Cadalyst - January 2008 - (Page 41)

aecinsight Doin’ the DEED Creating digital environments for early design. By Jerry Laiserin a nail” — a fundamental property of hammers is that they afford nail driving. My friend Pierluigi Serraino, a Berkeley-based architect and theorist, has written that “form follows software.” To me, Pierluigi’s point is that different software Figure 1. Modeling and visualization softtools enable difware, such as form•Z from auto•des•sys, ferent ways of permits designers to explore and test ideas design expresin ways that are impossible in paper-based or 2D digital media. Image created by sion and thinkAaron Mark, University of Florida; courtesy ing. These differauto•des•sys. ences can be as significant as the comparative affordances of 2D paper sketching versus 3D digital modeling (during the mid-to-late 1990s, Bill Mitchell often livened up his already lively talks with the wry observation that “if computers had been invented first, pencil and paper would be hailed as a radical breakthrough in interface technology”). A ustrian-British philosopher Karl Popper (1902– 1994) redefined thinking about science by casting scientific theories as falsifiable hypotheses. Theories that survive the experimentation and falsification process of the scientific method gain greater acceptance and usefulness. By analogy, design ideas are falsifiable hypotheses about possible solutions to design problems. Instead of scientific experimentation, design ideas are tested in the design process. Architectural design ideas or schemes can be tested against the building program or brief, massing models against the zoning envelope, and enclosure designs against desired building energy performance. Design ideas that survive — those that are not falsified by the building requirements against which they are tested — gain acceptance and usefulness for subsequent phases of design. Since the 1980s, digital tools have emerged to help designers formulate, visualize, and test design ideas. In early stages of design, digital tools complement rather than displace analog tools such as paper sketches or hand-built physical models. The coexistence of electronic and paperbased tools alters designers’ perceptions of both. The resulting blend of media when applied to concept design, preliminaries, or schematics can be labeled digital environments for early design (DEED). Representative Democracy Today’s designers are free to use diverse media and interfaces to represent their ideas. In their 1991 book, Digital Design Media, William Mitchell and Malcolm McCullough, then both at Harvard, grouped design media according to what I call axes of representation — from 2D to 3D and from analog to digital. Thus, paper drawings are 2D analog, and conventional CAD (or CADD) is 2D digital, and so on. Furthermore, each mode of representation can be converted to the others. For example, paper drawings can be scanned to CAD, CAD can be plotted to paper, physical models can be 3D-scanned to digital 3D, and 3D digital files can be printed via rapid prototyping. Yet these media represent and express the same underlying design ideas. However, perceptual psychologists identify other differences among tools and media as affordances. The term was introduced by J.J. Gibson (1904–1979) in a 1977 paper that defined affordances as the “perceived possibilities for action” inherent in an object or tool. This definition is a rigorous expression of the commonsense notion “to someone with a hammer, the whole world looks like Mixing It Up The bottom line for practicing designers and design students is that no single tool provides the best solution for representing any design idea. In fact, exploring design ideas through multiple tools helps insulate designers from the subtle influences (and/or limitations) provided (and/or imposed) by the affordances of any single medium or tool. Proficient designers instinctively recognize this situation and consciously exploit it as part of their process for testing design ideas. In his 2005 doctoral dissertation at Harvard, Athensbased architect Panagiotis “Panos” Parthenios examined these issues. (In the interest of full disclosure, I served on the dissertation committee for Panos’ thesis, published as Conceptual Design Tools for Architects.) Panos’ research included elegant case studies of both skilled designers and design students at work. In one study, an experienced project architect deliberately rotated her focus among sketches, CAD, study models, and digital 3D as various design issues emerged and evolved. www.cadalyst.com | cadalyst | January 2008 41 http://www.cadalyst.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Cadalyst - January 2008

Cadalyst - January 2008 Contents Editor's Window Cad Central Chasing the Dolphins CAD that Won’t Break the Bank AliasStudio 2008 — Design and Visualization Software VectorWorks 2008 — CAD/BIM Authoring Software Dell Precision M4300 — Mobile Workstation What’s in Store for 2008? Low- or No-Cost CAD Goliath Reinvented Doin’ the DEED Cad Cartoon Issue Indexes The Return of Hot Tip Harry

Cadalyst - January 2008

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