DEDICATION

To my daughter, Michol:

May your curiosity, multivarious interests and passion for learning converge into a fulfilling lifetime of selfexpression, service, and exploration.

We often think of reading and writing as a solitary acts, but they can also be common acts of convergence. Salman Rushdie once explained, “a different kind of identity is produced ‘as reader and writer merge, through the medium of the text, to become a collective being that both writes as it reads and reads as it writes.’ For Rushdie, this is the greatest and most subversive gift offered by a book.”¹

I would like to thank my team at Wiley for the opportunity to write for AD, and for their guidance, support, and encouragement throughout the writing of this book. Special thanks to Amanda Miller, vice president and publisher; Dr. Paul Sayer, publisher; Miriam Murphy, project editor; Amy Odum, senior production editor; Justin Mayhew, associate marketing director; and Calver Lezama, who has now worked with me on several books.

A hearty thank you to Helen Castle for recognizing the promise of the book from the very beginning and for helping to shepherd the initial idea for the book into its present state.

Also special thanks to my contributors Brian Ringley, Nathan Miller, Toru Hasegawa, Robert Yori, Robert Vierlinger, Sam Miller, Anthony Buckley-Thorp, the folks at PARTISANS, Philip Beesley, Markku Allison, Yun Kyu Yi, Mani Golparvar Fard, Jamie Farrell, Nels Long, M A Greenstein, Jose Sanchez, Carin Whitney, and Matthew Krissel for their generosity of time, and sharing of their experience and insights.

Lastly, my thanks to Aaron Lanoisz, who not only rendered the expert, colorful diagrams throughout the book, but also provided the inspiration for the cover. Aaron proved to be a gifted, trusted and creative collaborator and always-reliable sounding board throughout the writing of the book, and for that—and his wisdom and patience—I am grateful. I am confident that he is on his way to become a leading architect.

ENDNOTES

This convergence will be recognized as the largest, most complex, and most surprising event on the planet up until this time.

—Kevin Kelly¹

There is today a pronounced and accelerated convergence in architecture. This convergence is occurring in building design, fabrication, and construction because of doers, not thinkers, and in practice, not academia. It is about solution-centric individuals engaging in real-time problem solving, not in abstractions. The nature of this convergence, where things are converging, and what that convergence means for architecture is the subject of this book.

The emergent forces and technologies that have come together in the second decade of the twenty-first century have developed to the point where real-time integration of all facets of the design and construction process is now possible. Computational tools, collaborative work processes, and the cloud make real-time/right-time convergence today a reality. However, tools aren’t the only things causing this convergence: it’s also due to the maturity of the design community. Those who have been at this for a while, as they attest throughout this book, recognize a convergence of forces, technologies, and workflows not only in their own work, but throughout the profession and industry.

There is even another force at work: millennials. No longer restricted to use of the tools created and distributed by software manufacturers, and impatient with the old guard, standard procedures, business as usual, and the status quo, young and emerging professionals are driving this movement toward convergence by taking matters into their own hands via employee-created and freely disseminated software plug-ins and add-ons, along with user-empowered scripting and visual programming, thereby improving workflows and increasing efficiencies.

CONVERGENCE DEFINED

Design professionals today recognize that technology and work processes are converging in their area of practice or expertise. Convergence refers to two or more things coming together, joining together, or evolving into one. It is manifested in such things as building information modeling (BIM) and computation; gaming and spatial analysis that join in virtual reality; design optimization and fabrication; and reality capture co-joining in photogrammetry, visual sensing laser scanning, drones, and robotics. What design professionals don’t realize is that these convergences are taking place in all facets of the design professions and construction industry. Moreover, they don’t have a thorough understanding of how the pieces fit together, what the potential impacts are, or—most importantly for their practices—where all of this is heading. The convergence referred to in the book title has both practical and emergent antecedents. Architecture is a complex undertaking requiring the input of many individuals with varying interests, backgrounds, and expertise. This has not changed—and will not change. What is changing is the way these individuals are working, communicating, and collaborating. Their individual contributions—and the tools they are using—are converging. To meet today’s demands for speed, affordability, and quality, they are integrating their efforts. With increasing demands to make decisions in real time, design professionals—having met the challenges and opportunities of this moment—are moving beyond the linearity metaphor and thinking in terms of simultaneity, superintegration, and convergence.

Architects and other design professionals today are expected to design and construct in a manner that uses fewer resources, while still innovating, adding value, and reducing waste. Deliverables have to take less time and cost less money to produce, while not compromising on quality—expectations that many feel are unrealistic at best, and often result in a negative impact on outcomes, working relationships, and experiences. Old paradigms such as “Quality, speed, and price: pick any two” no longer apply. Owners expect all three—perfect, now, and free—on almost every project.

Traditional linear thinking no longer works in this converged-upon world. At the same time, the emergent forces and technologies that have come together in the second decade of the twenty-first century have developed to the point where they make real-time integration of all facets of the design and construction process possible. Computational tools, work processes, and the cloud make real-time convergence today a reality.

Architects in particular are about to go through a period of intense change, a transformation brought about due to convergence. An understanding of the convergence that is taking place is pivotal to practice and how architects will work in the years ahead; it is critical to education and how architects are trained and educated; and it is central in the reappraisal of the architecture that this transformation will bring about.

Whereas convergence is marked by a blurring of lines, disciplines, and roles brought about by interdisciplinary collaboration, until recently architects have tended to innovate only in their own sector. Today, for example, contractors often are at the table with the owner and architect from day one—something architects didn’t have to consider even a generation ago. “Architects and general contractors don’t always involve subcontractors in early phases of design and preconstruction. But if they want to prevent time and money from trickling down the drain, they should.”²

In the past, architects had a tendency and preference to study and address each subject separately. Some people in our industry address BIM, some address computational tools … but few address both combined. BIM has enabled architects to include means and methods in their models, enabling them to venture into design-build delivery methods, fabrication, and direct-to-fabrication projects from their models. Who is tracking that movement? Like the Internet, convergence exists despite isolated, disconnected, or unconnected efforts and focus.

It is hard to address a tool or process that is in motion, especially one that is moving toward, or merging with, another. When something moves, it has a trajectory: It moves toward or away from something, whether by means of push or pull. If everything converges, what is it converging toward? What is the end point? The meeting point? What are we working toward?

Is that meeting point nothing more than increased efficiency? Today’s architecture, engineering, construction, and operations (AECO) industry is marked by productivity, innovation, affordability, and speed. It’s not just that things are speeding up, but that they are moving toward each other: they’re converging. If the vocabulary we use to explain our work is any indication, we as an industry have spent the past decade leveraging the language of performance to get work approved that aims at—if never quite achieving—the nexus of perfect, now, and free.

CONVERGENCE PARADIGMS

Because so many innovations appear to be disconnected and disparate, there’s a temptation, when looking for a guiding theory or justification, to tie them together into a convenient framework. Does doing so conclusively capture the trajectory of convergence? Three convergence models represent lenses by which to see what is occurring in our industry: Software of Everything, Master Algorithm, and Total Architecture.

There have been numerous attempts to create a Software of Everything. Specific tools such as Kimon Onuma’s Onuma System address the entire building lifecycle from planning through operations, and (in a more limited way) Tekla’s Structural Designer combines structural analysis and design into a single application. However, a more general look at how BIM itself represents a convergence of all facets of design, construction, and beyond will serve as an illustration of what the Software of Everything might look like.

As will be explored in a later chapter, purpose-built BIM models are being used today for code compliance, cost estimating/quantity take-offs, coordination and fabrication, scheduling, and on-site production control. But that is not all. In current applications of BIM, in addition to design authoring you can model existing conditions, conduct a site analysis, undertake programming, do engineering analysis, evaluate for LEED status, conduct a design review, do clash detection, validate for code compliance, undertake digital fabrication, oversee asset management, and record modeling of construction and conditions over time via machine vision. Without purporting to be everything for and to everyone, BIM stands as an exemplar of the Software-of-Everything approach to convergence. More on the Software of Everything can be found in the epilogue.

The Master Algorithm framework is represented by Flux’s Metro software; Aditazz’s competition-winning, computer-generated process; and other pervasive computing and generative design-by-algorithm approaches. The Algorithm of Everything is discussed in Chapter 4. Total Architecture represents a gestalt approach, a comprehensive high-tech/high-touch design process practiced by such hybrid firms as PARTISANS’ partners and Assemble. Further discussion of Total Architecture, or the Architecture of Everything, can be found in Chapter 7.

Nevertheless, as convenient as these frameworks are, they don’t tell the whole story of the convergence that is occurring today. At best, they distill a single strand of the converging branches, but leave out a great deal, not the least of which is the human element—creativity, intuition, insights, the human override—that cannot be accounted for in singular explanations. You might argue that it’s all human generated—including, if not especially, algorithms—and that we’re fooling ourselves when we discount the human effort and, yes, creativity behind the computational rule-making. We start to split hairs when through machine learning robots and drones start to teach themselves—and each other. (Where is the human element in that scenario?) Convergence, as the word implies, doesn’t distinguish between what is man-made and what is machine-made, as it is interested in where the two meet.

These frameworks call attention to the challenges that convergence raises, forcing us to reckon with and overcome them. Where in the design process is human input needed and where is it redundant? What role will our legacy tools play and to what extent are they holding us back? How much depends on our industry’s ability to learn new skillsets (our technology readiness) or on our acquiring the mindsets necessary to keep up and avoid creating workflow bottlenecks? “The problem with architecture and construction,” says Petr Novikov, “is that we design digitally and then construct manually.”³

This book, as an investigation and meditation on the impact of technology on the education and making of design professionals, sees convergence as a way to explain and illustrate what is happening now in the world of architectural design, as well as to discuss the implications for the future of education, training, and practice. There is a need to clarify and make concrete what is happening at this moment in time for those who want to stay relevant but may be too close to connect the dots for themselves.

Books—whether physical, digital, audio, or whatever new as-yet-introduced format—are seen by some as antiquated technology. In the middle of the second decade of the third millennium, though, books are still the best means we have for synthesizing moments and movements; giving them a name; and, as importantly, using a language that can be understood, shared, and discussed by others. The purpose of this book is to bring a trend to the fore, give it a name, and start a dialogue. Although we cannot stop the rise of technology, we can seek to understand where this trend is headed—and in so doing devise a new model that helps the profession and industry move forward.

Along with a name, this book sets out to give this industry-wide transformation a direction and a sense of clarity, by shining a light on the factors that have given rise to it. This is so we can recognize where it is occurring, more readily adapt to and prepare for it, and anticipate where it is going to occur—but also to make it less threatening and more manageable. As this book is about the firms, individuals, and teams who have innovated to thrive in this environment, it sets out to provide design professionals working today with a better understanding of what is occurring in their field.

A note on the diagrams interspersed in the pages that follow: They are intended to provide a snapshot of what technologies and work processes are coming together, and what this coming-together means in terms of workflows, work outcomes, and the way we practice. When combined, they begin to form a design ecology—a design ecosystem—that points to a direction where the industry is headed. These snapshots, collectively, form the start of a roadmap for things to come. You—the reader, designer, design technologist—get to complete this story.

The convergences explored in this book have implications for both education and practice. The topic of convergences will be at once familiar, and of especially urgent interest, to emerging design professionals and academics, a readership that is knee-deep in the technology but is unable to articulate on a higher plane how what they do fits into the bigger scheme of things. They were members of the online crowdsourced library of applications AEC-APPs, and more recently of SmartGeometry, of the Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture (ACADIA) (but not necessarily the American Institute of Architects [AIA] or the Royal Institute of British Architects [RIBA]), and represent the future of the new architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC). They are voracious readers, learners, and makers, and have figured out how to move a piece of the profession and industry forward, yet are keenly interested in learning how their individual efforts fit into a larger framework.

Convergence is the natural succession in the research that aligns with, grows out of, and builds on my previous two books on collaborative building information modeling (BIM) and data analytics in the AEC industry. Convergence hints at what the future of architectural practice might look like and where architectural design is heading.

Convergence helps identify the future for architects as digital knowledge workers who bring not only skills supported by the continued development of technology and digital processes, but also (and importantly) any creative skills they may possess. More importantly, it helps the reader adapt to the new reality of work. Adapting to the new world of work requires learning to think simultaneously on several fronts and from several points of view. This is the world of convergence.

CONVERGENCE QUESTIONS

Convergence raises as many questions as it sets out to answer. Are things in our industry converging? If so, what is converging and how is this convergence coming about? In other words, what is fueling this convergence? In what ways is convergence part of the transformation and change the industry is going through? Where is convergence headed? How far can it go? Is any part of the convergence that is currently occurring in design and construction unique to our industry? If so, what part(s)? Why is this convergence happening now? What do we hope to gain by converging our tools and work processes? What specific challenges does convergence present to the designer?

Sophisticated tools for modeling and representing buildings already exist. How we use those tools, and how they dictate what the outcomes will be, is a design challenge. What specifically are the tools and work processes that are converging? How are individuals and organizations converging their tools and work processes? What benefits are they seeing? What is the ultimate endgame in the convergence of our tools and work processes? What specific skillsets would someone need to develop to work effectively as tools and work processes continue to converge? What are the implications of convergence for the role of the designer, and for aesthetics? For how we design, build, fabricate, and construct? In other words, for how we work?

Convergence improves the flow of data, information, and knowledge. Convergence improves the ease of use and accessibility of our tools. Convergence addresses emergence and complexity by rejecting a piecemeal approach in favor of holistic, integrated solutions. Brian Ringley, educator and design technology platform specialist at Woods Bagot, juggles a number of digital tools and work processes. “If we make the base assumption that convergence makes our lives easier, makes delivery more efficient, and makes the world a better place, the questions become: What are we sacrificing for that convergence to happen?” asks Ringley. “And, knowing what we’re sacrificing, does it matter? Awareness is the first step. Then, once we’re aware of what is being sacrificed, does that matter to us?”⁴

Convergence makes our lives easier, and our work more productive and efficient. But what are we sacrificing? This book, Convergence, addresses this question, painting a picture of what practice and education will look like once we’ve found a solution. As the convergence of computing and telecommunications resulted in modern telephony, what factors exist today to make convergence a reality and likely to continue, given how systems have evolved to converge at this point in time? Chapter 1 looks at other fields that have experienced convergence, and explains how convergence relates to, but ultimately differs from, integration, consolidation, multitasking, automation, and other forms of optimization—symptoms that do not on their own explain the rise of convergence.

Chapters 2 through 8 explore convergences in contemporary design practice that now occur at the meeting of two seemingly opposite forces: data and intuition; analytics and model; parametrics and computation; virtual and physical; design and fabrication; conception and construction; and practical and ineffable. Each chapter builds upon the preceding chapters.

This book is an attempt to understand what is happening in the design professions and building industry as it is happening; thus, it cannot claim to provide a comprehensive picture. The epilogue explores what the future holds for convergence, and whether it will ultimately result in a single unified platform.

ENDNOTES

IMAGE

Figures 1 and 2 © Robert Vierlinger; figures 3–7 © Deutsch Insights; figure 8 © PBAI, Philip Beesley photographer