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Contributing Design Editor, Wall Street Journal + Creative Director, Maclaren Nursery by David Netto
Jan 10
2011
Do you think the effect of CAD is discernable yet in the built environment of the last ten years? Hand drawing is now barely part of an architect's education, and totally absent from practice. For all its advantages of convenience this technology will change the end result of form in architecture in ways that are hard to predict.
Can we see the effect of CAD yet in contemporary buildings? Other than the obvious and largely well-received example of Frank Gehry, what architecture can we point to as evidence of the positives? What are the hidden costs of designing by keyboard rather than drafting? Since there's no going back, why should we care?
Josh gave the final word
I think that one of the greatest and most disturbing impacts of digital design delivery and CAD-centric design offices is not immediately visible when viewing architecture, at least not in the way one can observe the change in architectural styles over the decades. The impact is more indirect, yet extremely widespread. The concept that I’m alluding to is the significant increase of the speed and rate at which our society designs and builds new buildings. An architectural project during antiquity was an enormous undertaking, involving a design heavily guided by historical precedent, and necessitating a period of construction that might span multiple generations. Similarly, these projects were designed to last for hundreds of years. They were seen as irreversible additions to the grid of the city. Architects practicing in 2011, typically with building information systems software as their primary tools, can facilitate the realization of a built project from the schematic design phase startlingly fast. Not only has this evolution affected the speed of fabrication and the quality of the final product, but it has begun to sponsor a shift in attitude about the permanence of architecture. Our market economy’s obsession with discounting future uses and materials in favor of instant gratification has created a cheapened architectural result. When buildings aren’t built to last more than 50 years, the users naturally treat them less as permanent, deliberate artifacts, but rather as a product to be consumed, and later discarded in favor of something even newer (and even more fleeting).
It bears noting that “CAD” and associated digital production techniques do not bear sole responsibility for this phenomenon. Their widespread use, however, has clearly encouraged this attitude of buildings and building material as ways to satisfy a trend, rather than a consequential construction. So is the effect of CAD visible in today’s buildings? If any of them are still around in 2061, you may have your answer.
Friday, January 14 at 5:11pm
I agree with Hayden. CAD is simply the tool, same as the drafting table, T-square, triangle and pencil/pen. The benefit of CAD and BIM is seen in what Hayden mentions last – Schedule and Budget. CAD and BIM enable us to produce work much faster and more efficient, thereby reducing budget and schedule concerns. But it is finite. The human behind the computer can only produce according to his/her abilities with the tool. I personally still draft by hand for client meetings and I’ve always got my sketch book with me, but production is simply more efficient and of a higher quality than with vellum and pen.
Tuesday, January 11 at 11:54am
I think that for some contemporary buildings CAD has made possible fantastic sculptural forms that could not have previously been realized, and for that it is wonderful and inspiring. At the same time the cookie-cutter factor of contemporary suburban sprawl seems to have grown exponentially since the first Levittowns – and I think it is the public’s acceptance of a cut and paste approach that is most disappointing.
My working relationship with CAD is as a footwear designer, and so I can say without a doubt that using CAD to design has taken the life, beauty, creativity and craftsmanship out of much of fashion and footwear today, with a few exceptions for bespoke shoes and performance technologies in sneakers.
I work almost entirely by hand, and I’ve met only a few designers in my generation (Millennials) that do this. I believe it is an advantage that allows for greater control, more nuanced form, clearer communication and ultimately a higher quality product. Do architects feel the same way? As @Hayden Salter mentioned, having enough time is a key factor, and I’ve found designing with CAD is often a substitute for time or experience in footwear and fashion.
Tuesday, January 11 at 6:25pm
I agree a lot with what Emily is saying here, but also am coming at this question from a different perspective than architecture (my experience is with product design.) CAD is an awesome tool that, when used properly, helps architects- and designers- realize projects that would have been difficult if not impossible without the tool. It can also help dramatically with efficiency and staying on budget.
That being said, I believe that buildings and products crafted entirely in CAD often lack the human emotion that comes with slower techniques, like drafting. I’m a supporter of the slow movement, and believe that even though hand techniques, like drafting, may be slower than CAD, there is a lot to be gained through that slower process.
I’m interested to see if there really is ‘no going back,’ or if there may be an emerging trend of architects returning to drafting as a more intuitive way to design. That being said, I have worked with graduate architecture students and am appalled at their overall lack of sketching skills…
Wednesday, January 12 at 9:54am
My impression is that work of some firms, maybe like Asymptote, is governed by the possibilities of recent developments in software. And my understanding of the philosophy of “Parametricism” espoused by Patrick Schumacher is that he quite forcefully declaring a new paradigm in architecture based upon conventions of 3D modeling and animation software. I have the sense that the possibilities and limitations of software programs are dictating the aesthetic traits of such designers’s work. I sometimes question how closely some the more fantastical geometry and semblance translates into built form, and broadly whether such design is worthwhile simply because it is possible to make on a computer rather than definitively making for better architecture.
Wednesday, January 12 at 3:13pm
The topic of CAD has to encompass the larger suite of computing tools that interface with it, in order to understand its effect on architecture. Where the concept will always originate with the designer the tool used can only serve as the enabler. In Flushing Meadow Park, Philip Johnson’s New York State Pavilion boasts the World’s largest pre-stressed cable roof (not bad for a 47 year old New York building with zero maintenance) all designed on the board (by Lev Zetlin) while the nearby stainless steel Unisphere could not have been built without computer aided design (in one of its earliest forms) due to the complexity of the wind loads it encounters. It is when function trumps material cost, due to the ultimate cost of weight, that computer aided design plays out in form, as it typically does in aerospace applications. In residential building, varience in material properties require hefty load margins and form factors tend to get averaged out, so extreme cantilevers and thin shell structures are less common. When CAD comes into play it is more likely to be in the form of better scheduling or more units per subdivision.
Wednesday, January 12 at 7:11pm
I believe CAD can be a strong creation tool, but it has to be taught as such rather than having the classes about how to master a specific type of software. With new more intuitive technologies on the rise -I am perhaps looking at products like the iPad to pioneer new CAD ‘soft’ tools, I can already start to imagine better ways to throw what is in our heads out into reality, while, of course, passing through a computer of some sort…
To compliment MM’s comment about parametrics, let us remember there is always the designer’s decision on what starts off as acceptable forms as well as what is chosen in the end, and probably in various steps along the way. Whether these designers value architectural quality over aesthetic form is an entirely different question.
Wednesday, January 12 at 8:29pm
What’s interesting to me about this discussion is first, the answer is obvious. Of course, the influence of CAD is immediately present, if not also quite prevalent, when my eyes experience a city skyline. Possibly, this is true of my eyes even more than most architect’s my age who were raised on CAD, and certainly more than all of today’s recent graduates of architecture school. But, more interesting, is the reason why. So secondly, and not surprisingly, no one has mentioned the term CAD-cAm in their effort to illustrate probably the most important reason that CAD influence can be readily seen in today’s architecture. Of course, most might say this is a chicken/egg argument. I subscribe to the notion that the egg came long before the chicken in the biology world, probably a few hundred million years before. So, the point is that we could try to tie the CAD world to the CAM world and look at how their interdependency has influenced our skyline.
Released in 1982, AutoCad took a few years to become the rave. I left Architectural Engineering Institute in 1981, luckily went right to work for a prestigious specialized sub-contractor in my home town and fortunately, my company purchased four workstations of AutoCad in 1983, and my company , by 1990, became one of the top five in the US of companies of its type. However, because my own personal distinct drafting style (by hand) had already become as special as it was specialized, I elected not to do the CAD training offered by my company. This is not a bad thing. My company & industry probably benefited by such decisions by others besides just myself. The answer should be obvious to whether a CAD trained draftsman, or an old school draftsman’s work was desired back then when an important presentation needed to be made to an owner/designer by a specialized subcontractor via drafted drawings.
But, 10 years later when working freelance I eventually learned AutoCad in order to save myself eons of time when doing full size layouts for complex ramp & twist, and compound miter layouts. This enabled me to make a $75.00/hr. instead $25.00/hr. fifteen years ago. I appreciated the magic of CAD immensely. Today, I probably appreciate more, that I know what a dry cleaning pad is, that I’ve cranked a mimeograph machine more times than most graduate students have clicked open a CAD drawing with a mouse, and that I, unlike today’s graduate student, can get by in a pinch without a calculator, and sometimes more quickly than someone with one in front of them. Let me not stray too far into my experience in specialized drafting in what some old-school draftspeople call stereotomy.
What does all this have to do with the CAM in CAD-CAM? When I began my specialization in 1981, buildings like Philip Johnson’s Lipstick Building at 53rd and 3rd, or AT&T Headquarters on Madison Avenue with its neo-classical pediment were considered unusual, and certainly not too far in front of Frank Gehry’s potato chips. Of course, back then there were very clear limitations to the limit of pushing the envelope on a budget relative to affordable shapes available. It was still very common in the early eighties for a specialized artisan draftsman who worked for a sub-contractor to spend hours a week on the telephone with a major project architect of a major architectural firm on a very major high end commercial construction project. This is almost completely unheard of today.
For example, I remember when I could call so-and-so project architect in IM Pei’s office who may have been meeting with Mr. Pei at the moment, and say, “Yeah I need to speak to him right away,” and he’d come to the phone. Try getting through like that now without being the CEO of a major company. Architects were a different species of draftsmen then and draftsmen of any ilk communed like draftsmen.
There was no such thing as firing .dwg files back and forth across the ether. When the advent of the facsimile machine came about, I distinctly remember standing in front of one a few hours a week firing hand-drawn sketches back and forth with high end architects to bring things in at budget without the requirement of a meeting with a Construction Manager to micro-mediate an architect’s vision. The lack of this today is not a bad thing. The lack of this is just proof that the advent of CAM came about not because of the advent of CAD, but because there was a need to keep pace with the much quicker production of subcontractor shop & erection drawings that was being fueled by the being cornered into deadlines by the advent of fast track construction at the dawn of the more than decade long bull market.
Somehow all this business of speediness transferred to the private sector wherein now we must also finish a Guggenheim, Bilbao as fast as we finish a skyscraper on 6th Avenue. What does all this mean? CAD has been good for all. CAD has been good for CAM, but CAM in turn enables the designer’s vision to be produced more cost effectively, and certainly more quickly. I remember once in the early ‘80’s – during the pre-CAD-CAM days – three of us draftsmen laying out full size a lobby wall the size of a small town on a factory floor with a 300’ radius hand-made compass all the while worrying about the schedule as much as the budget. So, as they say, necessity is the mother of invention.
Then I remember standing in an industry-famous stone factory in Italy in 1989 as a CAD-CAM pantograph – the size of a NYC luxury condo – culled out for the very first time – in history perhaps – a radial feature wall in marble without a draftsman having to make a series of templates for another draftsman to make a series of templates for an artisan (also a draftsman of sorts) speaking another language who in turn would then make another series of metal templates to guide a machine run by two to three factory workers – this process all completed, of course, with the click of a few buttons after only one man merely loaded the machine with marble slabs and then moved on to another.
Making this process analogous to the titanium industry, we can ask, before 1989, would it have been possible to create Frank Gehry’s potato chips on schedule, and under budget? If not for greed, of course it would have been possible within reason. However, the accurate answer really is irrelevant. I don’t think it is a coincidence that Gehry’s visions began to be realized during the advent of CAM. Of course, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of other less mainstream examples, but if I can see them, others can too. There in as many tiny cities as they are in NYC, or Hong Kong. Taking into account today’s banking, diminishment of American artisans & international ones as well, and the business of fast track construction having fully eradicated the once existent kinship between educated draftsman and grey collar draftsman it is quite easy to see how CAM evolution limits the limitless possibilities of CAD, but certainly explains why it is easier for an old school draftsman to see the CAM-CAD shapes and composition changes throughout the skyline more easily than a graduate student freshly drafting in the real world can see them.
By no means, do I intend to hurt anyone’s feelings. I’ve put down my own personal million miles of lead on vellum. However, if I were asked to render the 3D design of a simple kitchen in texture and color from within the CAD environment, I’d require a full summer vacation to do so to my liking, whereas today’s draftsman could do so while eating the second half of a sandwich at lunch as he or she answers three days worth of email on an iPhone before the lunch break ends.
Then again, I could have simply said architecture has always been the mother of all the arts, and it always will, so of course, we can see CAD and CAM in the skyline. But, then again, it would not have been as much fun without infusing my 3 decades of practical experience into the topic. Yes, there’s no going back at all. I’ve got the pencil, onion skin paper, and keyboard. I hope I’ve helped.
Thursday, January 13 at 11:34am
Contributing Design Editor, Wall Street Journal + Creative Director, Maclaren Nursery by David Netto
This discussion is getting very technical and while that is good news in that people seem to really know what they’re talking about, let’s also keep it accessible to non-architects or engineers or IT technicians…
My initial thought in asking this question is whether architecture will now cease to attract a certain type of person to it as a career. As it becomes something done in front of a computer rather than drawing by hand, do we then lose the people who would really approach it from the position of an artist? (Even our most tech-savvy contributor still defines architecture as “the mother of the arts”)…
William Rutherford Mead was famous for standing over the drafting table calling out in stentorian tones the elements of classical architecture as he drew them (“cyma recta, cyma reversa…”), and Frank Lloyd Wright making the decision to spend his life at a computer is a very hard to picture. Buildings aside–by effecting a transformation of the profession from one media to another, have we lost anything in terms of who’s choosing to DO this as a career?
My guess is yes, and that the cape-wearing types might be missed.
Thursday, January 13 at 2:08pm
ok, ok…
who choses to become an architect? to some extent, i feel like i was chosen to architecture, and with the practice, have learned the software. i don’t believe that many of the starchitects out there know how to work with CAD: i have many friends that have worked in the offices of gehry, libeskind and the likes, and these top heads don’t handle software as much as they do their junior’s ideas.
if we step away from starchitecture, i still think that computer assisted drawing is making architecture more, rather than less, accessible, and i must say that most artist i have the fortune of knowing, know more and do more with technology than the average architect dares and dreams to. why can’t i have in five years from now a giant e-drawing table with strong softwares to make the thing amazing and worthy to spend a life invested with that media, and how is paper better than a screen other than by its romanticism?
i think the world is changing, twenty years ago, you might think that the same could be said about a writer, or a visual artist -yet today, look at all of us, in front of a computer, using it for our trade. the last question might be wich of the professions that is out there will not change dramatically with the introduction of computers?
as for the cape-wearing types, i have a feeling they will disappear from all types of occupations, starting yesterday: nobody cares about the new pope.
Thursday, January 13 at 9:19pm
I see a common thread in the comments here in that most would agree that CAD is but another tool to accomplish a task and not a substitute for creativity. To conclude that it may drive away the creative in light of the many other factors that accomplich this: large organizations, a focus on profit and a lack of job opportunities may be a bit of a leap. That said when relating architecture to the artisan at the product design level I can site a specific example of where something was lost: In Jamaica Queens, once in the shadow of the elevated subway, is a nondescript shop called the Klingbeil Shoe Labs, at the same location since 1959. Olympic Ice Skaters from all over the world come to this place to get custom boots fitted. From a series of measurements and tracings in various positions individual wood molds are carved, adjusted and stored for future orders. The lasting, stitching, liners and even the eyelets are all hand crafted. Bill Klingbeil, who passed away a few years ago, was so good that he could tell the ethnicity of a person from their feet. I had the opportunity to take some photos in his shop in 2004 and it was an experience I’ll never forget (if anyone is interested they are online and I’ll point you to them if you email me). Now there are many boots out there: Riedell, Jackson… that are pretty good, they are CAD designed and CAM manufactured and while Sarah Hughes won a Gold Medal in Klingbeils many other skaters have won without. Just like architects there are many factors that make a great skater but I have no doubt which boot I’d choose and in this particular case, for a quality that is very difficult to measure I’d say something was definitely lost.
Friday, January 14 at 2:00am
I do not think that the effect of CAD is discernible yet in the built environment, especially if we are talking about complex geometries like the ones Frank Gehry creates. Most buildings built today are, for the most part, simple rectilinear shapes with maybe a few curves thrown in. The software Gehry uses to produce these shapes is not a common one, and the technologies and coordination involved in executing his buildings are expensive. I think that is why these complex forms are limited to the famous architects like Gehry, who gets projects with very generous budgets. I think once the price of these complex building techniques become cheaper, architects will gladly learn the software. Also, I think developing these geometries is a process in an architects’ career. I was always surprised to learn that Gehry started out designing cubes. Maybe as more younger architects develop their designs we will see more CAD influence in buildings.
I think the problem that CAD has brought within the last few years is big picture designs with lack of attention to detail. Because a line can be drawn but also deleted with ease, not many people slow down to think “Should I be drawing this line? And if I do, is this where it should go?” I think maybe it is this careful analysis of placement of items that differentiates older buildings from newer buildings. Perhaps it is too easy to take the easy and boring way out with CAD. I think BIM has an opportunity to change all of this though because instead of thinking about a building through a series of two dimensional drawings, you can visualize it completely in 3D. BIM has the ability to create a more integrated, well thought out and analyzed building than even could be accomplished before computers. I think maybe when BIM becomes more popular in the work place we may see a more widespread change on buildings.
Another reason we have not seen much of a change in buildings over the last ten years is that the architects that are still doing much of the designing did not even go to school with computers, let alone with CAD or BIM. Perhaps once the younger generations start to take over more senior roles in design firms we will see this change. I think that we should care about the change from hand drafting to CAD because we should not lose the careful analysis of how we draw, where we place lines, and how we organize form. Even when we are in production mode, we should still be carefully placing every line on the page, furthering the design of the building even in small ways.
Friday, January 14 at 4:45pm
Although the role of hand drawing has left the architectural office it still remains a valid skill to develop as an individual, preferably while in school and one’s design sensibilities are being crafted. Hand drawing is a way of seeing and understanding something rich in spatial and textural complexity. Drawing from observation requires focus. Decisions about the purpose of the investigation are made and define the parameters of the act.
Exercises in drawing don’t necessarily directly play into how we execute work, but the skills keep us agile in observation and therefore proficient in the creation of something well crafted.
The effects of CAD are visible in the build environment of the past 10 years, in some places more than others. There seems to be a sterility to many of the projects of today, which I can only imagine connects back to the virtual reality of the computer in which it was created. It seems that virtual space, as convincing as it may be on the screen, is missing some textural, experiential quality that is hard to pin down. When the project moves directly from this virtual world onto the actual site without any interpretation, it almost seems otherworldly, as if it came from somewhere other than our physical reality. This is the extreme case. I do not see all projects in the past 10 years as having this quality. There is other, far more sensitive work that seems to come from designers with a developed sense of the physical world. What gives these designers a greater sensitivity, I can’t say for sure, but it seems a clear understanding of the physical space as developed through close observation and translation learned in the process of drawing from observation.
Drawing throughout the design process also allows things to be in various degrees of resolution and development. A sketch of a quick idea is loose and fluid, full of potential to take on a multitude of forms. Yes, a sketch done on the computer can change with the click of a mouse, but the quality of it has a rigidity and permanence. In a former office I worked at, the employees were encouraged to use hand drawing as a presentation technique for early schematic design. Even though the work was being developed with CAD, the hand drawn overlays were used for client meetings. The reasoning was that the computer rendering seemed finished, a real building, the potential for change and flexibility not visible to those outside the profession.
Although hand drawing does not have a tremendous role in the office, the development of the skills are invaluable to an architect in order to design with contextual sensitivity. As Melissa Harris states, “drawing is the language of visual thought” and so it must not be neglected in the visual world of architecture.
Friday, January 14 at 4:47pm
The act of drawing is a timeless process which has changed little since the development of the tools. On the contrary computer software and technology is constantly changing and evolving into the latest fashionable technology. There is something to be said for the craft of hand drawing. As with any practice, knowing the history, origins, and traditional ways of a craft often provide more insight into its nuances of the practice and can heighten knowledge and development through traditional methods. It is important for designers to have this knowledge, which enables them to move forward by learning from the past. According to Melissa Harris in The Tragic Choice, hand drawing slows us down and become aware of the layering and fluidity of our work, “thus imparting new readings.” This type of revelation is not always realized through other means.
Computer drawings have enabled multiple individuals to work on a single design, which has advantages and disadvantages. On one hand, it widens the range of design input, allowing for multiple perspectives to work on a single design and ideally elevating it. However, too much contribution and variation may actually ‘muddy’ a design and cause confusion or clarity issues. Computer drawings also provide more accuracy for complex configurations, which can propel the evolution of a design, whether that is seen as good or bad is up for debate. The use of CAD also allows individuals to test multiple ideas relatively quickly whereas hand drawings often require more careful contemplation of a design prior to putting pencil to paper. One method allows for a more accurate ‘real life’ experimentation process while the other requires a more critical introspective analysis of the design and individual knowledge of the way that the real world functions because one cannot rely on the software to emulate light, shadow, and material quality for them. This idea also relates to the argument that digital drawings cripple an individual into being less familiar with their work. This is not necessarily the case, especially when software is used as a tool, similar to a pencil, and the designer is still intimate and in control of the design itself. This way of working still requires the designer to think through certain instances and details, and have a greater sense of control. However, when it is used to in such a way that thinks for the designer, its use can become detrimental.
There are more and more buildings emerging that have visible evidence, both in the details as well as overall expression, which expose the source and tools of design. For example, I think it is almost impossible to argue that a design such as “Metropol Parasol”, a redevelopment project by J. Mayer H. for Plaza de la Encarnacion in Seville, Spain, could be developed through hand drawings. It would be nearly impossible to design and calculate every different intersection and detail of the building (mainly because it appears there are no two instances alike) by hand. This is an example where the scripting of digital technology is clearly evident and discernable in the expression of the architecture itself.
Friday, January 14 at 4:50pm
Josh gave the Final Word
I think that one of the greatest and most disturbing impacts of digital design delivery and CAD-centric design offices is not immediately visible when viewing architecture, at least not in the way one can observe the change in architectural styles over the decades. The impact is more indirect, yet extremely widespread. The concept that I’m alluding to is the significant increase of the speed and rate at which our society designs and builds new buildings. An architectural project during antiquity was an enormous undertaking, involving a design heavily guided by historical precedent, and necessitating a period of construction that might span multiple generations. Similarly, these projects were designed to last for hundreds of years. They were seen as irreversible additions to the grid of the city. Architects practicing in 2011, typically with building information systems software as their primary tools, can facilitate the realization of a built project from the schematic design phase startlingly fast. Not only has this evolution affected the speed of fabrication and the quality of the final product, but it has begun to sponsor a shift in attitude about the permanence of architecture. Our market economy’s obsession with discounting future uses and materials in favor of instant gratification has created a cheapened architectural result. When buildings aren’t built to last more than 50 years, the users naturally treat them less as permanent, deliberate artifacts, but rather as a product to be consumed, and later discarded in favor of something even newer (and even more fleeting).
It bears noting that “CAD” and associated digital production techniques do not bear sole responsibility for this phenomenon. Their widespread use, however, has clearly encouraged this attitude of buildings and building material as ways to satisfy a trend, rather than a consequential construction. So is the effect of CAD visible in today’s buildings? If any of them are still around in 2061, you may have your answer.
Friday, January 14 at 5:11pm
CAD changed architectural design dramatically. The first two and a half year of my undergraduate education focused on hand drawing training, while we introduced CAD into our studio work. So I could see the huge difference between hand drawing and computer drawings.
CAD drawing features by its efficiency, accuracy and it is easy to erase. Architects save space and effort for using rulers, angle meters and huge drawing board. A small screen can serve everything. We no longer worrying about redoing all the work just because a tiny mistake on a single line.
As a result of these conveniences, it is easier to become an architect than before: you are not necessarily to be accurate, to be good at pencil sketch – the computer will solve them for you. I will not regard this as a generation of lower quality, hand drawers and computer drawers are just using two different skills. But for me, as well as many architects, a good hand drawing nowadays is much more pleasant than the CAD drawings. I cannot tell whether hand drawings are more personalized or I am just nostalgic…
CAD technologies do create new types of buildings. Crazy geometry comes out, which is hardly possible to design by hand. However, surprises will not surprise you anymore if they become a fashion… I sometimes get tired when seeing ten Frank Ghery projects or Zaha Hadid monsters. At this time, I will look back to the moving hand drawings, becoming nostalgic.
CAD provides more possibilities. But I am always suspicious to this judgment. CAD is no more than computer programs, which is running under some manmade rules. As a result, the buildings are confines within what the computer program can do. I cannot believe that human brain could be less creative than computer. On the other hand, computer design is not so direct as hand drawing. If you draw a line with autoCAD, you have to change the graphic to CAD commands, which is an extra step in comparison to draw direct by hand. This extra step, more or less, will impede the design by killing several possibilities. CAD is efficient, to me, only in detailed and accurate drawings. While for the first few drafts of a scheme, hand drawing will be my first choice for it reduces the interference of CAD and gives me the most freedom. Hand drawing will always be the fastest way to realize my idea on the paper.
Friday, January 14 at 5:14pm
CAD allows new and unusual forms to be designed and constructed economically. Without CAD systems, drawing and fabrication of many designs would be prohibitively expensive and in some cases, impossible. However, actual design ideas are somewhat independent of the methods used to document them. Frank Gehry’s work is only possible because of digital methods of documentation and fabrication, but his design ideas begin as hand drawings and crumpled paper, not in the bowels of a computer. The computer is used as a tool to work out these initial ideas and eventually produce a building (albeit an expensive one). The same process can be seen in the work of Morphosis, Herzog and DeMeuron and others where CAD is used as a tool to refine and develop ideas and bring them to production in a reasonable amount of time.
The hidden costs of designing by keyboard rather than drafting by hand are hard to predict. Perhaps they are related to the costs of life in general becoming digital/virtual and being mediated through electronics…we lose the direct physical connection involved in putting spatial ideas on paper just as we lose a part of conversation when we text or a part of the experience of driving when we operate a virtual racecar. All of this activity occurs more in the space of the mind than in the space of the body, separated from the material world around us and focused on a glowing screen.
Friday, January 14 at 5:35pm
I think that the statement hand drawing is totally absent from practice is erroneous. I’ve found that most architecture students who have not had a background in hand drawing find that is what they need to learn first when they enter into professional practice. It is immensely useful for demonstrating ideas quickly, working out details, and problem solving. Perhaps it varies from practice to practice, but I’ve found hand drawing to be an essential skill as an Architect. I tend to agree with Melissa Harris, who in her article, “The Tragic Choice,” laments how hand drawing seems to be phased out of Architecture education. She argues that drawing is a “means to continual conscious learning and discovery.” The slower medium forces the drawer to make decisions about form representing, proportional relationships, and trains our eyes to become truly intelligently observant, and our hands to represent 3D imagined space. Drawing as an exercise helps to make the translation from 3D spaces in our minds to 2d or 3d representations of that space. I find it helpful to hand sketch out ideas, or places that interest me, for me it is about quickness, and capturing character, and then developing on details which strike me most interesting. At the risk of sounding nostalgic and romanticizing hand drawing, I will say that hand drawing should always be part of an Architect’s education, and no amount of pretty renderings or enticing parametric designs can ever replace it.
If asked to discern between a building that was hand drawn and one that was drawn with CAD, I’m not sure that I would be able to answer confidently, and I’m not sure that it matters. Obviously time plays a big role in the decision, as most all building designed by Architects since 1980’s are CAD drawn. The differences between a building hand drawn and on that is CAD drawn could just as easily be attributed to aesthetic tastes, and economic costs of technologies of the time in which it was designed. I suppose the main difference is that CAD buildings tend to stray from building construction conventions. An example would be East Quadrangle and the Ross School of Business building on Hill Street, right across from each other. East Quad is quite obviously an older building, no doubt hand drawn documents, while Ross Building is only a few years old. Immediately the choices in materials stand out as differences. Though the Ross building uses some brick, it is mixed with concrete, prefab metal panels and a lot of glass. East Quad, perhaps because of the more private program is limited to brick and punch-out glass windows and a hip and gable shingled roof. Ross School seems to have gone through many more iterations, which makes sense since it is much easier to do that with a CAD program. Starting drawings from scratch on a project like East Quad would take much more time and money, which is perhaps why it is so conservative and traditional; the client knew exactly what he would get based on other historical models and building construction techniques.
What the question is really after, is to identify what is lost from hand-drawing and what is gained from CAD. In other words what are the benefits to both methods, both of which should be thought of as mere tools for Architectural expression. CAD allows for quicker and more accurate detail drawings for constructions that are not typical, and is evidenced in the interesting geometries and details that architecture of the last 10 years shows. It has for the most part advanced our profession, though perhaps it has also alienated emerging Architects from hand-drawing. CAD and hand drawing are not mutually exclusive, nor should one replace the other. They are methods which vary in their usefulness at each stage in the project. For getting started, hand drawing I find to be incredibly insightful and useful in beginning to think 3 dimensionally about the space and imagining its possibilities, in relationship to the body and drawing by hand, not clicking in front of a computer screen and selecting options from a menu. Computers are weird inhuman things, and while they make our lives easier and make exciting forms and geometries possible, as well as engage clients with the quick pretty pictures and eye candy they can produce, for the designer, it is just one of many tools we use to represent our ideas. To a certain degree technologies like BIM, that are so deterministic can also become limiting agents in the process of design at which point switching mediums may pay off in solving a problem. The skill that is most essential for the Architect today is to recognize when to use which medium to achieve the maximum desired impact.
Friday, January 14 at 6:15pm
Rhetorical question, true, but let’s not forget the endless amount of average buildings designed drafted and built when only hand drafing tools existed. I don’t think we should be too nostalgic about the olden days. I agree with Hayden that there are a lot of depressing new buildings going up now, but I have to think that CAD is overwhelmingly positive in that it makes the most spectacular buildings of our age possible in a way that could not have been imagined without it.
Friday, January 14 at 7:49pm
As I sat sketching out a concept today before going to the computer to develop it, our chief IT guy passed by and said, jokingly, “You know, there’s a app for that!”
I appreciated the observation, realizing that the “A” in CAD is anachronistic and ancient. The computer is an essential element in and of design, and the argument is no longer about this or that.
We do not really “design by keyboard” but, instead, use the digital tool just as we/I used to use that box of “ship’s curves” to generate form that the straight edge otherwise constrained.
What is now much more fulfilling is that everyone in the delivery process shares the tools that enable the achievement of participation in the process of design and the delivery of spatial experiences that were otherwise unachievable.
Friday, January 14 at 8:15pm
Contributing Design Editor, Wall Street Journal + Creative Director, Maclaren Nursery by David Netto
I want to thank everyone who participated and took the time to write such thoughtful, well-reasoned and varied remarks. One thing you do learn in architecture school besides CAD is how to make an argument, I appreciate the care and clarity with which everybody who joined this conversation constructed their positions. It was not easy to choose a Last Word…
Friday, January 14 at 10:57pm
Keywords
Selected list of words appearing in this and other conversations.
Hayden Salter
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I think it´s tricky to answer the question because it feels almost rhetorical. CAD helps define and quantify but rarely serves as a tool for design. That remains the domain of sketches and models even in the cited case of Frank Gehry. The contemporary buildings that I like, whether by SANAA, OMA, Siza, Herzog and de Meuron, Ito, etc., seem almost indifferent to their drawing mechanism. So for me, CAD isn´t exactly the guilty party. It has more to do with the fact that today’s architecture settles for the generic, effortlessly drawn, easily spec’d, and controllably priced. Clients rarely look for anything else and builders prefer it that way. And the architects just keep clicking away on their keyboards trying not to fall too far behind schedule or slip too far over budget….
Monday, January 10 at 2:22pm