Here is a summary by Sabu Francis of whats been happening in the 20th Century as the new century comes up. It was published in Indian Architect & Builder, a magazine in India just before the millenium. It presaged the September 11th attack and its affects on architecture...
Years back, an ancient Indian sage discovered the zero in mathematics and nature started revealing her secrets. Now, we are all waiting at the millennium, huddled together at the end of another set of zeroes, waiting for the starting gun. We may start hurtling across once gain mindlessly, if we do not understand the significance of this new zero straddling the different sets of numbers.
Learning to use computers effectively in architecture requires the understanding of its historical context. I believe it is important to pause, take a deep breath and understand exactly the context in which the new set of zeroes are couched. I shall therefore attempt, using the next set of approximately 2000 words, to describe the history of computing in architecture. Due to space constraints, I may have to hurry through the points. I hope I am forgiven if you had to ruminate on the points here!
Handling complexity
The rationale for many of humankind's theories and researches could be explained by the simple motivation of wanting to handle complexity. Aristotelean philosophy {1} taught us to handle complexity by the simple process of divide and conquer. The effect is still seen and felt: See how we break up knowledge into convenient parcels and feed them to our children at school as separate, unconnected subjects for study.
Analysis of the deconstruction
The early part of the 20th century lay squarely with the analysts: A despot who wanted to divide human races the way he slickly parted his hair, an architect who proposed neat little rules using Fibonacci's numbers to explain good architecture, a lot of intense and intelligent people who went deeply dividing the elements of matter, searching for a lost reason.
That approach gave us a nuclear bomb or two. The explosions not just shook the world, but a cloud gathered over the Aristotelean theories that should have explained the real world around us but really didn't.
The world was then left waiting for some magic thingamajig. Everyone wanted to put the investigations into complex issues back into place, but there were no clear directions. Marijuana, flower children, a dollop of Zen Buddhism, and anti-Vietnam protests filled up the time -- all naive attempts to synthesize inputs from various directions into a holistic; hopefully to achieve a better result than the atomic bombers. All they achieved was simply a good time waiting for a theory.
In the meantime, architecture went from complexities to contradictions, and the-almost-anything-goes started becoming the explanation. The last nail in the coffin was the dramatic destruction of the massive Pruitt-Igoe complex at St. Louis, during the mid seventies {9}. It was supposedly the starting point of Post-Modernism in architecture; a state of affair, where "It dislocates any center of discourse to the edges of human preference and subjectivity, and reinforces the belief that absolute truth was once a viable belief, but has turned out to be little more than a passing fad" {2}
Post-modernism has now deconstructed into various other isms. Not taking sides is nowadays the in-thing, and architects design without any moral framework in mind. How that can be done is still unexplained
Computer as an abstraction machine
During the hippie era (post world war to mid seventies, give or take a few years), there were actually some notable achievements. They happened without too much fanfare and maybe they form the starting points of what could eventually be the road to constructive usage of technology in architecture practices:
Studies carried by the new field of Chaos Theory{3} (renamed later to Complexity Theory just as people started misunderstanding the term) gave us the confidence that there are formal ways to explain complex phenomena, using the synthesis of information without using the kind of massive resources that were needed by the traditional analytical approach.
It was also during the same time that computers started establishing itself as a respectable tool.
Whenever any human had tried to soar high by imitating nature, his wings were clipped by the heat of the Sun. If it was indeed possible to use natural analogs to solve human problems, we should have had aircraft that flapped their wings. The computer was humankind's first purposeless machine, purely meant for abstraction. Models developed on a computer could possibly stand the test of time, because such models need not depend on any natural analog. These models would be implemented on a medium which itself was so different from any other device humans had ever encountered. Hence such models would be looked upon as being unbiased both temporally as well as culturally.
In the usage of computers in architecture, one of the earliest experiments conducted was the typical Aristotelean, analytical approach of computerizing one of the issues concerning architecture; namely the visual. This resulted in CAD programs as we call them today. Unfortunately, the path they chose was to duplicate whatever that was happening earlier using manual processes (i.e. drawings). The analog is not really appropriate: the medium has now changed, so why saddle ourselves with earlier systems? I therefore believe the usage of drawings on computers has now become contentious. The notion that computers in architecture only means drawings should be discarded.
Who should care?
Obviously, architecture is not just to do with the sense of vision but it is a happening at the end of a breathtakingly complex synthesis of issues. Unfortunately, in these post-modern, deconstructivist times, there is a philosophical justification to the phrase: "who cares?" and so the phrase gets used quite liberally as a valid excuse.
Even if an architect may pretend that issues in architecture may be explained away using 'CAD programs', the synthesis happening in architecture is ever continuous and unstoppable. A lot of ills have started surfacing due to the disassociation of the modeling from the reality: Energy problems, ecological issues, people issues, logistics issues, economic problems and so on; all of them have started crying out to be looked into. And they all need to be looked into simultaneously, on equal priority levels.
So, no one can dare go back into the era of analytical divide and rule methods Admittedly, many have tried but without much success: There is just too much repetition of work, and redundancy of information when each issue is discussed individually and separately.
Just imagine, even erstwhile broken-up countries have begun joining together back, and in places where divisions were not perceived, new boundaries have started coming up: The whole world order is now mobile, and it is reforming furiously to form the new world. The froth is still flying around us, and in the meantime architecture continues to breathe, alleviating us from some of our problems. We should rightly be concerned, very concerned indeed, on how architecture is modeled (in the true sense of the term, not just the visual) using computers.
Object Orientation
In the seventies, Alan Kay {4} gave the world an elegant computing paradigm, called object orientation which allows complex data to be handled simply, while still retaining the dynamic flexibility required for handling changes in the attributes of the data. He simply put the data constructs as 'objects' belonging to repositories (termed as classes) that are strung together into a tree shaped logical form. One assigns attributes to the classes and tells which attribute to inherit down the branches of the class tree.
The objects hanging at the ends of these classes are therefore rich in meaning: The correct set of attributes gets inherited and given to those objects, without the user of the data having to go individually assign attributes to each individual data object. An object oriented system {5} acts as a very effective and efficient synthesis machine; a system which can act as a meeting point of all kinds of information, even if the information comes in gradually over a period of time and even if the information keeps changing.
Much of today's computing powers have happened because of progress in communication (a direct result of breakthroughs made by Mandelbrot and his ilk, using Chaos Theory) and because of object-oriented systems. Without such developments, we would probably be still wearing happy tee shirts with flower prints and talking about free love instead of modeling the real synthesis of issues happening in the real world.
Natural idiocies
Artificial Intelligence (AI), an area of computing which was supposed to help us with the complexities of the modern world fell on its face when asked to deliver. The real world around was too much ambiguous and effervescent to be handled using analytical methods then used in AI systems. Fortunately, the bye-products of the investigation, such as the computer language Prolog (Programming in Logic) are now being reused using the lessons learnt in the eighties and nineties. So, AI is once again back with us, but this time, hopefully, without the natural idiocies.
There are currently two broad approaches of using AI in architecture; generative systems such as genetic systems, shape emergence systems, etc. are seeking to give the synthesized solutions on their own. The other type are evaluative systems {6}. The latter is less resource hungry, and more genial: They presuppose that humankind has yet to understand many issues fully and therefore do not attempt to generate a complete solution for human problems on their own. A human being is very much needed around evaluative systems to arrive at a solution. Fortunately, the solutions given by evaluative systems are often far superior than those given by generative systems.
All frameworks are moral statements
Human beings requires points of references for evaluation. Though the deconstructivists believe that they need not make any frame of reference, nobody can escape the fact that at any point in time the context is always a framework hanging in the background to delineate the problem, whether people accept its presence or not. All frameworks, unfortunately, are also moral statements. And if there ever was a lesson to be learnt from the last century, nay, even the last millennium; that could be: let us have flexible frameworks please, because sooner or later the boundaries would be redrawn and new morals would be ruling us.
Just-in-time models- the Internet
The Internet could be an example of such a shifting framework. Today, we have started grouping together by entirely different set of principles. We recognize and empathize with fellow community members simply by the area that we browse on the Internet. Geographic boundaries have started to fade away (slowly but surely) and people will be re-orienting themselves by websites, email addresses and discussion groups. The sheer dynamism of the medium has allowed all kinds of frameworks to be put up, just as we need it.
I have not spoken much about the information explosion: The stupefying effects of this explosion has been felt by everyone. It is said that humankind has accumulated 80% of its total archived knowledge in just the last twenty five years! The state of architecture practice is indeed in great turmoil, directly as a result: With so much information around each architecture project, it is important to have a suitable framework which can be used to sift and organize the shifting sands. The effect of bad information in architecture once started the Mahabharat (Duryodhana was not informed about a slippery floor), and the effect of incorrect use of information in the AEC industry in India has made practically everyone connected to the industry slip on their floors.
What is needed is a Just-in-time model, something that the user can himself control without the fear of being dictated upon by the software. Object oriented systems working on the medium of the Internet may just about have such an answer. Modeling systems that take advantage of meta-data using XML (Extensible Markup Language){7} have started appearing on the Internet. XML allows not just architecture representation, but it also allows meta information (information about information) that is stored along with the data, making the system extremely flexible.
Phenomenal changes in the methods and techniques of communication has obvious and immediate repercussions on the practice of architecture itself. One can easily expect to have XML based office management systems where designers work from home by connecting to the net. Only physical site visits to the architecture projects need to be done using the old systems. But even at a physical construction site, encrypted, authenticated architecture models would get downloaded directly from the office's website to directly aid in the construction activity-- drawings, no more!
The Indian connection
To summarize, the argument is now in favor of systems that model the synthesis that is happening in the real world around us. There is a real opportunity now for finally grappling with otherwise intractable problems in architecture. Curiously, that is exactly the forte of us Indians too. Our age old traditions have always asked us to concentrate on the synthesis of disparate pieces of knowledge. If you recollect my example regarding the schooling of our kids, we must now recall the old Gurukul system, where no separate subjects were actually taught; but students listened to the holistic words of wisdom that came from the guru
The zero is a special abstract concept that added tremendous value to mathematics. It is a figure that can be added to any other number and yet not change it. Similarly, XML based models in architecture would allow the practice of architecture happen in such a manner that all the issues can be synthesized together into the model and investigated apriori, with the least amount of distortion. Architecture practice is no longer concentrating just on drawings, but on the complete chain of activities right from information acquisition of the model, synthesis of the various issues; all the way to the dissemination of knowledge{8}.
References:
{1}. http://members.tripod.com/~batesca/aristotle.html
A gist of Aristotle's theories and his life.
Useful links to more detailed articles on Aristotle's works can be found here
{2}. http://capo.org/premise/95/sep/p950805.html
An explanation of the theory of postmodernism, along with the various other forces in philosophical thought that shaped history and society
{3}. http://www.imho.com/grae/chaos/chaos.html
What is chaos? Is there a pattern behind seemingly unconnected and disjointed phenomenon in the real world around us? Chaos theory comes closest to understanding the complexity and the underlying order in Nature
{4}. http://ei.cs.vt.edu/~history/GASCH.KAY.HTML
A brief article on the life of this brilliant multifaceted computer scientist, Alan Kay, and his works
{5}. http://www.well.com/user/ritchie/oo.html
A thorough technical site on all the latest knowhow on Object Oriented Programming Systems (OOPS).
{6}. http://www.teamtad.com
The homesite for TAD, an instance of the evaluative system that is built around the principles of synthesis in design. The Architect's Desktop (TAD)is an object-oriented software that provides a complete system for running an architectural practice.
{7}. http://www.xml.com/pub/98/10/guide1.html
A good introduction to XML as an alternate way of looking at data organisation.
{8a}. http://www.teamtad.com
A common platform for all the various members of the AEC (Architecture Engineering Construction) industry to interact and exchange information. This site is an instance of an XML-based system.
{8b).http://www.aecxml.org/index2.htm
AecXML is one of the XML-based languages used to represent information in the Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) industry.
{9}. http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/~sjk/pruitt/
This site tries to analyse the factors that led to the demolition of the Pruitt Igoe housing complex.
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