Sunday, 18 September 2011

In a strained economy, when the aim is to implement architectural designs with challenging, complex geometries, it does not suffice to merely determine which digital tool is best suited to the task.  It necessarily involves thoroughly digitizing the individual steps of the work process, from the concept to the finished product. And this is no longer merely a utopian concept, an international firm that specializes in planning and fabricating state-of-the-art building envelopes – it is standard operating procedure. When the computer programs and the methodology behind them are understood not merely as a means to depicting a design, but as part of the engineering, new horizons open up.  One of the outstanding innovations is computer-related work is the fact that we can now go about it in a much more interconnected, communicative manner. Various complex, unrelated disciplines, results, and adaptations can be merged to become a much more complex, dynamic process. New computation methods are required – and are feasible. This dynamic way of approaching tasks allows us to rethink the work process – a process that has thus far been one-dimensional. The building portrait can be portrayed for any desired point in time- all information relevant to construction is accessible. Thus, there is no vertical tiering of the project progression, but instead a dynamic contemporaneousness that is simulated – with all of its different facets – for the entire timeline.