Chapter 3.2

3.2 ANALYSIS OF SURVEY CONDUCTED ON THE EFFECTS OF DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY AMONG RESPONDENTS IN CONCEPTUALIZATION STAGE

In order to prove this statement, a survey was carried out among 38 respondents who are involved in the architecture and interior design industry. Based on the results of the survey, 68.4% of the respondents think that design software aids in their conceptualization and idea generating, which supports the statement whereby digital technology or in other words, design software do aid in the conceptualization stage and realize their ideas and designs. The outcome of this analysis also showed that 50% of the respondents explore with various innovative and dynamic forms during the conceptualization and design process using design software and on the other hand, 89.5% of them think that digital technology and design software helps in the handling of increasingly complex geometries within their design. In view of that, digital technology has indeed enabled designers to explore more forms during the conceptualization stage while correspondingly helping them to work on forms which have numerous complex angles and indirectly generate contemporary forms in the architectural field.

 They were also asked about the method they usually use to come out with their design ideas and 87% of them usually draft their ideas using CAD software after coming out with concepts using hand sketches and mind mapping, while the remaining 13% of the respondents preferred using design software to generate a conceptual approach. This phenomenon shows that although design software really aids in the conceptualization stage of the fellow architects and designers, it may be only helpful to most of the respondents in terms of the later stages of conceptualizing in order to make their design come real, as seen in the mentioned work of Frank Gehry which is the Guggenheim Museum where he utilize digital technology to enable his sketches to be brought to fruition.

Chapter 3.1

3.1 CONCEPTUALIZATION USING DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY BY FAMOUS ARCHITECTS

Conceptualization is often regarded as the most crucial stage in the design process of a designer as it involves inventing or contriving an idea or explanation and formulating it mentally. Great works often arise from great concepts which shine and stand out from the rest. In this digital era, due to the availability of various digital computations and methods, designers tend to be more adventurous and adaptive towards the usage of digital technology in terms of coming out with a good concept to ensure their whole design process goes smoothly. Among the great architects in around the world, Frank Gehry and Zaha Hadid are the perfect examples of architects which incorporated digital technology and design software in the conceptualization stage of few of their iconic works.

In the 1980’s, Frank Gehry, the gifted architect had begun to utilized digital technology in his work. His design works were bold, valiant and revolutionary which can be seen in his representational ‘art piece’, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. His design first began as a series of free hand sketches that he made by standing on the riverbanks overlooking the side. His adventurous nature had made him go all his way out to think out of the box and create forms which he had always dreamed of without any restrictions. Pleated cardboards and crushed paper-towel tubes, the materials which we would never think of had been made use by Gehry to transform the energetic lines into countless number of models. In the article ‘Art Crimes and Art Historical Mysteries’ by Noah Charney, Gehry always works with models, using scraps of ‘’whatever is lying around’’ and on one occasion a Perrier bottle is even used. He also told Charney that he moved a piece of paper and struggle over it for a week, but in the end it was a matter of getting the stuff built.

Gehry’s spontaneous and genuine work was only being able to be realized at its most by bringing the CATIA software into play. The CATIA, also known as Computer Aided Three Dimensional Interactive Application was a new French computer advancement borrowed from the aviation industry that was previously used to design the Morage jet fighter and Boeing 777. This software had made his imagination come true. It was developed in the 1980s, allowing architects to manipulate three-dimensional solid models and most importantly encouraged the curve trend to boom in architecture as the architects in the past used to deal in angles which were way more challenging. 'The computer is a tool that lets the architect parent the project to the end, because it allows you to make accurate, descriptive, and detailed drawings of complicated forms', Gehry said. 

-to be continued-

Background (Refined)

CHAPTER 2.1 TIMELINE OF THE EMERGENCE OF DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY IN ARCHITECTURE

CAD drafting history is practically as old as the first computers. The ideology of contemporary CAD (computer-assisted design) drafting programs is rooted in early advancements in computer programming in the 1960s and '70s. The true breakthrough regarding CAD technologies could be credited to the SKETCHPAD which is a drafting tool developed at MIT by Ivan Sutherland in 1963. It did not only enable designers to draw on their monitors by using a pen of light but also further demonstrated that computers could be used for drafting and modelling. However, due to the high expense associated with the technology, CAD software was predominantly used and developed by large private businesses such as GM and Renault. During the 1970s, CAD drawings were largely a variation of traditional drafting, as drawings could be produced only in two dimensions and primarily intended to automate repetitive drafting tasks.

Following the lead of aerospace and automotive engineers, architects began using CAD technology in the 1980s. Subsequently, the transformation from 2D to 3D began. This is the time where solid modelling and 3D software were invented in the 1980s which revolutionized design and manufacturing industries. The year 1990 is also significant for the development and implementation of digital technology and one major breakthrough in the architectural field is the emergence of rendering 3D design. Architectural practice without graphic software had become unimaginable. The fact that digital culture has been made possible by the emergence of an information-based society at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is generally agreed by historians. This era was a major transformation that corresponds roughly to what specialists of technology often call the Second Industrial Revolution.

Speaking of the evolution of CAD software, the Sketchpad which was the pioneer of all is already a major breakthrough in digital technology. At that time, it utilized a complete graphical user interface, using an x-y point plotter display and the recently invented light pen. The clever way the program organized its geometric data is by pioneering the use of "objects" and "instances" in computing and pointed forward to object oriented programming. The main idea was to have master drawings which one could be duplicated instantly. If the user changed the master drawing, all the instances would change as well. However, its limitation is to 2D drawings as the first CAD systems served as mere replacements of drawing boards. The design engineer still worked in 2D to create technical drawing consisting from 2D wireframe primitives for example line, arc and B spline. 3D rendered images or visualization started off extremely rudimentary by today's standards and consisted of wire frame representations of various geometric shapes when it was first introduced. On the other hand, 3D visualizations today are almost to perfection and realistic, besides being less geometrical in the interfaces compared to those in the past which shows that the evolutionary of 3D visualisation software is somehow enormous.

Over the years, CAD software had succeeded to assist designers in creating wide frame geometry, modelling using 3D parametric feature, the ability to use again the design components, generate automatically the design standard components, producing amazing 3D visualizations and other capabilities that you never could think will be able to make designing easier for designers.


CHAPTER 2.2 ARCHITECTS AND THEIR 1960s DREAMS

Archigram, a renowned British Architectural group believed that modern technology would bring about a new era in building design. Big dreams they had, coming out with inventive sketches and articulate essays but no clients dared to commission them. The world simply wasn’t ready for their ideas. Later in the 1990s, the world had become a totally different place with great technologies, which some people would never imagined back then. It is only with recent advances in computer science and technology that many of these ideas and structures became relatively possible. Subsequently, architects and engineers began to harness the powerful software to achieve their somewhat ‘impossible’ attempts, which brought architecture to a whole new level, a quantum leap to the unknown. This is when the quotes ‘Imagination creates reality’ and ‘Anything one man can imagine, other men can make real' comes into the picture.

Peter Cook and Colin Fourniew, who are the former Archigram colleagues, who once foresee the future in architecture with technologies, can now fulfill their boyhood ambitions and build their dreams. It was a chance to accomplish their mission, by making good on the promises sketched out all those years ago in order to recapture their 1960s dreams.

Interview Session

 

INTERVIEWER- MR DICKIE ONG CHYE HUAT

Education : Architecture – University of East London

Professional Status :
Mr Dickie Ong is the principal of Axial Interior Design and has more than 20 years of working experience as a designer. He worked for numerous architectural and interior design firms and has experience in design and builds projects mostly in hospitality and corporate office. Over the years Mr Dickie has also managed projects overseas. He has attained Bachelor of Science (Hons) in Architecture and is also a registered interior designer with the Board of Architects; Malaysia (LAM) http://www.lam.gov.my and a fellow member of Malaysian Institute of Interior Designers.

He is also :

• A member of the Inspection Team of Malaysian Hotel by Ministry of Culture, Arts and Tourism Malaysia

• A member of Technological Association Malaysia (TAM)

• A visiting lecturer at KBU International College, Sunway University

• A industry panelist at the Universiti Sains Malaysia.

 Project Experiences :
Proposed Malacca Hotel; Melaka
ONE Bahrain (Serviced & Residence Apartments) , Bahrain
600 Hectar Masterplan – Vungthua, Vietnam
Le Meridien Hotel, Coimbatore, India
Impiana Villa- Kato Noi, Phuket, Thailand
AoPo Marina-Phuket, Thailand
Dining (KELAH) Cruise – Putrajaya, Malaysia
Holiday Villa Serviced Apartment, Kuala Lumpur
Grandstand No 3, Royal Brunei Polo Club, Brunei
Palace for the Foreign Minister; Hijau Baiduri Brunei
Miller Insurance (Corporate Office), Damansara, Malaysia
Rabo Bank (Corporate Office), KL, Malaysia
Proposed Refugees Transit Camp for UNHCR & Red Crescent, Malaysia
Pan Pacific Hotel; KLIA
Royal India Fine Dining Restaurant; Double Tree, Kuala Lumpur
Charlie Brown Cafe; KLCC Kuala Lumpur

• The interview session with Mr Dickie was conducted on the 13th of November at 10.30am.

•  Another interview session with Architect Lim Jit Hui was also carried out on the 16th of November at 11am.

CAD versus Sketching, Why Ask?

Found an interesting article "CAD versus Sketching, Why Ask? by James Self"online, please have a look by clicking on this link:

http://www.core77.com/blog/education/cad_versus_sketching_why_ask_by_james_self_21844.asp

Introduction (with methodologies)

The term ‘Digital technology in architecture’ which is defined as the usage of digital technology in architecture, is not foreign in this field as architects and designers have long incorporated digital technology in their professional practice. Digital technology enables immense amounts of information to be compressed on small storage devices that can be easily preserved and transported. Digitization also quickens data transmission speeds. It has transformed how people communicate, learn, and work. Thanks to the advancement of technology, architecture has now evolved into something that was unimaginable 50 years ago. ‘Avant-garde’ ideas and concepts came across many architects’ minds but were left unbuilt due to limitations of technologies in the past. In this digital era, there are a handful of great examples to prove that the extensive usage of digital technology in architecture had indeed promote the birth of amazing architectures, namely the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, and the Olympic stadium in China (Bird’s Nest Building and Water Cube). This is a similar situation for many architects and designers who had a hard time articulating and expressing crazy ideas in their design using manual drawing skills and sketches. Probably there were abundant of crazy and creative ideas in their head, but somehow they just could not convey their ideas comprehensively for the world to appreciate them. Now, with the help of technology, people can just express their ideas using computer software and share their amazing ideas and concepts with anyone they want, making designing easier than before.

These new technologies are helping to transform architectural surfaces far beyond the traditional norms of architecture. In short, digital technologies have helped to define a new frontier for architecture. Not only that, it has entirely revolutionized the design process for architects and designers, be it in the conceptualization stage, form derivation, design process, execution of design, construction matter and even solving complex calculations. The main instrument used is of course, the computer which hence gave birth to a new term in the industry, which is known as CAD, an abbreviation for Computer Aided Design. CAD software includes AutoCAD, Autodesk 3dsMax, Autodesk Revit, Maya and Rhino.

The topic for this dissertation is ‘Digital Technology in Architecture which has already been defined in the passage above. I would like to look into a more specific area in this dissertation which is the effect of digital technology on architects and designers. Therefore I would like to examine how digital technology (design software) for instance AutoCAD, Autodesk 3dsMax, Google SketchUp, Maya and Rhino has helped architects and designers in their design process, which includes generating ideas in the conceptualization stage, 3D modeling and visualization besides. Next, I wish to study how digital technology has possibly changed the way architects and designers think and work, with various design software available to be explored.

The methodology used in order to collect the data and information for this writing is by carrying out firsthand research by conducting an online survey with architecture, interior architecture and interior design students in order to obtain information about their opinions on the usage of digital technology in architecture. Besides, I would also have an interview session with our local Malaysian architects and designers to acquire their thoughts about how digital technology has affected the way designers think and work nowadays. Second hand research would also be the source of my research along the way, which includes information attained through books, online journals, website, videos and analyzing relevant case studies in the chapters.

Background

Timeline of the emergence of digital technology in architecture

CAD drafting history is practically as old as the first computers. The ideology of contemporary CAD (computer-assisted design) drafting programs is rooted in early advancements in computer programming in the 1960s and '70s. The true breakthrough regarding CAD technologies could be credited to the SKETCHPAD which is a drafting tool developed at MIT by Ivan Sutherland in 1963. It did not only enable designers to draw on their monitors by using a pen of light but also further demonstrated that computers could be used for drafting and modelling. However, due to the high expense associated with the technology, CAD software was predominantly used and developed by large private businesses such as GM and Renault. During the 1970s, CAD drawings were largely a variation of traditional drafting, as drawings could be produced only in two dimensions. 

Following the lead of aerospace and automotive engineers, architects began using CAD technology in the 1980s. Subsequently, solid modelling and 3D software were invented in the 1980s and revolutionized design and manufacturing industries. The year 1990 is also significant for the development and implementation of digital technology and one major breakthrough in the architectural field is the emergence of rendering 3D design. Architectural practice without graphic software had become unimaginable.

The fact that digital culture has been made possible by the emergence of an information-based society at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is generally agreed by historians. This era was a major transformation that corresponds roughly to what specialists of technology often call the Second Industrial Revolution.

The architects back then had their 1960’s dreams too, but the world simply wasn’t ready for their ideas. Archigram, a renowned British Architectural group believed that modern technology would bring about a new era in building design. Big dreams they had, coming out with inventive sketches and articulate essays which could only became relatively possible in the 1990s. Powerful software was harnessed by architects to achieve their somewhat ‘impossible’ attempts in the past. It was a chance to make good on the promises sketched out all those years ago in order to recapture their 1960s dreams, like the saying ‘Imagination creates reality’ goes.