Oct '08 - Jun '09
what do you do when you have so much work for studio and very little time before the final review? you write a post, of course. ^_^ so anyway...
my school is known for embracing computers and being open to how they can affect potential futures in architecture. the past few weeks have been a bit interesting for me, as i kind of fell into the columbia stereotype, and had dug out from the depths of my brain as much programming knowledge as i could remember from undergrad cs classes i took like ten years ago. i was fortunate to get more help on this effort from a couple people, one being mark bearak who graduated last spring. he has be super helpful in getting me more bearings on the script beyond the basic logic/info i can remember. (thanks, mark!) unfortunately, though, the current setup of my studio plus the learning curve on the very powerful, very dense language of visual basic have taken the upper hand... and my few weeks of feeble coding effort are going the way of the trash bin.
slightly saddened at its abandonment, and slightly surprised that i traveled down the "let's script a whole bunch of stuff!" route, brings me to the question on how should architects approach scripting/programming and architecture. my classmates may find it weird that that i am asking this, or that i even took up this effort to script in the first place, as i tend to not swim in those pools of interest in the school. (and particularly in the past few days as i have voiced frustrations on my stalled efforts and seen those efforts fumble into oblivion). don't get me wrong, i find it cool and would have loved for my studio project to have a stronger generative aspect to its creation.
but in general, this begs the question of if it is the best use of an architect's time to spend, say, 20 hours making a bit of code to do something when it would have taken someone from the computer science realm less than 2? and with the depth of knowledge that someone with a computer science background has, would he or she produce something less simplistic and push the boundaries of not only architecture but programming itself? should there be more explicit training in programming to overcome this learning curve hurdle? or in the professional world, which i will soon reenter in all its crappy-financial-market glory, should there be more collaboration/discourse between computer programmers and the architects at the bleeding edge of the field in this area? will this bring architecture from being an adopter/adapter of other fields' methodologies into one that is at the forefront of that adopted/adapted field as well as in architecture? is there a better model to approaching this than what is happening now?
just thoughts, no answers. many of you probably have positions on architecture and generative design (whether or not through specifically hard-coding of lines of syntax), and it'd be interesting to hear your thoughts on this as well.
2 Comments
i'm undecided about this. i believe architects should become more knowledgeable of these tools as computing becomes more pervasive in all professions, but at the same time i think there might be too much emphasis on these techniques in architecture studio. in other words, i don't think it should define an entire studio agenda as i have seen in many instances. i've come to this conclusion from witnessing students spend days and weeks trouble-shooting a script when that time could have been spent thinking through a design problem more comprehensively. many times, all that is produced in the end is a script that would have been cutting edge back in the early 80s. all in all, i think scripting is important, but should be peripheral and not the focus of design studios.
you've learned one very valuable real world experience here, if someone else can do in 1/10 the time for roughly the same pay as yourself - have them do it.
in '01 I was using QBasic to use scripts to get work done quicker, but I wasn't good enough at programming to make it worth my time.
i worked for 5 years and went back to a grad program that wanted you to learn scripting in Rhino in an amazing 3-4 months. a fellow student who actually had a CS degree refused to script - he thought architecture was something else.
the only reason scripts ever interested me was to make my visions quicker and most importantly ways to make a lot of money, like producing construction drawings for a curtain wall really fast or a way to do zoning to 3D very quickly.
generitive really isn't that interesting, especially when you're an architect who at best as DOT says produces something that was cool in the 80's or something Stephen Wolfram did when he was like 10 on his Apple IIE.
you had the experience, and now you are wiser for it.
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