Periodical: Architectural Research Quarterly
Thesis: Widespread implementation of modeling software would be exponentially beneficial in allowing students to create more complete and complex projects.
Society continuously evolves to advance technology and embrace new trends and ideas. These advancements also bring the ability to expand the design process through the use of software. Unfortunately, the successful integration of this software into architectural education programs has yet to occur. According to Francis Lyn and Ron Dulany in their article, A Case for Drawing, 92% of architecture schools believe hand drawing and digital drawing skills are equally important. 85% of schools believe a student’s ability to draw by hand is directly related to their ability to design while only 52% believe the same about digital skills (23). This exemplifies the misconception that hand drawing is better, resulting in a lacking integration of digital skills despite the professed importance. As a current architecture student, I experience and observe the effects of this lack in my design process and in other’s design processes frequently. Widespread implementation of modeling software would be exponentially beneficial in allowing students to create more complete and complex projects.
The architectural education system continues to lag in the efforts to advance with technology and society. According to Steven Holl, “you can get to the nature of an idea more quickly and therefore test the validity of a number of ideas”. According to A Case for Drawing, the intuitiveness of hand drawing allows for an easier way to investigate spatial ideas as a process. An additional concern from Alan Balfour in Architecture and Electronic Media is that “the technology seems to limit concern for the future by giving vivid and virtual support to the wildest of dreams,” (271). The major concerns throughout architectural discourse express the belief that the use of software limits creativity while hand drawing allows for an iterative process that results in overall better design ideas. However, not teaching students to use modeling programs is like not giving a chef the chocolate chips for chocolate chip cookies. The architecture profession has evolved to embrace new types of buildings designed for both aesthetics and sustainability, which can only be fully integrated in modeling programs; this evolution results in the need to integrate modeling software in the education system.
According to a quote from Edward Allen in the article Applications in Cross-Curriculum Teaching the Synthesis of the Design Studio and Building Technology Seminar, “this gulf has occurred largely because of a misunderstanding that the studios are where art is taught and the technical courses are where science is taught. Architectural design is not art. It is design. It is the solving of human problems through the creation of form. Technology is not science. Technology is design,” (16). This idea addresses a major advantage of modeling software. Architectural design requires the use of modeling programs to move beyond the basic plans and sections available in drawing and modeling by hand. Modeling programs allow for more unique and complex designs that have the potential to better meet the needs and desires of society in architecture. Additionally, Fabio Gramazio and Matthias Kohler agree in the article Digital Materiality in Architecture: Bridging the Realms of the Virtual and the Physical that “The synthesis of these two seemingly distinct worlds – the digital and the material – gives rise to new self-evident realities and sensualities,” (179). This exemplifies the unlimited potential in the integration of modeling software into the architecture curriculum.
The above table shows the results of a survey conducted during a four semester experiment at Gazi University. The experiment consisted of four consecutive semesters with classes to document a pre-existing building with different methods. The first class in the sequence focused on documentation by hand in drawings and models. The second class concentrated on 2D drawings created in a vector based software. The third class created 3D drawings and models from a vector based software. The final class utilized object based software for documentation. The students and faculty in the experiment completed the survey after the four semester course. The survey evaluated production time, spatial requirements, precision and quality, photorealistic visualization, revision possibilities, creation of new designs, archiving ability, suitability to distance education, and satisfaction of faculty and students. The evaluation scale ranged from very weak to very well for each method in each category. The table clearly shows a range in how well each method works, with hand drawings and models at the bottom and object based software at the top. As Tayfun Yildirim and Arzu Ozen Yavuz summarized in the article Comparison of Traditional and Digital Visualization Technologies in Architectural Design Education, “digital visualization techniques give more successful results in expression of inputs such as three-dimensional expression, spatial perception, scale, fabric, shadow and light, where traditional methods lag behind,” (73). This study also revealed the biggest problem with hand methods, which is the lack of detail available to be put in projects (Yildirim, Yavuz).
In a research project called The Embryological Houses conducted by Greg Lynn, the potential of digital modeling programs are explored and taken advantage of in order to create houses whose design are governed by the same set of rules but in a way to make each house unique. Every Embryological house is constructed from 2048 panels, 9 steel frames, and 72 aluminum struts. The house utilizes controlling points across the entire surface so each individual change affects the rest of the surface, allowing for a unique customized home while still being recognizable as an Embryological House. The software used to create these houses is also connected to information regarding digital fabrication limits and factors them into the software as an additional set of rules (Lynn). This research exemplifies the unlimited potential allowed by digital modeling; the ability to not only create unique forms but to create them in a way that they can be mass produced while retaining that uniqueness.
According to Brian McGrath and Jean Gardner in Cinemetrics, “today’s digital architectural drawing is a way of working and being in the world, not merely a servo-mechanistic process of simulating objects and illusionary scenes in service of what has become standard building production,” (7). Modeling software contains the ability to affect architectural designs in many ways that we are unable to visualize without testing them out. This inability to visualize the potential led to the stunted integration of software into architectural education. However, the abilities and advantages of modeling software far outweigh any concerns about integrating software into the architectural education system.
Sources
McGrath, Brian, and Jean Gardner. Cinemetrics: Architectural Drawing Today. Great Britain: Wiley-Academy, 2007. Print.
Lynn, Greg, and Hani Rashid. Architectural Laboratories. Rotterdam: NAi Publishers, 2002. Print.
Gramazio, Fabio, and Matthias Kohler. “Digital Materiality in Architecture: Bridging the Realms of the Virtual and the Physical.” Explorations in Architecture (2008). Print.
Lyn, Francis, and Ron Dulaney Jr. “A Case for Drawing.” Enquiry 6.1 (2009). Web.
Yildirim, Tayfun, and Arzu O. Yavuz. “Comparison of Traditional and Digital Visualization Technologies in Architectural Design Education.” Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences 51 (2012). Web.
Enright, John. “Applications in Cross-Curriculum Teaching the Synthesis of the Design Studio and Building Technology Seminar.” Enquiry 6.1 (2009). Web.
Balfour, Alan. “Architecture and Electronic Media.” Journal of Architectural Education 54.4 (2001). Web.