CADD : on reorganizing the practice of architecture

CADD: On Reorganizing the Practice of Architecture

by

Constantin Elias Cavoulakos

Dipl6md de l'Ecole Speciale d'Architecture Paris, France

1985

SUBMITTED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF ARCHITECTURE IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS

FOR THE DEGREE

MASTER OF SCIENCE IN ARCHITECTURE STUDIES at the

MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

June, 1987

@ Constantin Elias Cavoulakos 1987

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

Signature of the Author

Constantin Elias Cavoulakos Department of Architecture May 5, 1987

Certified by

Ranko Bon Assistant Professor of Economics in Architecture George Macomber Career Development Professor in Construction Management Thesis Supervisor Accepted by OF TECinOnOy JU

A

Il \

I would like to thank all those who helped, by offering their advice and encouragement

I especially would like to thank my first advisor at M.I.T., and advisor of this thesis Harvey Bryan, who has been a true source of inspiration

My special appreciation goes to Ranko Bon who can be so

helpful at difficult situations

To Miguel for his advice and care, encouragement and scoldings, his real friendship

To Carlos for the help that never seem to end

To my parents, Alix, my brother, Chittaranjan, Yannis, and Daphne

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

CADD: On reorganizing the practice of architecture

by

Constantin 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 computers in an effort to anticipate the needs of the modem working environment and to enhance the informational flow between the various disciplines of modem practice. 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; rather, it is to grasp how the computer affects performance at work, altering the traditional hierarchy of our perception and decision making in order to strengthen productivity by changing the traditional organization of architectural practice. Development of design software enhances the man-machine interface, encouraging the architect to work directly on the machine, leading towards a true integration of the computer in the practice.

While a small computer team, composed by CADD specialists, initially supported the computer facilities in architectural practice, it is particularly important, today, to demonstrate that every professional should be able to access, and work directly on the computer, adding to the dissemination of technical knowledge within the team and of the benefits 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 the

CADD support team, that can concentrate in research and development of an

increasingly powerful computer-aided design environment.

Integrating CADD in architectural practice depends on the organization of the particular office. A crucial question for the architect and the central topic of this thesis is how to put designers at work in front of the screen, and how to control decision making within the CADD environment. I address the various issues involved in the

implementation of CADD in the architectural office, and conducted field interviews to support my findings. Computational decentralization is increasingly important, for accessibility and peripheral control, while parallel support of complementary CADD environments 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

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT _{Page 3}

CONTENTS _{Page 4}

PREFACE _{Page 5}

INTRODUCTION

THE INFORMATIONAL ERA _{Page 9}

PROFESSION: ARCHITECT _{Page 15}

AT THE OFFICE OF WOO AND WILLIAMS _{Page 27}

COMPUTERS IN THE LARGE OFFICE

SASAKI AND ASSOCIATES Page 37

AUTOMATION FOR INTEGRATION

RTKL _{Page 45}

TOWARD A COMPUTATIONAL ARCHITECTURE

DISCUSSING WITH ERIC TEICHOLTZ Page 53

BIBLIOGRAPHY _{Page 59}

Table of Contents Page 4

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 needs of 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.

INTRODUCTION: THE INFORMATIONAL ERA

Introduction Page 10

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 descriptions4_{. 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 the industrialization of the British provinces, where the entire population has been subject to displacement caused by regional growth; this displacement would reveal a message, the relationship of capital investment and territoriality. Movement generates a message and there is no message without

movement. "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 by exagerating the replacement of each frame by the next one (the mouvement of the film through the projector), forcing each image to disappear.

2

While our representations inform our perceptions, there is a direct influence of our everyday life to our representations. During the Renaissance, the enlightment promoted the perspective projection, while on the 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 as many perspectives as there are visions of the world, or cultures, or conditions of life. An inevitable interaction takes place between our thought and our representations, and new representations change our culture, 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.}

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 drawing2. "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

1_{In the film Napoleon, Abbel Gance, wants to represent the exceptional abbilities of the young colonnel} to forsee the strategic results of a battle, to understand how an offensive would lead to victory with the

least effort and the fewer casualties, only by looking on the map, reading these strategic maps in a new way. Abbel Gance uses sophisticated montage and animation to show Bonapart's string of thoughts; he relates enhanced understanding and clarity in reading the map to complex representational techniques, and associates a sequential representation , the very essence of the cinematographic art, to the complexity of Napoleon'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 Pierre}

Chareau in Paris been conceived on ordinary paper? Furthermore, the transparent paper, originaly used

by the engineers, introduced the mechanical imagery in the architecture of the twentieth century. Aren't the aesthetic mechanisms that consitute the interior decoration of the maison de verre a proof that Pierre Chareau was using tracing paper, contrary to the Beaux Arts tradition.

3

S. Isenstadt, p. 29.

(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 building techniques 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 information2, 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.

2

As Roland Barthes said, images are coming to us from all over the world, unrequested; they appeare from 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.

1_{In this instance I like to use these greek words in the way Roland Barthes used them; deictique}

language refers to the photographic descriptive language, while protetique is associated to forward movement and the cinematographic art.

SKIDMORE. OWINCA x. MIc~pti

New York Chicg S-:n Fn Purtiana

Chicago Operations Partnership

Control

Project Management

Administration Production Construction

Estimating

Accounting Master Planning Civil Architectural Mechanical Construction Site Planning Engineering Engineering and Electrical Management

Eng neering

Purchasing Building Structural Heatig, Field Offices

I Design Engneering ventilation and I

SAir

Prjuect

Reco Lcping Site Co-ordination Plumbing and Contracts

Deve[L oomen. J jFir Prec Specitications I

Plan Control Interiors Soils and Eiectrica

L Foundations I Supevi un Non-Technicai Research Process

Perontnel

Figure 74. Skidmore, Owings and Merrill. office organizational diagram, 1957. The large American architectural office of the twentieth century was typified by a style of 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

1_{This is the first school of Architecture, renamed Ecole des Beax Arts after the French Revolution; as a} concequence of the student revolt in May 1968, the school was divided into ten Unit6s P6dagogiques, to assure 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, not

craftmanship (Politicus).

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 gain productivity; the principals had to devide the responsibilities for the various areas of work 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

1

The first pedagog to arrive from Europe was Eugene Letang, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 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

1_{Separation of the decision making from the work would raise the question of responsibility in}

coordinating the separate work areas; it is with drawings(visual representations), the material

embodiment of both design logics and ideas, that the architect will direct and control the production of architecture. Ed Robbins, 1986.

2_{This 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, and where a formal communication protocol ensures the exchange of information between the individuals in the team.

4_{Gropius, Scope of Total Architecture: " The Bauhaus was inaugurated in 1919 with the specific object}

of realizing a modem architectonic art, which like human nature was meant to be all-embracing in its scope. Experiment once more became the center of architecture, and that demands a broad, coordinating mind, 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 productivity3_{. 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

1_{Total 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 decisions themselves could be made subject to the general aims of the office; from which it followed that the more decisions the office controlled the more firmly the control had to be excercised.

2_{Spiro Kostof, The Architect, p. 325.} 3

The partners pledged "to offer multi-disciplined service competent to design and build the multiplicity of shelters needed for man's habitat" (N. A. Owings).

4_{Spiro Kostof, The Architect, p. 327.}

5_{0p. 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

1_{In order to survive and maintain itself, any large business had to keep work coming in, to keep the}

organization to run at maximum efficiency, in other words maximum productivity and maximum

profits.

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 members during the collaborative meetings...the new information is more easily seen in its proper perspective and

its 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 handcraftship3. 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 left}

to the one member who happens to be responsible for the specific job, even though his decision should run counter to the opinion of the other members, for the freedom of the designer in charge must be paramount." (W. Gropius, p. 24).

2

1n thruth, Gropius' ideal of teamwork was not possible; the profession of architecture had become not a free 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 the work, 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 the} development of scale and knowledge of calibration (either geometric or numerical), linear perspective and the emergence of architecture as a profession in the eighteenth century." E. Robbin. Development in the informational mode of generating graphics, contributed to the introduction of the computer in the practice of architecture. The versatility of the new computer generated graphics changed the way architects perceive and use their traditional means of communicating design ideas, the drawings. Static images turned into versatile projections, and decision making that was closely related to the production of drawings (drawings for internal use that gave the architect total control of a project) has now been dissociated from the generation of those drawings and relies on the informational flow that the computer introduced.

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This was made possible by the development of time sharing machines and multi-tasking operating systems.

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.

1_{In the capitalist reality, it is not the price competition which counts but the competition from the new}

commodity, the new technology, the new source of supply, the new type of organization... competition which commands a decisive cost or quality advantage and which strikes not at the margins of the profits and 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.

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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,

1_{Concidering a commodity (equipment), expenditure of a particular project, is very advantageous to the}

office, since instantaneous depreciation makes the equipment very cheap to use in other projects of the

firm.

At the office of Woo and Williams

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 for storing 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

1_{This 'computer team' would see its power increase as more designers use the computer for their} projects. Enjoying the admiration and acceptance of their peers, the computer team will be more reluctant to communicate their knowledge to the designers of the office, been afraid of losing their power

within the firm, concluding to a super-centralization of knowledge in the domain of computers. On the other 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

At the office of Woo and Williams Page 32

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 the firm. 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

1_{it is important to state at this point that I don't believe that one graphics editor can handle all the phases} of the architectural production; I think that the better a CADD system can handle one job, let us say

professional 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 not necessarily be the same with conventions used for another task.

At the office of Woo and Williams Page 34

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