Reading 2

Ali Rahim, throughout his writing, clearly states his thoughts on how modern day architects should engage technology into their design processes. He starts out by introducing a phrase “feedback loop” and subtle yet important distinctions on often-confused-terms technology, technique, and technical. To summarize his points, technology is an application of technical or scientific advance to a cultural context, which only gains meaning in their applications – invention of original techniques. This in turn actively participates in a feedback loop because “technical advances give rise to new uses or technologies leading users to create techniques, that, in turn, demand technical advances, which spawn new technologies” (Rahim). In chapter two, he goes into the concept of temporality and further takes it to argue that technological practices use “temporal techniques” to create innovative works of architecture. According to Rahim, most architects, if they cared enough to consider time as a factor in their design, viewed time as essentially a neutral container for events to occur in a linear, reversible way. This underlying idea of linear, reversible time, brought design process that goes from top to bottom: where an architect first comes up with a concept first and a design that clearly shows the concept and continues the design by adding details to the initial design. Rahim says that during this process, “every effort is made not to change the initial design – in order to preserve the ‘clarity’ of the concept.” However, some architects, believe the theory of time based on thermodynamics, which states that time is irreversible, and there is a fundamental asymmetry. Those who believe in this notion of temporality use design process that goes from bottom to top: in such design process, each step in the process of design reshapes and redirects the next; instead of having an underlying initial design, by analyzing each component of design and adjusting parameters that show the relationship between each components, the architects discover relationships that are not yet known and go to the next step from there, expecting unpredicted outcome.

        Rahim mentions how “techniques, like architecture practices themselves, run the risk of becoming routine and static over time, no longer capable of or inclined toward innovation.” He criticizes “younger architects simply use CAD to implement the hand-sketched idea of a senior designer. The software merely makes this task more efficient. In this model, technology is simply collaged or superimposed onto the design process and is not allowed a more transformative role.” Last year, we started implementing CAD drawings in our design processes. The basic technique of using CAD itself, as Rahim would put, has already become routine and static. Just like the younger architects who simply use CAD for efficiency, by tracing plans and developing elevations and sections from the plans and photographs, we learned how to use CAD. I always thought of CAD as a program that is not quite necessary – since we can draw by hand – but makes the design processes faster, easier, and more precise. Though I still have trouble starting out a drawing on CAD without hand-drawn sketches, I have gotten used to the basic techniques and feel comfortable using the program. What Rahim said made me realize that I am very passively or not even participating in the feedback loop of technology and culture. Instead of thinking of new ways of using CAD or fully enjoying the benefits of computer generated drawings, I just learned the already existing techniques.

If I look through my sketchbook, I often times came back to the initial designs because they clearly retain the original design concepts. Last reading was interesting in its intensive description on modern day digital practices and how typology and generation of forms are critical elements of digital architectural practices. With the development of software that enables execution of four-dimensional space, architects are able to develop specific components of a design, perhaps according to its specified programs, and then set up parameters according to the site conditions in order to find some interesting relationship between each component. By experimenting with different parameters, forms are generated, and from those new generated forms, the process repeats. Listening to the presentations of various firms assigned in DAP assignment, I am starting to realize how each firm or architects struggle to find a unique way engaging technology into their design processes and to incorporate innovative methods from other areas, like airplane or ship industries, to develop a new technique.