Technology adoption

 Technology adoption

I'm fed up with people asking the rhetorical question why this or that technology have a low rate of adoption in this or that area. What they imply is that we are fools not to acknowledge the potential of what they are propagating. Well, they may believe in the promise of blockchains, 3D printing or even BIM bit real evidence of performance improvement is often scarce. We are called to trust the prophets of innovation and adopt not just the technologies but also some prescriptive or proscriptive framework for their deployment and application. And if things don't work as expected, it's often the users' fault for not believing enough to apply the technologies as faithfully as required. 

This is irritating enough to throw the technologies back to their face but I actually think that the mediocre performance one achieves with many new technologies is actually what we should expect. The reason for that is that the technologies are deployed within contexts that define what can be achieved more that the technologies themselves. One can 3D-print a minimal shelter like a tent but cannot do the same with a conventional building of bricks, tiles, concrete, wood, steel, glass etc. 3D printing seems inevitably restricted to homogeneous subsystems of the whole. The way these subsystems come together to form the building has possible limitations and inefficiencies that remain largely unaffected. In fact, it may get even worse if 3D printing is overspecialized. 

Similarly, if BIM is used to produce the drawings, bills of materials etc. customary in conventional design and construction, then the performance of BIM is ultimately bounded by the limitations of such documents and the practices around them. Again, moreover, the new technology may reinforce the existing situation and make its limitations more pronounced. This, however, does not mean that the goals of the new technology have not been achieved: the documents may be produced faster, easier, more completely etc. The problem is that the goals are constrained in a timid or arbitrary way. 

Such constraints make it hard to understand the true potential of each technology because they define it relatively to others. Imagine, for example, that we are re-introducing the venerable dual technologies of pen and paper as an alternative to computing technologies (handwriting is actually one of the original digital technologies but not in the sense we use the term "digital" today - just think about it). We will have little difficulty exalting the relative promise of these technologies: low cost, wide availability, familiarity, no electricity requirements (hence good for the environment), effortless multimediality (at least concerning combining letters, numbers, drawings and various notations on the same page) - clear advantages over digital means. However, asking users to reproduce a laser-printed page with their handwriting would be unwise. It would introduce an arbitrary framework of adoption that could only lower performance. Asking users to write in a legible hand is not only more realistic but also meaningful and constructive. The real performance of pen and paper is unrelated to copying computer-produced text; it's all about the cognitive, psychological and other brain-related advantages of coordinated work with the eyes and the hands, especially concerning language, about which we have been hearing more and more in the last decade. Handwriting is making a comeback because we need it in ways that may be unrelated to computing technologies. 

Technology deployment and adoption should therefore connect to the real goals behind the technology and the real needs of the users, not the compromised first steps that are deemed safe in a fixed, conservative world. Such a world does not exist. 

The con of computerization

The con of computerization

Like a con artist, a scientific area I know rather intimately is known by many names: computer-aided architectural design, design computing, computational design, digital architecture, digitization or digitalization … And like a con artist it keeps promising the same things to different people without delivering much in the end. I've come to consider this a primary characteristic of the area: rather than delivering, it shifts its attention to new clients. CAD was aimed at designers and engineers but it failed to become more than admittedly adaptable but nevertheless expensive drawing. BIM was sold to a wider market of largely unknowing yet enthusiastic and powerful stakeholders. BIM has yet to deliver but now we have digitalization and proptech, which appeal to artistic designers and property managers respectively. Fundamentally the area has been promising more or less the same in different guises.
Much of this is inherent in computerization: it's full of short-lived technologies, early market share acquisition, gadgeetering and wannahaves with little practical value beyond fashion and exhibition. My life is full of obsolete technologies -things that work perfectly well but have been superseded in what they do- and, even though I often discard as much as I can, they keep accumulating. Any individual, any area involved in computerization falls victim to the transience of computing technologies.
Unfortunately many areas make it even worse by their lack of historical memory. It is impressive how often I get a feeling of déjà-vu reading research proposals or reports: it is not only that new generations want to do the same stuff as there predecessors, they also appear ignorant of earlier attempts and especially failures. And if one points this out, the usual reaction is one of solipsistic dismissal: yes, others may have tried it already but we have better technologies and better brains, so we'll do it anyway. Unfortunately, new attempts generally fail in more or less the same way as previous attempts. Ironically many talk of machine learning but human learning appears to be ignored.
In conclusion, the whole thing feels like a con: promises without return, merely selling the idea to the naïve, the ignorant, the deluded. And the worst thing is that everybody seems to behave like a con artist.

Teylers Museum: a time machine

Teylers Museum: a time machine

At the Teylers Museum in Haarlem, reputedly the first and oldest museum in the Netherlands: interesting building, eclectic collection, typical of earlier times. I have the feeling of going back in time, not just because of the old, rather worn building with its sloping wooden floors and the old-fashioned cabinets that remind me of my school back in the middle of the 20th century.





What really takes me back are the yellowing, type-written or calligraphically handwritten cards and labels next to the exhibits in the cabinets - true remnants of a bygone era. It used to be like that, people made everything themselves, using what they had: scraps of paper, pens, typing machines - and we all thought the results were great.





Nowadays even the most incompetent computer user can produce results that would have been of the highest professional level back then, using fonts and clip art, colour and all kinds of effects. Our possibilities have grown explosively but I wonder if the same applies to our capacities. Nowadays there are too many machines between us and what we make, layers of mediation that attenuate feedback and make procedures even more prescriptive. If they ever replace the old labels and cards at Teylers Museum, I don't think I'll come back for another visit.

Critical or constructive?

Critical or constructive?

Having been involved in computerisation from the early days of its popularisation in the 20th century, I'm often involved in ambitious projects that aspire to develop Company 2.0 or Society 3.0 - that kind of visionary, disruptive and innovative stuff that has become so popular. My involvement is thankfully limited: brainstorms in the early, conceptual stages or evaluations at the end. I sit in conference rooms, like I did last week, and listen to big words with little understanding of the technologies involved and their possible consequences. People are drunk with the potential of their world - not specific technologies but the abstract, vague spirit of the age: AI, blockchains, BIM, social media, big data are magic wands that can transform their reality into something else, something new that will help primarily their career.

It's difficult to remain constructive under such circumstances, lacking in structure and clarity of approach. What I hear reminds me of people excitedly buying more and more stuff for their homes, gadgets and furnishings with questionable utility, without any intention of replacing old stuff, without any thought as to combine the new with the old, just overloading and cluttering their lives. Yes, one can be eclectic and promote heterogeneity into a virtue but coherence has its advantages, especially if it helps reduce cost and effort. Computerisation remains too expensive and demanding to take it as a mere collage of an ever-growing collection tools and micro-environments. It's not enough to claim that one's making a new version of the world; one has to specify this version in a coherent and comprehensive manner.

But even if I would be inclined to neglect the overall picture, it's hard not to be critical of such individual tools and micro-environments. People just buy any old thing from so-called developers and advisors (most of them are just resellers of products with added unnecessary services: servitisation is for the benefit of the seller, not of the buyer), impressed by modernity and peer acceptance. They buy things that might overlap with what they already have, things that might not do what they expect, things that might perform worse than alternatives digital or analogue. Even worse, they often seem unable to take a step back and look at the mess they're buying.

So, what am I supposed to do? The easy option is to just sit there and nod gravely, letting them do the interpretation of my silence. Yet I cannot resist attempts to make them think for themselves, to offer them some starting point for structuring and explaining their own thoughts. It seldom works; one cannot talk rationally to junkies, it appears. Let the world dissolve into tiny pieces, each governed by salespeople and PR. We're rich enough to support them all, it transpires.

Ghosts of buildings

Ghosts of buildings 

Virtual prototyping is a fascinating subject. Most people are attracted to it for practical reasons, for example because it allows us to develop and test designs as completely as possible, eliminating most mistakes and reducing error margins. Anyone involved in BIM would directly affirm that. My problem is that although I concur that these practical reasons are quite significant, I'm not sure that the improvement over other means of representation, specification and analysis like conventional drawings on paper is that big.

I think that there's more to virtual prototyping than these practical benefits; at least, more that attracts people to it. It's just like the old discussion: what's better, radio or television? Radio people would suggest that radio is better because it allows people to use their imagination. I'm unsure about that, too, but it's clear that radio allows more in terms of abstraction and reference. Some things are possible on radio but not on television. Radio comedy like the Goon Show made excellent use of these possibilities. On television, these jokes were impossible.

When it comes to architecture, I believe that the opposite is the case: conventional drawings ask too much of the readers; they require knowledge, understanding and slow interpretation to let readers imagine the three-dimensional form and its experience. Virtual prototypes, on the other hand, are complete ghosts of buildings that allow readers to see their form directly and imagine how they would experience them with high plausibility. However much I love architectural drawings and consider at least some of them, like floor plans, truly invaluable, the potential of virtual prototyping in architecture goes far beyond practical reasons; most aspects, such as its aesthetics, have yet to be fully understood.

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence 

I do expect a lot from artificial intelligence. First of all, I'm sure that low-level practical intelligence can liberate human designers from trivial or repetitive tasks, like the proper positioning of a door, so that they can concentrate on the bigger picture, e.g. how circulation takes place in the design. One should obviously know all about doors and their positioning but shouldn't have to spend too much time on each door in a design.

In addition to this small yet essential stuff (and rather tricky in terms of intelligence), I want even more from computers, especially feedback from analyses that monitor design actions and decisions, calculating their impact on behaviour and performance, so as to give early warning to the human designers. The analyses and simulations already exist to a large degree but have yet to be integrated in designing as they should be for this kind of immediate and continuous feedback. Analysing a design once it's practically finished contributes little to improving the design.

If this partnership between the analytical computer as an intelligent design assistant and the creative human designer seems obvious, one can't say the same about intelligence that allows computers to understand design intentions through types, grids, schemata etc. and impose these as coordinating devices. It may seem strange that an analytical assistant should take over the design like that but there's a lot an assistant can do to promote consistency, including assuming such a coaching role. This can also prove liberating to designers, letting them focus on intermediate levels (the spatial aspects that often go wrong in buildings), as well as making them see the overall picture that emerges from their possibly uncoordinated actions. Who know what kind of clever distortions and antitheses they might conjure up once they realise it.

Popularisation

Popularisation

Not so long ago, when a particular founding father of my area was mentioned in a discussion (often unfavourably), someone would say it and the others would concur: yes, but he's doing a great job popularising design computing. It was a strange reaction: it combined negative undertones with a genuine pleasure that someone was trying to explain the value of the area to a wider audience. I must admit that I liked him; I wouldn't trust him (as most of the founding fathers) but I enjoyed his style.

Some time after his early death, I tried to re-read his books. I was rather disappointed. There was too much futurology for my taste but what made me really uneasy was the rhetoric: it was the usual architectural stuff, attempts to impress through references, clever observations and limitless, speculative theorising. It's forgettable stuff, after all. I'm not saying this just about this particular author. Many areas like design computing become too desperate to become accepted, to be admired by a target group - in this case, architects. On the one hand, it is only logical: this is the wider audience - schools of architecture and architects in practice. To succeed, design computing had to become accepted as a way of designing, appeal to architects who would then use it to compose. Only then would design computing achieve its true goals. The rest (visualisation, communication, information management) are mere efficiency improvements that have little to offer to the core of architecture.

Now that there's little resistance to computing in architecture, design computing still remains in the periphery. Eminent architects may use computers to design but most are just clever users. I guess that popularisation didn't work as expected, perhaps because the wrong target group was chosen: people who couldn't care less or who didn't have the power to change or interest in change. Another possibility, of course, is that popularisation mostly promotes the populariser, making him a known figure for what others have done. So, what do I do with his books? I gift them to colleagues who come late to matters digital and they are thoroughly impressed. He was really good at that, after all.

The recurring fascination with generative systems

The recurring fascination with generative systems 

Soon after I had entered the area that used to be called CAAD (Computer-Aided Architectural Design), I realised it was motivated by two quite distinct and actually conflicting ambitions: to computerise drawing and to automate design. The design automators were in power back then, leading the area with creeds like "intelligent design versus stupid drawing". I didn't agree; I have always been fond of drawing and fascinated by visual representations in general.

Still, when the democratisation of computing meant that computerised drawing became commonplace and hence dominant, I was less than pleased for the basic reason that much in computerised drawing was not about new, intelligent representations but about producing the same old stuff on paper, only seemingly more efficiently (people think that efficiency is merely the ability to change easily the content of digital documents). What followed is what one can see in architectural education and practice today: an overemphasis on visualisation, combining poorly readable line drawings with lavishly rendered perspectives, meaningless or jittery walkthroughs and often no time to study all those images for the benefit of the design.

The funny thing is that design automation persists and is resurrected by every other generation of students and your researchers, who somehow inherit or more frequently rediscover the appeal of the same techniques for generating patterns one can pass off as schematic designs. Among them, those relating to space allocation never fail to come up: one makes a list of rooms, determines some clustering of these rooms, uses some elementary way of arranging them in a floor plan, usually without the benefit of architectural knowledge (e.g. spatial typology), makes some manual adjustments to make the layout look less like the product of a child playing the architect, and calls it a design. It's amazing how easily people believe in the same old, tired techniques. It could make one believe that they have some inherent power but I suspect that they're simply easy enough to be rediscovered again and again. That they lead to nothing and are forgotten for a generation or so is a truer indication of their power.

Parametric

Parametric 

I've just spent a couple of days checking out a leading parametric package for architectural design. It's not bad and I like the interaction with the design representation, although the so-called visual programming can result into rather cumbersome graphs - still, one (and especially beginner programmers) should appreciate the overview it offers.

My appreciation of the possibilities offered by the package are only tempered by the examples I've come across in the tutorials and even more by the code so generously made available on the Internet by so many users: it's mostly not about parametric applications; people use the package as a handy programming interface to do stuff one normally does with humble macros. It's not about parameters and constraints but about automating repetitive tasks, circumventing limitations in the editing software and the like.

One might say that this is legitimate use; if people are troubled by such issues, why not use a better programming environment to solve them? To this I can voice many objections. Firstly, editing software should be better equipped to solve all practical issues, including repetitive interactive manipulations. Secondly, using parametric software to do non-parametric stuff may create the wrong idea to many users, namely that this is all that parametric design is about. Thirdly, we are paying too much attention to trivial problems, often caused by convention and poor software design, rather than paying more attention to the relation between designing and the performance of what we design. Even if one doesn't believe in parametric design, the proposition of reducing design to the manipulation of a few parameters in a cleverly constructed network can be fascinating.

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.