C is for Computers

I'm a member of the first generation of architects to use computers as a native.

I started teaching myself CAD in second year, as a way to compensate for the fact that I am not a born artist.  Because I'm not a born artist. I didn't draw a line in my life before I took Architectural Communications Spring 1989.

The problem with being on that cusp was that our professors, uniformly, didn't understand it.  They said things like, the computer designs this way, as if the computer were the mind at work, not the student.

They didn't understand the most fundamental things. When Andrea dragged her studio critic into the computer room to see the 3D model of  her Capstone project, he asked if it could refresh the image from the ground up instead of drawing the objects in the order they were inserted. Sure, she said. If I take a couple of days, delete everything and recreate the model that way.

And indeed, when I got my first professional job, most architecture firms billed CAD work as an additional service. I chose to go to work in a firm where there was a computer at every desk, and a designer handling every digitizer.  The owner of that firm understood not only that the most efficient way to operate a project was to have people who could think doing the CAD work, but that using computers as a production tool increased profits by decreasing the time involved in the inevitable revisions.

But even now, the older generation dismisses the computer as a tool.  These young people, they say, shaking their heads, they can't draw a stick. The post by poopi66 in this discussion board thread is not atypical:

Are architects being consumed by the drafting industry?  An architect forms a vision.......not on a screen but within his/her mind....one SEEs an image (imagines) and it is real to him/her.  An architect then translates that thought to paper in order to describe this creation and let it be built.

Like so many architects over the age of 50, Mr. P fails to distinguish between the design process and the tool used to render the design product. While I agree that design sketching is still an essential skill, it's not necessary for every architect to be able to produce perfectly beautiful photorealistic renderings. It never has been, even though that's what we were given to beleive in school and what the Old Guys say. The fact of the matter is that CAD facilitates the creation and construction of adventurous design, as discussed in this 2004 interview with Frank Gehry.  Technology opens opportunities for single practitioners to open their own firms and be productive and competitive with minimal overhead, and for women to continue to practice after starting their families by being able to pick up some of the normally required 60-hour workweek at home.

Is it a good thing that if my mom, my sister and I are sitting in a cafe working together you can't tell which one's the novelist, which one's the CPA, which one's the Architect?  I don't know. What I do know: embracing and growing with technology will only help architects to work more closely with the other members of the team that creates our designs: the engineers, contractors, craftsmen.  It will only help us to reclaim the roles we've abandoned over the years because of liability fears, to once again become recognized as Master Builders.