The wood and the trees

The wood and the trees

When it comes to digital design, computer-aided design, computational design, design computing or whatever you want to call it, I have increasingly the feeling that we cannot see the wood for the trees. We're always into something -some approach, some technology, some technique- that seems to absorb us completely. I look back at the considerable literature produced in this area and such matters appear to dominate: there's arguably too much research done into issues that appeal to the initiated only. One should not underestimate the technical challenges involved in applying computer technologies to architecture but however elegant, intriguing or fundamental, these challenges are only part of the story and moreover a part that doesn't promote the story to a wider audience. If there's some value in computational applications in architecture, we should surely search for it in cognitive and social areas. While we struggle with BIM servers, social media are proliferating society; we talk about 4D, 5D etc. but pay little attention to how one recognizes an architectural representation.Having worked with enough computing technologies, I've grown less sensitive to new ones that essentially repeat the promise of earlier ones and even to new applications (after all, they tend to be structurally similar to earlier ones) but my interest in what happens in one's head and between it and the world remains undiminished.