer team will be morereluctant to communicate their knowledge to the designers of the office, been afraid of losing their powerwithin the firm, concluding to a super-centralization of knowledge in the domain of computers. On theother hand, the computer team will be inclined to teach the designers to use the computer in their work,in order to stop having to demonstrate perpetually the power of the system.


systems that engineers and contractors use in their work would further increase the

efficiency of the system. In the office, AutoCAD's DFX standard file protocol assures

the transfer of files to and from almost every other computer system.

Efficient processing of the inhouse information is equally important. Machine

memory is much chipper today, than only few years ago, but it is still a limited

commodity. The office has chosen to keep all the work of the active projects on the hard

disks of the machines, since the projects are few in number and small in size. Special

attention and good housekeeping is essential to prevent uncontrolled expansion of

memory space that each project uses. Since the data of any current project are kept on

the internal drive of the machine, and the workstations are not connected to a network,

information generated and processed in periphery tends to stay there; concequently each

project is allocated to a particular machine, and sharing of common information becomes

difficult.

The office is not equipped with a central memory device to store current information,

since all the drawings of the active projects can be stored on the hard disks of the

machines. The office chose to keep a hard copy (paper copy) of all the information

produced on the computer, as a backup of archival electronic storage that the office

keeps on floppy disks. Keeping a paper copy of all the graphic documents, facilitate

search and retrieval of information, but doesn't deal with the problem of accessing old

information in digital form for update and reuse. With the introduction of the computer

changes and updates in the graphic information became so simple, that it is difficult to

control. In this office though, since each designer is responsible for his own project,permission of access to each project is not yet a problem, but when two or more

designers will be working on the same data good communication between them will be

the only way to keep each member of the team informed, and to avoid conflics and

inconsistencies.

The machine allows for many corrections to be done directly on the screen, without

having to produce working documents for internal use; this important contribution of the

machine lowers the price of updating and transforming that occure during the design

process. In the office, particularly, Kyu Sung Woo, the principal who is mostly

interested in design, has been invited many times to sketch directly on the computer and


so to speek, generate a design idea within the computer environment. One of the

significant preoccupations of the management in the computerized firm, is to lose control

of the design decisions, since they do not have the necessary skills for a thorough

understanding of the machines. In many instances this lack of communication between

the managment and the computer team, resulted in cutting the budget of the computer

section. But in this firm, the computer initiates, invite the managment to work with

them directly on the machines, facilitating the communication and revealing the 'secrets'

of the new technology.

The principal of the firm responsible for the economic success, Jack Williams, on

the other hand knows very little about CAD, and does not have the time to learn more

about it, and although he believes the system does not increase productivity, and

economy, it keeps people happy in the firm, since each designer feels he can deleguate a

lot of the routine work to the machine. In addition, the computer permits to the

managment to better control the ups and downs of the business, since the machines can

be extensively used in production when there is a lot of work, and can be used for

training or development of generic libraries, when work is down. Furthermore it is

important for the firm to customize the CADD system; learning how to program will

automate many tasks, used commonly in the firm, that will increase productivity of the

system, and help the firm remain competitive.

In the development of the computer facilities for enhanced everyday use, a generic

library has to be developed for the machine to really change the working habits of the

architects of the firm. This standard library has to be detailed inhouse, so that most of

the technical and aesthetic solutions that the designers use in their projects be easily

accessed. This library helps to reduce machine time, to improve productivity and to

assure coherence and standardization of the builing, and has to be compatible with the

ideas and the principles that the designers of the firm share. Discovering and

incorporating new ideas in this generic library, is an infinite task, and necessitates

organization and understanding of the system and the firm. Standard libraries of doors

and windows used in most of the projects, as well as technical details, will improve

sharing of information and will best explore the capabilities of the new tool; planning

and organization can improve the productivity of a CADD system, and can help reduce

redundancy and eliminate excess effort.


Organization and planning will help the office use the power of the machine in many

tasks. Naming conventions, establishing a standard vocabulary and terminology for a

better communication between the designers is important, because we need clarity to

understand the new technology, as well as precision in descriptions, will help storage

and retrieval of the electronic information. This new terminology will help colleagues to

find important pieces of information available on the system, without having to ask the

author and will enhance the development of a database where all the computer generated

drawings will be reported. These naming conventions need to be shared by all the

designers of the firm, so that the classification follows a natural way of arranging and

grouping information. The resulting database has to be easily accessible by anyone in

the firm, following the principles of decentralization on which the office establishes its

success.

One activity that the office wants to develop even further on its CADD system is

presentations of schemes and design ideas to the clients. Using various techniques of

calling in a sequence drawings and views previously generated in the database can help

the client visualize a proposed scheme, and serves as a powerful marketing tool for thefirm. This practice calls for higher organization of the information from the very

beginning of a project, (the first design drawings will have to be generated on the

computer), and facilitates further elaboration and development of working drawings on

the system, keeping coherently all the phases of design in the database of the machine1 .

Because of the financing techniques that the office uses to purchase the machines

(office expenditure), the computer facilities are not depriciable. This makes replacement

difficult, since only a new large project will permit enlargement of the equipment pool.

But the managment does not want to consider computers to be capital (equipment),because this will increase the marginal cost of the product (services) and it is doubtfull

that the office will become competitive again in the limited market. As a consequence to

that the office does not charge computer time to its clients. But as the computer becomes

1it is important to state at this point that I don't believe that one graphics editor can handle all the phasesof the architectural production; I think that the better a CADD system can handle one job, let us sayprofessional drafting, the more difficult for the same system is to do another work, for instance design.And that is because, the system will incorporate many conventions to help one task which will notnecessarily be the same with conventions used for another task.


common and necessary tool in the practice of architecture, new financial techniques will

have to be applied in small as much as large firms, in order to avoid repeating the same

financial mistakes that the pioneers of the profession commited.

The office, although small in scale, shows clearly that informatization of the

architectural practice is not strictly limited to the large firm, with the large budget and the

big allowences. The new tool can help better organize the small office in a much more

direct way, and can facilitate communication and sharing of information both within the

firm and outside. In addition, the willingness of any member of the firm to participate at

any level and in any task of the work, due to the friendly atelier atmosphere, helps in

the decentralization of the knowledge and the better integration of the new technology in

the office.


COMPUTERS IN THE LARGE OFFICE


Computers in the large office

Computers in the large office: Sasaki and Associates

The office of Sasaki and Associates in Watertown, Massachusetts, is a fairly large

multi-disciplinary firm, that include architects, planners and engineers. The office has

created its reputation because of its excellence in design and its capability to successfuly

bring to completion large scale projects. The firm has recently been equipped with

computers, in order to better control consistancy and work flow in the large projects,

and to enhence the multi-disciplinary organization that the office has built its reputation

upon.

The firm initially acquired several MicroVax workstations that supported a high

resolution color graphics monitor. These powerful machines were running Mc Donell

Douglas computer aided design and modeling software, that could offer all the

computational power necessary for the size and the complexity of the projects of the

firm. The price of each workstation (approximately $ 60,000) encouraged the

organization of the work in two shifts, in order to use these expensive tools at maximum

output, and to shorten the paying back period of this important capital investment. In

parallel the office had to hire new personel with particular knowledge and skills in the

domain of computers, to become the first users of the system, and demonstrate the

efficiency and productivity of the electronic tool. While the office was investing in this

powerful system, AutoCAD gained popularity in the profession as a drafting tool. This

raised the question of whether to stay with the power and the capabilities of the existing

computer environment, or to allow another CADD system within the firm. Eventually,

the office aquired several IBM AT personal computers, that were running AutoCAD, in

order to free some computer time on the Vaxs. This decision was taken after the drop in

the prices of the personal computers (that made these terminals affortable), along with

the desire of the firm to operate a popular computer system and to ensure compatibility

with outside consultants' electronic information. Sasaki's computer pool today consists

of five networked MicroVax workstations, and eight IBM AT personal computers.

The low prices of the AutoCAD workstations (purchased at about $ 10,000 each),

did not require the machine to stay in use constantly in order to pay back the initial

investment. This is similar to the development of word processing in the business


environment, where low prices, brought a computer on every desk1 . Thus, the new

tools were introduced in the architectural studios, without requiring a reorganization of

the work in multiple shifts. On the other hand, the generic graphics editor was enhaned

by supporting two AutoCAD overlays, the DCA template for civil engineering, and

Arcabus. These enhancements would make AutoCAD easier to use, while ensure that

each project developped on the machines uses the same standard conventions.

At the beginning though, the introduction of computers in the firm met the resistance

of many senior designers, who believe that the architectural production should not be

computerized in order for the drawings to keep this immediateness of the creation and

the spirit of the art. On the contrary, other senior designers were very interested in the

electronic tools, and contributed to the aquisition and the development of the computer

facilities in the firm. These designers would often work with young computer

operators, teaching them their approach to architecture and design, while learning from

them the capabilities and probing the limits of the machines. Working in front of the

screen, would reveal the new way of thinking and working that the computers

introduced.

Today, the firm understood the benefits of putting designers to work directly in

front of the machine, and to eliminate the gap that divided the architects from the users

of the system. In addition to the new generation of computer-initiated-designers, the

firm decided to have computer trained draftsmen, that would be able to help the

architects directly on the system, as well as develop the necessary details required for

each project, by using the inherent capabilities of the machine, and easily modify

existing generic database elements. Training time for the other members of the firm

depends on the CADD system's complexity, and varies from two weeks for learning the

Mc Donell Douglas software, to three days for AutoCAD users. After the training

period, each user of the system is allowed to use 6% of his time to play, learn new

methods and develop new techniques to better use the capabilities of the system.

1Buying a word processor is no longer related to the amount of work in an office; similarly the designworkstation is perceived as a necessary tool, hence its aquisition is not guided by the pressure of workin the architectural firm.


It is one of the managers of the firm, who being very interested in the development

of the computer facilities, elaborates the plan of development of the computers in the

office. Being a senior designer, he directs expansion and evolution of the computer

team according to the ideas and the disciplines of the firm, and represents the interest

and the needs of the computer section to the management. It is on agreement and

understanding between the computer team and the management, that development and

insertion of the computers in the office depend. In addition, the management approves

the budget of the computer team and decides how to charge the clients for the computer

services. Depending on a variety of factors dealing with standardization and availability

of generic graphic elements for a given project, the office may charge either a fixed fee

or an hourly fee, which varies between twenty and thirtyfive dollars per hour of use.

These estimates are calculated, to pay operational and maintenance costs, as much as

overhead, particularly high for this section of the office.

Developing a project on the computer, is more expensive for both the architects and

the client. Charging computer overhead to the client, does not make the product less

attractive in the market, because computer generated drawings are consistant, precise,

and are easily accessible for further modifications and updates. Easy changes and

modifications is an important feature of CADD that reduces future costs for updates and

remodelling, and for this reason can become a powerful tool in facilities management.

Futhermore, the higher cost of keeping drawings in electronic format, is not only

prestigious for the firm, but contributes to the development of the computer system, that

leads to higher productivity and consequently lower operational cost.

The firm is actually moving to a point where large part of the work can be done on

the machines. The Mc Donell Douglas environment is used to create complex two-

dimensional drawings; in addition using the three-dimensional capabilities of the

software, the office elaborates shadow diagrams, perspectives for presentations as well

as three-dimensional computer models of pieces of furniture designed in the firm.

AutoCAD on the other hand is used to create standard details and other two-dimensional

drawings, by both the architects and the engineers of the firm. It is one of the goals of

the firm to create an extensive library with all the standard details commonly used in the

studios, in order to eliminate redundancy in the production of those documents.


In a fairly short time the firm has moved towards automation, and today there are

many CADD operators to keep the machines running full time. The benefits of

automation became apparent as the machines were able to perform complicated tasks.

Gain in power and performances made the machines indispensable tools of the office.

Consequently the office is actually trying to put together a budget for long term

planning, and paying back the equipment. In addition, the firm is going to change the

way it is charging its clients for computer services, and will now be charging for the

overhead as much as the machine time for every project. This policy will make the

computer department independant financially, and help to further develop and replace

the computer pool of the firm.

Meanwhile a small group of four computer experts, is managing the machines of the

office. This team is divided in two subgroups, the first dealing with the MicroVax's

and the second with the IBM personal computers. Each subgroup is dealing with the

twofold problem of hardware keepup, and software programming. Keeping the

machines operational, as well as making sure that the network and the plotting facilities

are running properly, is indispensable for the production environment of the office. On

the other hand, although software support is important, the principal task of the

computer team is to develop enhancements for the CADD systems, as for instance,

customizing the interface for the specific needs of the office, and implementing macro-

commands for easy access to standard procedures. In an effort to keep the CADD

environment as close to the habits and the conventions of the office as possible, the

software team, developed programs to facilitate the user (architect, engineer) to

communicate with the machines, in much the same way as in the rest of the firm.

Project history and specifications' databases are kept on a Wang. The databases of

the office are used joinly by designers and engineers in the fin. Keeping the databases

on an independant machine does not help the designers to easily retreive or classify

information, while working within a CADD environment. In addition to the problem of

retreival of information, the project managers, responsible for the completion of a

project, need to develop a new understanding of how work is organized in the CADD

environment, in order to control the completion of the project. The project manager

needs to have an overview of all the information created within the machine, in order to


use all the possible resourses to acheive higher efficiency and productivityl.

In parallel, the computer team of the firm, in an effort to better organize and to

increase the efficiency of the CADD system, is developing a standard generic library, in

order to make most of the elements and the solutions of the firm, available and easily

accessible by a computer operator. Meanwhile, the office is developing layering

conventions, to be used by all the disciplines of the firm. This will permit transfer of

documents from one discipline to the other in digital format, without having to specify

any naming conventions, or having to explicitly declare on which layer various elements

of a project could be found. In addition each professional would be working on

predifined layers, that will help to avoid possible conflicts, and will guide the other

members of the team to the information they will need in their work. This organization

of the CADD environment is useful for a layer structure software, as it is the case with

AutoCAD. In addition, the operating system of IBM personal computer, DOS is

encouraging such an organization, since the system cannot identify the user, and

consequently cannot restrict accessibility or assign permissions. On the contrary, the

Mc Donell Douglas CADD system permits user recognition (login procedure) that limits

the access to users of the system for current jobs in the database. This system does not

have a layer stucture but has an object intelligence, updating constantly the database, and

keeping the working object constantly updated.

Modifications of drawings are still done on hard copy, using traditional methods and

techniques, that the office used before the introduction of the machines. With the

development of the computers in the firm, there is progressively "a pretty clear ground

to where people interface" said Mark Kalin, one computer expert of the firm. The office

is now at the point where the new tool is increasingly used in the production of the

office, and it starts to become clear how computers can be best used, as well as which

tasks are best done and which cannot be done by the machine. In parallel, the firm

1Creating an element in the machine is a time consuming task; good organization of the work in themachine is to use as much as possible the resourses of the database, and by using parametric variationsto modify the created entity and to introduce it in the new project. It is important for the projectmanager to understand how much of the work can be done through parametric variations, and how muchneeds specific element creation. Another problem is a thorough kwoledge of the created elements, sothat all the existing elements are not created in redandancy. Here comes of course the problem ofdisseminating information within the office concerning the existance in the database of newly createdelements.


chose to support both CADD enviroments, within the office, which I believe is a good

ideal. Moreover the office decided to have both CADD operators, who being familiar

with the enviroment, have been progressively productive, and CADD professionals,

architects or engineers with specific knowledge and skills in computers, that can work

directly on the system, and can perceive the process of developing a project within a

given computer environment, while stadying the evolution (tendency) of the

development of a computer system.

The Mc Donell Douglas CADD environment is a centralized system, where all the

workstations are networked. On the contrary the AutoCAD system is decentralized and

emphasizes accessibility and local processing of information. But the organization in

the firm, is very centralized; the CADD principal is responsible for the profitability of

the system, in parallel with the design quality of the projects done using the system.

The same centralized group, feagures out the training needed in the office, in order to

get more people to work directly on the machines, and defines what is the reasonable

overhead in the computers' production, while taking care of the profitability of the

system and the adaption among the other members of the team. Finally, the office of

Sasaki, although is a fairly large and well organized firm, its horizontal organization to

specialized teams, has contributed to the isolation of the computer team, and the slow

development of the machines within the firm.

1In the modem computerized office, the usage of one system in the production (working drawings) aswell as the other tasks that the office supports is probably not the best thing to do. It has been arguedbefore that the advantages of one system, may be disadvantages for another, especially because, theroutines and the paths of though that one uses in doing one task, are not necessarily good for anothertask. It is consequently important to have complementary CADD systems that are able to exchangeinformation, and that are deliberately used for different tasks in the practice.


AUTOMATION FOR INTEGRATION


Automation for integration

Automation for integration: RTKL

The office of RTKL in Baltimore is the headquarters of a large architectural firm

with countrywide services and decentralized offices. This multi-disciplinary office

includes architects, engineers and graphists, working together in a computer integrated

environment. RTKL has been one of the first architectural offices to use computers, and

has been involved in software development ever since. The office has moved from a

central powerful computer system, to progressively decentralized networked

workstations, all sharing a common database and all connected to a central informational

manager. Parallel to the inhouse software development the office has served as beta

testing site for Intergraph's graphics editor, by testing (using) special features or

enhancements developed either by Intergraph or by the computer team inhouse.

The computer pool of the firm includes: (1) A VAX 781 Digital computer that runs

Intergraph design and modeling software, that supports sixteen Intergraph design

workstations, and manages four disk drives. (2) A VAX 750 Digital computer that is

connected to the accounting department of the firm and manages one disk drive; this

computer runs in parallel Graphics 4.0, the design software developped by the firm, and

is connected to several graphics terminals, used for design support amd software

development. (3) A Wang minicomputer, used for word processing and database

development, and finally many micro computers deployed throughout the various

departments of the firm.

RTKL has decided to support in parallel two design environments on their

machines, in order to provide optimum conditions for every task in the architectural

production. The Intergraph system, is a powerfull computer drafting environment that

provides the designer with many easily accessible features, for two-dimentional working

drawings. Graphics 4.0 on the other hand, is a versatile computer design environment

that helps the architect construct easily three-dimensional computer models, in order to

produce perspective drawings, for quick visualization of the project. The system is

connected to a vector graphics monitor, that can store multiple images for developing

demos and sequential visits. Information developed on any one system, can be easily

translated to the other. This is a helpful feature that the office uses to transfer the

On reorganizing the practice of architecture Page 4 7

preliminary design drawings, usually developed in the Graphics 4.0 environment, to the

Intergraph environment, for further development and elaboration.

The architecture team comprises designers, technical architects and draftsmen, that

work under the guidance of the project designer and the project manager of a particular

project. The project designer is responsible for the design decisions of the project,

while the project manager makes sure that all required documents are produced and is

responsible for the technical detailing of the project. Design is generated by the

designers of the firm, and is further improved by the team that includes technical

architects and engineers. Thus, each project is followed from the beginning of the

conceptual design, to the end of construction, by a variety of people with different fields

of expertise, all contributing to the excellence of the projects of the firm. In addition to

the architects and the engineers, a graphics department as well as a promotion (public

relationship) department support the architectural team throughout the project.

Furthermore, a strong management distributes the tasks among the design teams, and

makes sure that each project is equally well supported by the firm.

Up until two years ago, the office was devided in four studios. Work was divided

in specialties and each studio was assigned specific tasks. Two studios were generating

the design schemes for the various projects of the office, and the two others were

providing technical support. The two design studios produced all the preliminary

schemes to present to the clients; studio two specialized in retail space, while studio one,the other design studio, dealt with a wide viriety of projects, that included housing,urban development, office space (administrative headquarters, training centers),

hospitals and hotels. Once the first phase of design development was approved by the

client, the work was sent to the technical support studios for further development and

completion. Each technical support studio was complementary to each design studio

respectively. Further elaboration of each project resulted from a close co-operation

between the technical support studios and the engineering team.

Separation of responsibilities as well as total specialization within the practice of

architecture, was introduced in the beginning of the fifties when modem management

techniques were first indroduced in the practice of architecture, in order to better control

design development and to increase productivity. Following this scheme, the teams of


RTKL were highly specialized in the tasks they were assigned to, following a horizontal

organization of the work1 . Dissociation of work from the decision making contributed

to a segregation of the architectural production; this segregation became even more

evident, with the horizontal organizational structure. As work evoluted from the design

phase to the development phase, information was changing hands, and a project

developed by a specific team in the design studio, had to be transfered to the next team

in the technical studio. However, the architects in the technical team knew little about

the ideas and the principles that guided the design team in the development of a project,

as a result of the poor communication between the teams, due to separation of tasks and

devision of labor. Consequently, the principle designer of the design team, would have

to work with the technical team to control the various stages of the development of the

project.

This would all change with the introduction of CADD in the office. The computer

provided the posibility of working in parallel and simultaneously sharing a common

database. This became the model of the reorganization of the studios of RTKL. The

office is now divided in two studios, each one being the fusion of a design and a

technical studio. The new studios include design and technical architects, in an effort to

keep the project evoluting within the same team. Consequently the new vertical

organization of the studios, ensured better control of the design ideas, as well as

advanced communication between the various factors of development of a project. The

new project teams would include architects with computer skills, so that every team will

have the choice to elaborate a project on the computer.

Training and support has been a central issue of the plan of the firm. The computer

support team of RTKL, is devided in two sections. Hardware support is provided by a

team of three computer engineers that keep the machines operational, supervise the

backup routines, and control the status of the network. In parallel, the software team,

makes sure that all the supported software is running perfectly, and is involved in

1With the term horizontal organization, I mean an organizational scheme, where each team is composedby professionals that have the same skills, and are doing similar work, while belonging toapproximately the same position in the hieracy of the firm. As opposed to that, the team of the verticalorganization is composed by specialists in different fields, having various positions in the hieracy of theoffice, each one doing a specific task, different and complementary to the tasks of the other members ofthe team. A horizontal organization advances separation of tasks and devision of labor, while a verticalorganization promotes multi-disciplinarity.


programming for research and development. Graphics 4.0, a generic graphics editor

developed inhouse, is one example of programming research that the software team has

been involved; further development and enhancement of this design software is still one

major task of the software team, along with macros development for the Intergraph

system. In addition, the firm is training a good number of its designers to operate the

two graphics software of the office.

Multi-disciplinary use of the central database, for development of a project, would

reveal conflicts, and show the importance of access control to the database of a particular

project. Each discipline, may alter information generated within the same discipline,while the architectural documents may serve as a background file for all the other parties

involved. The project designer and the project manager are the superusers of the project

and are authorised to perform changes and alternations. The system is powerful enough

to register all the changes that occured since the last logout of a user in the central

database, and to highlight these changes at the next login of the operator. In addition to

this sophisticated system to keep control of the changes in the daatabase, computer

operators are encouraged to announce their changes in a written format, so that the next

user may easily see, what the change has been, and what was the reason to make this

change. At last, the office developed a layer convention, assigning deifferent layers to

different tasks, which stimulate productivity and ensure standardization in the

production of graphic documents with the computer.

Plotting is another issue of big interest for the firm, since it is through plotting that

the office can communicate with the client, by providing the necessary graphic

documents. Most of the firms documents are produced with a large static pin-plotter,that reduces the time of each plot considerably, even though there is a definite loss of

quality on the final product. The firm operates a pen-plotter as well, but this is mostly

used for the production of presentation documents, where the quality of the graphic is

more important than the time consumed. High quality plotting has become affortable the

last years, but it is still a very time consumming operation, and this is the major reasons

why the office has decided to support the low quality graphics production.

Finally, the office has organized three four hour shifts in the use of the design

workstations. A major reason for that mesure was that many projects and many


operators needed accessibility on the system, but consideration was given to the fact that

after four continious hours of work in front of the machine, the user gets tired and is

becoming progressively unproductive. It is though the organization and the general

perception that the management has towards the machine, that promoted this mesure. It

is because the management of the office does not perceive the CADD user as a devoted

operator of the system, but as a member of the architecture or the engineering team that

can work on the machine, as well as work on other tasks, that advanced this notion of

the four hour shift; this opens the architectural and the engineering teams to the use of

the computer, making the first step towards an integration of the machine in the

architectural practice.

The office of RTKL, has entered a new phase of use of the computer when it

changed its internal organizational structure. The new vertical organization, gives access

at the computer to every architectural team, while accepting the fact that any member of

the office may use directly the machine. Meanwhile, the common computer database

promotes co-operation and sharing of information between the different disciplines of

the office, which leads towards a true integration, preparing us for the new multi-

disciplinary reality of the post-industrial era.


-,, , , -

TOWARDS A COMPUTATIONAL ARCHITECTURE


Towards a computational architecture

Towards a computational architecture: Discussing with Eric Teicholtz

If we look at the global picture of the organization of the architectural practice during

the last twenty years, there are two distinct types of organization that we can discribe,depending on the composition of the peripheral unit of work, the team (or cell); the

vertical organization and the horizontal organization.

The horizontal organization was introduced by the modem managerial techniques

during the fifties, where the teams are isolated and work flow is controlled by a strong

management. The teams of that type of organization tend to become highly specialized

in the particular task they are asked to perform, and there is little communication and

sharing of information with the rest of the office. As a consequence to that poor

exchange of information exist among the various teams. Computers in that

organizational structure, cannot be effectively integrated, because of the lack of

communication, between the technical support stuff and the management. The

management does not understand the technical talk of the CADD team, and the computer

engineers do not understand the financial preoccupations of the managers.

On the other hand, vertical organization reflects the twentieth century model, that

praises multi-disciplinarity, and collaboration between various fields of expertise, where

the teams are composed by as many different professionals as necessary, and having as

different background (fields of expertise) as possible. In the architectural practice,

vertical organization leads to a project team, composed by the partner in charge of the

project, as well as a senior designer, a project manager, designers, technical architects

and computer professionals, who are architects that have some familiarity with CADD

and understand how the computer operates. These computer initiated architects, could

become the machine operator for a particular task.

This new generation of professionals in the architectural practice, has to learn new

working techniques for the machines, and to be able to associate and integrate their

knowledge within the design process of the firm. The team additionally will comprise

CADD professionals, which are architects with particular knowledge and experience in

the field of computers. In addition, the computer team has to be organized in such a

way, and to enjoy such a position to be able to talk to the management. It is important

for the computer team to have a manager or a senior designer to report the progress and


the development that the team has accomplished in the firm, and to ensure the targets andthe scope of the firm are reported. Technical support staff and development and

research scientists,will anticipate the needs of the architectural office.

When organizing the office, there should be a distinction between the workstationsdedicated to design, and those concentrated to production. The design terminals are

used by the project teams in order to imput the relevant information of each file in thedatabase, while the production terminals are mostly dedicated: (1) demonstrations toclients and the office teams, or other professionals (consultants) that are working with

the firm on a particular projects; (2) library development for use in the particular office.

The computer team has to develop a library in order to maximize the productivity of the

firm working with the machines. The development of genereric as well as project

specific library is fairly important. This organizes better the work and develops new

tools for the firm to handle architectural projects efficiently and with more control on thefinal output. Development of libraries and parametric variations on existing elements in

the database, are the tricks-algorythems-paths to be used in order to enhance the existing

library.

Plotting and production of graphics produced for the client is another important issue

to understand. Plotting has become today, very attractive, but it still is an operation that

takes a lot of time. This is one reason why many architecture offices are producing pin-plotted drawings, where the quality is not satisfactory, and the price is higher, but thetime spent is, depending on the complexity of the drawing,many times faster.

Training time, is another issue to be considered by the management of the office.Most of the architecture firms that have already computers for some time have a policy

about this important issue that is training. Some offices will ask their employees to

participate in CAD training programs so that they can work on the workstations. Some

other firms, have inhouse courses and demonstrations, but for all of those courses,length in time varies depending on the complexity of the software; the firms are mostly

interested in having young operators, to just know enough after the CAD training

program, to start a drawimg. The firms are seldom interested to educate thoroughly

their personnel, because they assume that they will eventually become fluent as they are

going to work for the projects of the firm.


There is a priority in the efficient management of the system for entering a project in

the computer where various criteria should be evaluated in the process of choosing; there

may be adaptability of the project in the logic of the system, or strong support of the

client , caracteristics that are related to an existing database and a coherent library,familiarity or preferances of the project architect, or even the choice of a senior partener

for demonstrating the capabilities of the system. On the other hand there should be an

integration of CADD drawings and the manual techniques in order to achieve in many

cases the desired results in the least of time.

But the systems role in the organization of the firm is fairly important. The new

techniques need to be understood by the designers and on the same time need more

attention and planning because of the new technology, unknown to the professionals of

the architectural office, and where everything has to be developed, although much work

in the enhancement of the system is already undertaken. It is important here to notice

that at the beginning of the introduction of CADD in the offices, much change in the

schedules (working shifts) happens, but later on every body gets accoustomed to the

coexistance of the machines, just like in word processing.

In the meanwhile informational systems in architecture are changing the most

fundamental functions in the practice. Looking at drawings changes; looking at a CADD

drawing one can perceive the drawing in precision, or can always go down (zooming

down) and look at a detail. The CADD drawings on the other hand are more accurate

than the manual. In the electronic environment, the drafting standards are based on

conventions and inherent structure. Furthermore, the use of overlays in the CADD

enviroment helps many designers and various users to share a common database without

the risques of conflicts. A major difference when compared with the manual

procedures, is that when one is storing or retrieving information, one cannot see the

drawing in question. Looking at the drawing, will take a tremendous amount of time,

so that it becomes almost impossible to store or to retrieve any information without

establishing conventions. A final issue concerning regular backups and archival

storage, needs to be addressed by the firm, in order to assure that the information will

always be there. In addition to all the changes in the drawing conventions or the habits

of drawings, one important issue may be to establish a common vocabulary, with all the


necessary terminology to be able to communicate with precision about the CADDsystem. In the beginning, many firms thouhgt it was better for the organization of the

office to define multiple shifts, in order to run the machines at full capacity.Today,

multiple shifts, may help a designer to work in front of a terminal without having to

suffer, since a user will only be permitted to work four hours per day in front of the

screen. Financing the new tool is as important as aquiring it in the first place. The

office should be charging for an overhead item to begin with, and furthermore charging

per hour fixed fee. Finally printing and plotting is becoming easier, while plotting is

still very time consuming, and many times a carefull planning ahead of time is needed.

Because the computer structure is becoming quite important, the management of the

system needs to be reinforced. Having a manager of a firm , to be involved directly

with the computer facilities is very good, because it brings the ideas and the policy of the

firm in the facility, and the news of the computers in the management of the firm. In

any case introducing CADD in an architecturl firm is automatically justifying increased

planning in the firm, since all those issues have to be carefully considered.


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cadd: on reorganizing the practice of architecture

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