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.