Their story of how I attended
the Americas to architecture

students restaurants conference
in Washington D.C. The sober.

Little actual schedule and
I remember walking into the room.

The rule and easy about the B.P.

of all of this sort of morphed into
an hour long Hitchcock coverage it is

else the close of the Sopranos
the very ARE ABOUT HOW ARE effects.

Really current society and
also shift technology is made

being something we use to achieve
a very precise visitation for

more ahead of the illness and
design process.

Thinking more like a preview and
see if we can give him speak.

I got here a little bit schedule
really really happy about this until.

We're very good you're here.

As of August first of all of this
leading software provider for

the architecture engineering shortage
in the streets the strategy and

publishing for the E.C.
were responsible for

setting the company's future vision and
strategy for technology to build it.

Also a crime scene or

with twenty five years of experience after
seeing you guys for a master's degree.

You know university teaches
the professional practice course there

are these the measure of this
is an article on technology and

these are quasi cry from
Mission modeling and

is the coeditor of building in the future
because the lever in architecture

was published in twenty ten a conference
seeker organized at the old school or

he's a senior fellow on the design
future special and it for sure.

Yeah sure.

Join me looking at the stickers for
that's OK bye.

OK Can we turn the lights off because my
images are already kind of washed out here

or just down enough that the.

Stuff's Washoe OK so
I'm really happy to come in and

do some reading the most of that's
what you guys are looking for.

I had.
That might not be necessary.

OK that's actually not
exactly what I had learned.

Yes.

So we're going to talk about tonight is.

The intersection of the various things
that I've been working on in my career

I mean as was mentioned I practiced for
a long time I was a project

manager in Cesar Pelli office for thirteen
years which meant I wasn't actually

designing stuff I was making it possible
for other people to design things.

And I got during that time
I was very interested in

questions of process how do
architects do what they do.

How do we create opportunities for the
making of architecture at the same time I

started teaching professional practice.

At Yale and started trying to correlate
what the major influences were

in terms of what was happening in
the overall marketplace with what we

actually did and what I should be telling
my students about how they would be acting

in the world then about like it was a bet
eleven years ago I made a career change.

And I joined Autodesk and my job my
job at Autodesk is to be the sort

of senior domain expert
the software business has become so

strongly correlated to the future
of various kinds of professions and

particularly in our company was
controlled almost exclusively by software

engineers and business types and
they began incorporating experts.

I guess they wanted.

I thought I was an expert into
the strategic planning process so

that a large arc of
the planning that we do for

technology is informed
by at least an opinion.

And in my case it's a very
strong opinion about what.

How technology is affecting
the making of buildings and

particularly my particular interest
although I do work on a lot of stuff.

Is about that relationship
with regard to architecture.

So about I was about eighteen
months into that job.

I was kind of responsible for
the the strategy

there were a group of us looking at it
which was an extremely successful product.

It's either used or borrowed by
millions of people around the world and

we determined that as a company
that maybe the future was in

the future was not drafting tools and
so we started working on this problem of

building information
modeling we did the read it.

Acquisition we shifted our strategy when
we did what I've now learned the business

world is called disrupting ourselves we
actually decided that we were going to

make a change that would allow us to use
the momentum of an idea like autocad but

to really make a shift in the way
the building industry was going to work.

I had no idea at that time when I was
advocating that problem and we were buying

that company and shifting things around
that it was going to have the kinds of

implications that it has had and
having had a few years to think about it.

Now what I want to do building a little
bit on the argument that you had this

summer in Washington what I want
to do tonight is talk about how

technology is inserting itself into some

of the fundamental prophecies that
architects are involved in and

how it may change the nature of
the practice of architecture and

some of the fundamental
relationships that are there and

I want to build that argument
in a sort of six chunks.

Well first we're going
to talk a little bit.

OK so you just first I want to
talk a little bit about the design

proposition not to define it because
we're are all architects are trying

to be architects in this room and
want to talk about.

The gestalt of how architects think and
talk about design then you'll note

the smallest box in my presentation is a
slight diversion to talk about technology.

Just a sort of part of marker
down about that then I'm what

I'm very interesting this
concept of measurement.

We talked about how digital tools are
changing the nature of the design process

by making it more quantitative and
more understandable and

that that actually creates a bridge to
an entirely different set of issues about

how buildings are actually constructed and
how they operate in our projects might be

related architects might be connected
to that part of the process but

we're going to have a professional
practice diversion and

explore some of the archetypes of project
organization because I think the central

actually the central issue here has to do
with the relationship between the parties

and then finally I want to talk about this
question a value and what I mean by value

is how architects positioned in
the realm of building in such

a way that we have the kind of influence
that we should have in creating the built

environment and frankly we're compensated
commensurate to that influence.

So you can kind of see that
you can sort of see the broad

structure of the argument here.

And since I was screwing around with
this earlier with the students.

It's not going to work our
point is let's start over on.

And see if that works and we are OK to
speed through the thing in reverse.

Hold on.
Close your eyes because you can get

motion sick with this with
this technology here.

I'm a pretty Ricky.

OK So about three or four weeks ago was it
was it four weeks ago towards the C.S.A.

in Boston.

So I was at the A.C.S.
a conference which is the Association

of Collegiate schools of architecture with
a bunch of my architecture colleagues and

that conference was all about
the relationship between technology and

educate the education of architects and
these were the three big question.

NS that that conference was asking
what is it that architects my

my architects roles change with
the emergence of of the digital paradigm.

How do analytical tools the kind of

influential tools that
are available to architects.

How might they connect architects to the
performative aspects of buildings in other

words can we understand what buildings
do based on the tools that we use and

then finally how to architects Reince
cried themselves in the building process.

Given that there is all this
technology in these questions were

formulated by Professor Goethe or at MIT
and I thought they were actually spot on

to the discussion that we're talking about
because really what we're taught what

we're going to talk about today is the
question of having a set of technologies

which are essentially instrumentation
create a set of opportunities that could

read define what architects actually do
in their life and one of the best ways

to understand that problem quantitatively
is it with this number thirty five

percent which is which I think is a really
interesting number thirty five percent

is roughly the amount of carbon that
building create and contribute to the.

Contribute to the greenhouse gas problem.

Thirty five percent is
roughly the amount of energy

the buildings consume in the environment
thirty five percent is the inefficiency

factor of the world construction industry
normally believe that construction

is only about sixty five percent efficient
so every dollar that gets spent on

construction thirty five cents it's wasted
and until about two quarters ago thirty

five percent in round numbers was the
unemployment rate of the U.S. architects.

So there are big These are big numbers
big important numbers that talk about

how the relationship of of the act
of architecture and building to

the environment and James Timberlake from
Karen to be like that we work with a lot

said something very interesting at
a conference a couple years ago he said

anything you could you need to quantify
and can be measured in some way is.

Better than not measuring it at all and
I thought that that statement goes to

the essence of a lot of what we're going
to talk about tonight which is the act of

measurement the use of design tools
to measure and quantify hands and

how that act of measurement might actually
reposition us in the design proposition

and this this tradition of overlaying X.

of measurement on to the on to design
is a very is a very old tradition and

Professor Carr Posen is an expert
in this I'm just a bill to hunt but

there have been some very interesting
historical artifacts on the record.

This is an image from a show
an interesting exist exhibition that was

you know a couple years
ago called compass and

rule and you see this from where
you were around for that one.

So this is a show that explored
the relationship between mathematics and

architecture and this image.

This is an image of Euclid as
described by fifteenth century

British builders where Euclid is being
described not as a mathematician or

a philosopher but as a Mason.

Because what these guys were beginning
to realise was that geometry Euclidean

geometry was one of the first pieces
of analytical equipment that was

available to architects to builders
to create an organizing system

to actually use as a strategy for
the making of buildings but

it wasn't it wasn't an organic
ground up act but in fact that there

were systems analytical systems
abstract systems that were available

that created organizing principles but
drove the process of design.

And what I've learned from Aereo and
this is this idea

which we've been talking about for
a couple of years now has really affected

a lot of my thinking about this is that
by the time you get to the Renaissance.

The assertions that Albert he made in his
theoretical a treatise on architecture

actually created the practice of
architecture because up to this moment

up to this moment in
the historical record design and

construction work considered to be.

Simultaneous acts they were not
separated from one another.

The ideas that drove
the construction of the building.

The ideas that drove the organization
of the building were part and parcel

of the way the building was actually
constructed and made and manifest.

But what Albert he said was that
there's an abstraction of the building.

There's a model and
he did use the term model right.

There's a model of the building that
exists independently of the construction

of the building and that the builders
job is to understand that model which is

created by the architect and
the architect is going to create

something called very clear
drawings whatever that means and

that those clear drawings are to be
executed by the builder without deviation.

And that creates this very interesting
relationship between design acts and

construction acts that have been
that's been extrapolated in all sorts

of interesting you know natural ways for
a long time.

Well in the early eighty's.

Peter it was an interesting work trying to
define the meaning of design itself and

what Rowe talked about was this idea that
the act of architectural design is what he

called a wicked problem and this is
an amazing sentence to read especially if

you're in the technology business which
is also a set of look at problems.

Design is something that has working
on problems that no definitive

formulation no explicit stopping
roll always more than one was of

the explanation a problem formulation that
corresponds to a solution and vice versa.

And the solutions cannot be
strictly correct true or false.

Tackling a problem of this type requires
some initial insight the execution of

provisional rules inference or

possible strategy in other words
the use of heuristic reasoning.

Using reasoning strategies to figure
out the answer to design questions.

You could call these rules of thumb or
patterns of work and

later or earlier when Christopher
Alexander was doing a lot of his pattern

language where he talked about defining.

As trying to create an intangible form and
in determining context.

So there's this in effable quality

of the nature of the design process that
we've always that's been part of our

culture as designers you know
since the very beginning.

Now in the meantime we come upon
a world where the problem space

that needs to be explored is extremely
large so I was the project manager for

this project for pep Mr Pelly office.

This is the Brooklyn federal courthouse
in Brooklyn New York it's finished now.

This is pre-conceptual design
forty two chip board models

made by inexpensive people like
you students in the office.

Here in the audience here didn't cost
us very much to generate forty to

study models of this project and
we weren't even in designing it.

We were in pretty design.

We were we were just
strategizing about the problem.

This is chipboard as
you're a stick here right.

And in a Harvard magazine in two thousand
and ten there was an interesting interview

with a group of famous design architects
and one of them said clients can deal with

a huge amount of information we have we
hand them to make decisions we give them

one hundred and six alternatives and
they don't know which one we believe in.

So we were clearly trained to
systematically explore alternatives.

The question is how do we sort
them how do we titrate them

how do we ascribe value to them and
how do we.

Let's the decision making process as
the gets used for talking to clients and

at the same time we've got these
digital tools out here right now

this isn't another architect in that same.

That same article says the digital ALS for

ease of variation but we don't know
how to communicate the stuff there.

So we we've got so much information about
projects you know in the digital realm

that there's information everywhere
everybody is e-mailing everybody.

We don't have time to think about
anything anymore because we're so

busy generating generating digital
information but I'd lost Mr Pelly used to

call this the problem of the use of
digital technology for what he called

the systematic generation of useless
alternatives and so you've got these two.

That I bought you a got all these
expensive computers I brought you and

you're not thinking you're
using the computer to generate

alternative systematically but
they're all useless.

It's not what I'm paying
you actually to do and

this is all part of the same
problem of the digital turn right.

Meanwhile another architect in
that same interview said and

this is a classmate of mine from graduate
school I don't want anybody manipulating

anything I'm working on until
maybe mid design development.

I want input and not have others but
people equal the table.

I do not want the obligation
of specificity too early.

I want to keep things as abstract and
as variable that is unanswerable for

as long as possible so

I can maintain the maximum number of
alternative outcomes to design process.

And you could as you can imagine this
drives this kind of attitude drives

clients insane and contractors to drink or
or weapons and we can talk about that.

So if you take this if you take the
ability in construct it separates design

and construction and you and you
extrapolate that into the modern context

and it's traveled through
the professionalization of architecture

the regulation of practice licensure the
liability crisis of the one nine hundred

eighty S. you end up in the circumstance
that we're in right now where you so

here's the archetypal relationship between
client designer and constructor and

on the left hand side of the equation we
have the ideas people Albury's ideas be

right we exercise our judgment we
do something called the design.

We're all about thinking about stuff but
we're not allowed to make anything right.

We Merican construction industry
architects are not allowed to make things

you're not allowed to be involved in
the means and methods of construction.

You're not to take not
take responsibility for

how anything is made and by the way
you're going to go to school for

four to ten years to get
a license to do this stuff.

So the state can certify that
you're a thinker and not a maker.

Meanwhile the other side of the equation
are the guys trying to build the stuff

they make things they're held.

About the ennoblement and
the training of the single designer.

No one in the building industry
does anything by themselves.

So this question of help people actually
work together is actually pretty critical

and then finally and this is becoming more
and more interesting in the digital realm.

How does the design that has
been represented analyzed and

worked on collaboratively get
translated into its physical form

after the act of design is complete.

So let's talk a little
bit just briefly about

what the what the technological
overlay is here right.

So this is the part right so
it's wax poetic about modeling right.

Modeling is creating Well look at this
image look at this incredible high

resolution three dimensional
representation of this complex mechanical

system that couldn't.

Nothing could have possibly gone
wrong with this project but

this is this is awesome.

Everything's here and it's all in three D.

and we even color coded it to make it
easy for the contractor to build it.

That's actually not the point the point is
that the ability to prototype the design

in a three dimensional behaviorally
correct way in a bin like fashion is

just the beginning of the process and
it's the origin of that idea was in fact

to attack the problem that's described
here by these two dimensional groans.

But in fact buildings actually many
buildings operate at this level of

complexity but
we use tools like these tools to

communicate how we want those buildings
to be built so I am going to contrast for

you that two drawings that are on this
page that are both meaningful to me

personally on the right is a sketch
that was transmitted to the revenue

engineering team by Bob Stern's
office who is busily designing

a four hundred million dollar
Gothic building on the campus.

So I think to myself OK Let
me get this straight.

He's a piece of twenty first century
technology to make a twenty first century

replica of a twentieth century
replica of an eighteenth.

Replica of the fourteenth century building
because the collegiate It's a building

information modeling tool being used to
make a collegiate Gothic building and

they says this drawing and
said we don't understand what having so

much trouble your tool because
they built most of us campus

from drawings that look just like this and
the contractor didn't have any problem.

It's all they needed.

We had the red just to make a point.

Over here and it's a little bit burnt
out is a shop drawing of the top

of the Petra last tower which
is the two which is the was at

one time the world's tallest building
that we were going to Mr Billy's office.

This is a shop drawing of this stain
was created by the stainless steel

subcontractor who was in
England who copied it.

It's not a kid fourteen drawing copied
it from an overhead fourteen drawing

of a working drawing prepared by our
associate architect in Kuala Lumpur

who copied that from a plot from
an Autocad fourteen drawing

of a design development drawing that
we did in New Haven Connecticut.

So even though the whole thing was
completely digital the process artifact

was such that people
were plotting things and

copying them digitally and then plotting
them again and copying them digitally and

the most profitable participant in
this process was Federal Express.

Because we Fed Ex these puppies back and
forth across the world like crazy.

The Fed Ex guy was the most popular
guy in Mr Pelly office he came to

our Christmas party in your kids' names
and we could not do our work without him.

And he read this note here it says Note
that location of access panels is drawn I

know they should do not agree with
the location shown on the plant.

Please correct my teenage
daughters would say no.

Di.

This is a fourth generation electronically
generated hand drawn artifact

of an extremely complex.

Phenomena and
just to make matters more interesting.

You see this kind of faint thing here.

This is the shop drawing stamp that we
put on the drawing I wrote this because

that was part of my job
Mr Kennedy's office and

what this stamp says is enjoy destroying
We take no responsibility for it.

What so.
However we're going to make some marks on

it that we think might be helpful to you
but we're taking no responsibility for

this and why would really it's a third
generation copy of it all a good drawing

it's been replicated plotted and
Fed Exed around the world.

So somebody can build this building from
destroying but fortunately I'm safe.

Because I've stamped this drawing that
says My ass is completely covered

no matter what happens it's
somebody else's problem.

This is not a this is not
an excellent paradigm.

But back in the mid ninety's when we did
that drawing the technology was basically

the technology was about
electronic drafting and

plotting stuff right now as we
are approaching the second decade or

in the second decade of
the twenty first century.

There's a whole bunch of other stuff going
on the technological overlay starts to get

really really interesting right.

So we now can digitally simulate reality
at such a high degree of precision that

you couldn't tell the difference between
digital renderings and actual photographs.

Right.

Many of you probably saw Avatar that
composite thing that was all done with

our software.

It's done with multiple copies of three D.
Studio Max taken out of the box and

composite it by James Cameron and
twelve guys from our office.

That's out of the box
offer doing hyper reality.

And you can and the algorithms
that are used to make those models

model physics they model light
reflectivity refraction.

We're modeling the real world
cloud computing is almost here.

It makes your i Pad possible.

It is an infrastructure that creates a
context in which very complex things like

buildings are no longer
constrained by computation.

There's no longer a computational
problem working on a building any more

stuff starting to get printed digitally
there are little tiny artifacts

of that in most architecture schools
they're called laser printers and three D.

printers and cuckoo robots and.

And waterjet printers but
nowadays we can print buildings and

assemble them like pieces of furniture.

And finally this is some of the baby.

Like myself to really completely
understand this whole idea of

crowdsourcing or the fact that the social
network has created a collective

consciousness and a degree of insight
about things that didn't exist before.

So you have access to different
kinds of information that you didn't

know if you take those two sets of ideas
representation through realization

additional reality through
social networking and

you map those two against one another.

You come up with a lot of really
interesting ideas about what might happen

in the design and construction process but
for purposes of this discussion.

I think the yellow boxes are the ones
that are most interesting because what

the technology is really allowing
us to do is reason about projects

in a fundamentally different way we
can now reason about the implications

of a design but for we go out and

build it which means the design process
can be a form informed by analytical

algorithms that exist should not worry
about this will just give you this.

Dick.

I don't have to take
pictures of the screen.

I'll just give you this back.

So you can reason about the analysis about
the project was being designed you can

run those analysis perpetually So
take your energy and

also software profit MacLeod
let it run all the time.

Who cares what's in your work there's
no computational overhead for that so

that information is instantaneously
available to you if it's kind of rules

based systems become possible
the computer infrastructure might be able

to report on the constructibility of the
thing that you're building like a fellow

that the time is going to leak or Millen
could possibly get a paintbrush into

that space but you have just created or
you're going to get sued.

Right because the dialog box pops up
while you're doing the details as you

are going to get sued.

It's all happening on the cloud.

And meanwhile of the sources of
information that are out there

the ability to reach out to a large
network of folks you know changing it.

I think changes in some
pretty fundamental ways.

So let's talk about if we were living
in a measurable world kind of what

that might mean what that what
the implications of that are writing and

want to know others of their size.

Or out there that does all of this
kind of stuff I don't need to bore you

with that but what's interesting about it
is those kinds of analytical algorithms

now become a plague of
all the fairly low grade

conceptual design models that
have building awareness.

So instead of this being a sketch
up model which is easy to make.

And instead of it being
a fully completed rabbit model

which is extremely hard to make but
super smart.

There's a middle ground here where
we can use this technology to create

building aware artifacts like
this blob of a building here

which can then be reasoned about during
the early part of the design process and

you can begin to look at
the characteristics of that design.

How does the sun reflect off that
thing that is the wind blow over it.

What is its what it says is its
putative energy performance

over the course of the season.

What sort of energy consumption
might you see from that project.

This is all a combination of digital
representation cloud computation

analytical algorithms and the collection
of crowd generated data like weather data

and building performance data that allows
you to take a model that looks like

that at that level of detail and
reason about it at this level of insight.

So imagine a designer who's
sitting there at her desk and

she's got three screens on the left
is bought of five Facebook

three chat windows and there's probably
something else that I'm going to think

about that we have Netflix
movie running right.

That's the left screen on
a screen is the revenue model but

the right screen is
a series of desk boards.

That's reporting in real time.

What the implications
of the design are and

seeing this kind of
information in real time.

So if you're actually manipulating
the design your understanding

the measurable implications
of that does and

that's a pretty I think it's a pretty
I think it's a pretty heavy concept.

This is.

This is.

Some tools that we make that take that
idea to its more logical extreme which is.

Ways of quantifying the design.

So it's quantitative characteristics in
this case it's cost estimating become

apparent immediately to their design or
during the design process itself.

So we can we can gather enough
information and have enough insight

about how the design is actually working
that we could be understanding the cost

implications of design even as
the design is sort of unfolding.

There's a really interesting study that
I saw at a conference I was at last week

a couple of researchers in Switzerland
who have created a series of

algorithms for projecting how
the contrast in the amount of light in

a space is going to be perceived
by users in that space and

what's interesting about this research is
that these ten diagrams here represent

ten different feelings that people
have when they're in spaces

with different kinds of light contrast and
when they've taken those ten ideas and

created a series of digital
maps that allow them to predict

the inevitable effect of light in
a space based on its contrast.

Starting with a theory of how
the space actually feels and

then looking at a digital
simulation of how it operates.

So what we're talking about now we're
getting to that boundary condition between

here istic and the algorithmic because the
computation power of the problem you have

potential power has gotten so great that
you can suddenly start to do all kinds of

really really interesting things and
that kind of logic that kind of ability to

collect high resolution information can
be extended into all bunch of different

places in the design proposition this
is a research project we're working on

right now this is our building in
Toronto where our research group works.

They're allowed to trash their office
in ways that the rest of us in

the corporation are not so they wired the
entire office with occupancy energy and

light monitoring sensors and then they
hooked up the sensor network with real

time data feeds back to the revenue
model so they could measure the energy

consumption on a floor by floor basis or a
workstation by workstation basis collect.

Documents the data and
then correlate it all the same time.

So we're collecting all this information
in real time mapping it back to

the original design model and it's created
a whole different set of of of ideas and

really what's happening out there is our
ability to understand the implications of

design decisions is starting to move down
almost to the molecular level these are.

Simulation images from our
manufacturing Good looking at flow and

stress and air flow and I guess this is I
don't know what the hell this is a man of

mechanical engineer but these this
information is involved is available real

time to the mechanical design or while
he or she is actually doing the work.

It's more and it's literally displayed
on the design while the design is being

worked on so as this designer manipulates
this whatever the hell it is I don't know

what it is he or she is finding out where
the stresses are and how it's working.

This is a this is a completely
different way of working ladies and

gentlemen than architecture
traditionally trained to do.

We're trying to study the ineffable
as vaguely as possible.

Keeping the decisions as open for as long
as possible until we run out of time at

which point we have to make a decision
sexually different strategy and

you can take that same set
of analytical ideas and

scale it up to the super macro
scale to begin to understand

how your design operates in the larger
context and this is a thing called the I

think is quite a cell way diagram of using
these there's a flow mapping diagram.

This talks about all the sources
of energy in the United States and

where they end up after they flowed
through the entire system and

how they're consumed by buildings.

So these are energy
sources from hydro to oil.

These are building uses for residential
two these are human uses residential

building industrial building use
of cars freight airlines and

this is a macro model that shows how
energy flows through the system.

It's kind of washed out with a bunch
of it is is in growing up here which is

basically waste good look.

Contextualize your design in this context
while simultaneously understanding at

the molecular level.

I think you're on to something
really interesting there.

So what I meant what I'm suggesting here
is that we have a set of design attitudes

that being redefined by
the possibilities of technology the most

important aspect of those possibilities
of technology they are about measuring

in the bridge between the ineffable and
the measurable and that now.

Well we're in a construct where a lot
of things major magically change and

that this romantic notion that we
have all held as architects they

were all Brunelleschi and that we all
control all aspects of the design has

got to be re factored in
a different kind of way.

You know Brunelleschi was working
at the same time as our very right.

You know right.

And basically was saying I am going to
control everything I have the idea.

I am the central source of information.

I'm going to design the boats that
are used to bring this ship the stone to

the quarry where each other.

Great story to cover C.E.O.

a couple weeks ago about how burning less
he would make study models and turnips.

Right and show the builders what he had
in mind and then he ate the turnip.

So there's no artifact
of the design idea left.

So this construct which is the kind
of romantic mental image that we keep

it's kind of dead now this that
unfortunately this drawing

is kind of blown out of the projector but
I find this to be what I thought this was

the most interesting drawing
of the compass will show.

This is a technical drawing created by
the architect Robert sniffs and fifteen.

In the fifteen hundreds.

It's called a round window
in a round wall and

what he's described in this drawing
is a strategy for the design and

construction and fat fabrication and

installation of this very complex artifact
which is curving in two directions right

it's curving it's curving this way and you
can see in play and it's curving this way.

Now I don't know about you folks but
it would take.

About fifty or sixty shop drawings
to do this in two thousand and

twelve but what Smithson was able
to do with this very simple drawing

was just describe the math the
construction strategy the proportions and

the installation of this
beautiful artifact.

With a set of very very
efficient instructions.

Because he was able to isolate the
information that was necessary to achieve

his design intent with
the utmost amount of fish and

see if he were designing this bill if he
were designing this window today he'd have

to go through a whole bunch of rigor were
all involving involving Rhino models.

So it works models negotiations
with sub contractors lots and

lots of drawings lawyers guns money and

we've just gotten completely away from
this construct except when you consider

the possibility that technology might
be remediating the relationship.

So Professor Gary who's
a colleague of Marion's in mine

at Yale said this in a lecture several
years ago he said this is simple

is really easy not a very
complicated problem.

The way I see it the computer puts
architecture back in driver seat

as we control it.

Information.

And I get when you're Frank Gehry it's
easy to make statements like that's right.

I am in charge.

I am going to last.

I have a computer.

Not not entirely clear to me that that's
sort of where things are headed but

where they are headed is the use of
technology to greet bridge this.

Intention.

Into execution.

But I soon since Bill was here
you guys have seen this project.

This is the this is the little folly that
they did in a park in New York this is

Sharples Holden pastorally.

This is what the working drawings looked
like the project was completely P

prefabricated all of the installation
instructions were laser etched on

to elements that were preassembled and
then prefabricated and

then assembled in the field the working
drawings had no dimensions on them and

the contractor used no tape measures or
other measures.

Device it's part of the building's
design and its construction were

manifest simultaneously by doing computer
simulations first using those computer

simulations to create the fabricated
artifacts and then having the building.

Sort of be predestined So
in a way this image

twenty first century version of this
image is this out what's the what's

the strategy that allows the building
to ultimately be manifest.

The buildings actually operate it
considerably more considerably higher

levels of sophistication than
either Smithson's window or

Sharples folly but we have a very
sophisticated tools available to us

that allow a strategy for
the construction based on the design to be

created the problem is in the relationship
between design and construction and

the relationship between thinking and
making the folks who understand the most

about what the final artifact is supposed
to do are disconnected from the logic of

construction and so
this is just a tool that

you know one of the tools that we work on
that looks at construction strategy and

it's all about the extraction of
the design intent model and the overlay of

that model on an idea about construction
but that's going to require to make

that bridge close that gap is going to
require thinking about the problem and

I'll skip that one thinking about the
problem in a fundamentally different way

and not about the deployment of tools but
about the structure

of the process of how buildings
are organized and delivered itself.

So we're going to a five minute really
boring digression into professional

practice.

OK so I'm really sorry but
I'm going to show diagrams.

All right.

OK so if you take.

If we take this idea that we talked about
before this thinking vs making thing

you can actually isolate the roles of the
players in a traditional building project

into three very clear sets.

Interests.

We have clients who aspire
to have buildings we don't

understand how to make them.

We have architects who want to manifest
the intention of the building but

are prevented from making them and
then we have builders who go out and

actually execute those intentions That's
the theoretical construct that exists and

the way that construct is
manifest in modern construction

legally is in two sets of relationships.

The relationship on the left
is a services contract.

I provide professional services and
I deliver those services to the client

the contract on the right
is a construction contract.

I make a thing based on the information
that's been provided to me by the owner

I create and I create a product.

This is a product that's a service.

But here's the problem.

There is a in them at least
in American construction.

There is a fundamental structural dilemma
in that diagram forget about hatred and

animosity and between architects and

contractors forget about
the separation of means and methods.

Forget about daring contractors to
build buildings the legal standards

by which these things are delivered to the
client are incompatible with one another.

The insert professional services
are provided by this thing

called the standard of care.

I assume this concept has been introduced
to you in your professional practice

course right it's.

It's an ineffable standard of what
a competent practitioner would have done

if he or she had done a good job that's on
the left but on the right the relationship

between clients and
builders is dictated by a legal concept

that was created in the one nine hundred
thirty S. called the spear in doctrine and

the spirit doctrine says contractors
in receiving instructions from

owners to build buildings are legally
entitled to rely on the accuracy and

completeness of that information and
if that information is not accurate and

complete they have mean they they may take
means to recapture the economic loss.

So this is all about judgment and
this is all about products.

This is all about some
kind of weird competence.

Standard and this is about getting it
right this is all about intention and this

is about execution the bag definition the
intention part cannot meet the standard

created by the Spirit doctrine but
the structure that doesn't work.

It does not work and

in that in this set of relationships is
where you find the thirty five percent.

In marriage class today I mentioned
today that one of my friends

is a contractor in Boston
says that he spends

thirty percent of his time on any
construction project covering his ass.

Doing exculpatory stuff.

Writing memos putting pieces of paper in
the file looking at errors looking for

errors and omissions in the drawings.

That's thirty percent of his time that is
not spent delivering value to the quiet.

He's defending himself against
the potential problems that are created

by this construct and so
there are there's an emerging theory

of that it goes under the general umbrella
called integrated project delivery but

you can call it the general idea
of integration that somehow

if we could reexamined the relationship
between these players we could destroy

this construct that's created these
problems we can destroy it somehow.

But we're not going to be able to do it by
Miss sizing the problem around the edges

we actually have to try some
fairly radical constructs and

so this idea that somehow there's a feel.

I did this completely subliminally the
whole piece on thing I'm sorry about that

you know child of the sixty's sort of
thing but there's this theory that if you

can create a realm in which the
relationship between the players can be

reconstructed can be redefined the maybe
you can attack the underlying problems and

so what you're starting to see in this
will be the end of the boring professional

practiced digression is in each of
these archetypes of how projects

are organized whether it's design
bit build or C.M. models or

some of these experimental integrated
project delivery models that are going on.

You're starting to see
the appearance of what I.

All this red stuff and

the red stuff is new relationships
between thinkers and makers whether

it's the exchange of digital information
between a designer and a contractor.

That's a sort of a side
deal on a hard big job or

whether in these construction management
jobs where the architects and

the engineers and the constructors share
a set of contractual conditions that

allow them to benefit if
the project operates well or

these multi-party agreements all this
red stuff means we're creating new and

different kinds of connections new
relationships new obligations for

the exchange of information
new protocols for

how designers interact with builders and
it's.

Discussion and the emergence of the red
stuff at least in my view would not have

been possible without the catalytic
effect of some of the technologies

that we've talked about previously because
they create a degree of transactional

transparency and a degree of insight
procedural insight understanding

of the implications of decisions that make
these kinds of collaboration's possible

you no longer have to dare the contractor
to build the building from the drawings

because you and the contractor are going
to work together simulate the building and

prototype prototype form digitally and
understand how it's going to work and

that means you're going to have
a completely different relationship

with that particular contractor.

But as it turns out it
least in my view and

I've been around now for
I've been around long enough.

I've been through what you say
George six recessions seven

recessions since I started my
career in the late seventy's.

This one of the worst against America
have for the students in the office is

just short term or OK it's just going to
be a short DOWNER I won't stay on this

slide very long but the facts of
the matter are you guys saw this right.

So the article The New York Times
go to college.

Don't study architecture.

Right.

And this is a this is actually a good
thing because things don't change in our

professional.

If there's an economic crisis combined
with some other stuff that's going on and

so we got our economic crisis right.

That's the unemployment rate for
recent architecture graduates.

That's the unemployment rate for
people who have experience in architecture

who are reporting the fact that
they're actually looking for

a job in architecture.

My opinion is that their numbers
are probably twice what that is

I like to show my students the numbers
that architects earn as salary and

then I'd like to compare them with their
roommate and goes to Yale Law School.

It's a really scary situation but I can
make it mathematically really simple for

you just put a one in front of
each one of these numbers right.

So we laugh about this the bad news
is that we're in this big economic

crisis the good news is is it takes one
of those things to create an existential

conversation amongst architects and they
can actually really start defining what

they're doing and what's interesting
about as we were in studying this stuff.

What we found is there's
a very interesting

sort of financial economic
modeling problem that occurs.

So the gears the construction cycle which
goes up and down over the course of six to

eight year periods that's just
normal the normal business cycle.

This one.
We

have to be in right now
is that it's pretty deep.

It's deeper than anyone that
I've actually ever seen.

But what we also know is
that the profit margins

in construction are certainly razor thin.

That if the economy
starts to turn down and

people start fiercely competing with one
another their profit margins go negative.

And they stay negative until
midway through the upturn.

And when they get positive for a while and
then the next upturn they turn negative so

the area under this curve that's negative

is actually significantly a lot
larger in the area that's positive.

Which means we operate in
a very low margin business.

We don't make very much money that's why
principals of firms don't live in big

houses and in turn architects make thirty
five thousand dollars a year principles.

Law firms live in really
really big houses and

law graduates make a lot more money than
we do because the profit margins are so

narrow that means that that
has run significant effect and

it has one big implication
effect on us as a business

is business is that have low profit
margins have no money to innovate.

If you don't have a lot of extra money.

It's hard to experiment and
trying new things.

So there's a reason that
you know graph a soft had

the idea of what the eventually became
building information modeling but

position to for
twenty five years as drafting tool.

And we came along much
later than those guys.

After acquiring rabbit and decided to
position rabbit as a revolutionary tool

because we had a very profitable cash
cow called Autocad and we could spend.

Well it's now been about five or

six hundred million dollars working on
this building information modeling problem

where you know our business
doesn't suffer from this cycle.

So we have these bits of the first issue
is not very much money for innovation so

the sources of innovation
are relatively limited but

the other issue is we now actually have
an opportunity given this the structural

problems that we've talked about and given
the possibility that the combination of

the economic circumstances and
the technology that's out there.

Those things might
restructure the problem.

So we could actually attack the value
proposition in a different way.

We actually start thinking about
delivering our services in a way that both

enable us as architects to prove
our value in the marketplace and

also frankly raise or reserve salaries
which kind of desperately needs to

happen and there's a lot of a lot.

There's a lot of really interesting
work going on in this question of how

professionals reach competency right now.

You guys know this guy's name
is a tool go one day he's a he's

a surgeon at Harvard Medical School.

And he's written this really interesting
book called The Checklist Manifesto.

You know what he's interested in he works
with the World Health Organization.

He got very interested in the fact that
a huge number of people die from surgery

because stupid mistakes get made
is really really dumb mistakes

missed the procedures operating
on the wrong leg leaving sponges

in people failing to wash your
hands just dumb dumb stuff and

he's come up with this idea that there's
a very simple answer to this question.

Just like an airplane pilot
a surgeon should spend some time

making a well designed
checklist to make sure that we

all washed her hands that we're
using the right any biopics that we

drape the patient properly
that we have got the right.

Medications in the operating theatre and
of course what was interesting about his

study is there is this whole study they
do and they do an implementation across

some of the public hospitals
in the United States and

they lower the death rates by like forty
percent post-op death rates go way down.

So he says to the search then
he does a survey of surgeons at

Harvard Medical School.

And he surveys them and goes if you are
having an operation would you like your

surgeon to use one of these checklists.

Like eighty five percent of them said
yes then he's the next question was

since you were a surgeon would you be
willing to use one of these checklists and

like eighty five percent of them said no.

Why did they say no.

Well because surgeons like architects
are trained in this super heroic

professional model where we somehow
believe that we can heroically

lead the process with no tools no
help no innovation no technology.

No nothing but securely new and so this
you know well I think this go on to work

as a proxy for
this question of how we as a profession

could use technology to begin inserting
protocols that can drive that can begin to

drive the value proposition and
I think the way we do it philosophically

the way I think the problem is
structured is pretty easy to understand.

I think there are three major trends in.

Building industry right now we've
got to get our heads around and

call whatever you want.

The means of representation or building
information modeling the means of delivery

or integrated project delivery and our
relationship to the buildings lifecycle or

sustainable design or
lifecycle management or

whatever we want to talk about and
what we have traditionally done in

the thirty five percent inefficient
highly atomized idea to build by building

construct is all of that stuff
has been lots and lots of pieces.

We're adding around without a relationship
to each other and as you move through

these representational delivery and life
cycle that there's we need as a profession

to begin to look at the problem of what
it means to execute a whole project.

Whole project and all the pieces and how
all the pieces actually go together and

technology is just one of the columns in
this little porch that I have created here

and I think one of the most
interesting ways of looking at that

was defined in our in the book that
Professor Beamer and I worked on together.

There's an essay in that
book by a labor economist

named Paulo Tom bases from
the University of Melbourne.

He studies the nature of
labor in architecture and

he talked about this idea.

He talked about an idea that the overlay
of information technology in the practice

of design reduces information
subjectivity makes it

faster to exchange and makes it easier to
understand how it's going back and forth.

But more importantly he
talked about a concept

that I think is at the center
of this whole discussion here.

The concept you talked about in
his essay was something called

the something he called
flexible specialization.

I should probably put it on the slide
here for X. about specialization.

And what he said was that architects have
found themselves in the western world

too focused on architectural design and
not focused on building design and

that the making of buildings
is a design problem.

The.
It is a state that is a superset

of the problem of architectural design and
in the future.

Given the less subjective nature
of information technology and

the complexity of the enterprise.

There are actually lots of different
things that make up the design

of a building some of which are more
traditional architectural design

activities like scope or relation and
project definition some of them have to do

with designing the means of production
the means of erection and the and

the way projects are maintained what Paul
and suggests is that the practitioner of

the future has to be able to move around
very agile he on these lily pads and

play different kinds of roles but the more
important idea is that we translate

our concept as professionals from this
idea of purely architectural design or

sticking almost exclusively in
the implementation of the of the vague and

measurable and ineffable and
into the larger problem of what it means

to manifest a building and what I was
saying to a couple of the students earlier

tonight is this is not just
an abstract exercise that you know for

your attentions like myself are looking
at if you look at the nature of

six U.S.
business in the United States bin adoption

is the highest of any place in the world
and in our business right now most of

our profitable business is contractors

we sell a lot of modeling tools to
contractors and what the contractors have

realized much more quickly in terms of
the slope of the curve than architects

is that digital prototyping building
information modeling all the stuff I'm

talking about has a real effect on the
efficiency of the construction process and

because there are so many low cost
of Ailill architects out there.

All they need is a couple of copies
a rabbit and a few cheap architects and

the next thing you know they've got
a modeling team up and they can start

building digital models of the projects
that they're going to build they don't get

the model from the architect they don't
hear them they can solve it is a very

short hop from a team of modeling
architects to an architecture cracked.

It's a very short hop and if you look at
that trend and you look at the emergence

of mega practices like eighty com
Stan tech R K This battle for

baby the integration of the industry
people trying to figure out how to

control all these little pads is something
that's happening and we as a profession

have to decide how we're going to position
ourselves in that I think is the central

existential question of the architecture
profession going forward.

So I'll finish with this thought right now
what we're really talking about here if we

take this back to the theory classroom
is the relationship between what we call

an architecture that contingent in other
words the things that affect the design

and constrain it and the N.F.L. ball in
other words as one of my students asked

when we were doing some revenue
training you know a couple years ago.

Where's the serendipity of all this.

Where's the happiness.

Where's the where is the beauty.

How do you how do I get serendipity when
I'm using a building information model.

And so the construct that I think
we could think about it in this

overall arrangement is the following if
we want to think about the relationship

between technological tools and
all these changes that I'm talking about.

At bare minimum the implementation of
these tools makes things more efficient

a bare minimum the use of
a modeling strategy means you work

faster you need fewer people and you have
cycles of Ailill to do something else.

So that's just a pure economic argument
that's kind of at the bottom of the food

chain of what I think the arguments are
about the middle of the argument is about

what I would call understanding which is
if we're going to make the transition to

these kinds of tools and we're going
to have different kinds of obligations

we have to have different kinds of data
streams that are part of the process and

it least will understand
more about what we're doing.

If we can operate in that mode.

When explicitly make the decision that
that weird shape that you've created

is going to cost a lot more money or
use a lot more energy or leak or

whatever but I think the real opportunity
here is what what I what I'm going to call

insight which is that all this
technology and all this restruck.

If we think about it in the right way and
we position ourselves in the right way

actually can operate in the service of
the ineffable it can actually make us

better designers because it can relieve us
of the obligation of having to do a lot

of stuff that we there can't do
do here a sickly or outsource and

create any technology can create a space
in which we can explore problems.

So we can use the parts of our brains that
are synthetic and that are really about

evaluating and understanding alternatives
and coming up with good ideas and

create and leave the rest of the problem
to all these kinds of technologies but

if we're going to do that it's going to
require a conceptual jump to a different

mode of operating a restructuring of
the use of tools a new relationship to

construction a new set of rules of
practice a new set of value propositions.

And you know I my view of this is that.

This part of the argument is all about
the creation of of the profession and

we somehow managed to come out of ties
ourselves into a role where our values

not really well understood if we take
this argument in these kinds of tools and

the power of information that we can get
to a moment where there's a new there's

a new value proposition out there and
we can we can reposition ourselves in this

context and really make architecture
important and architects more valuable.

So with that.

I mean done because that
argument makes sense.