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Automation Takes Command: toward a design typology. Joseph A. Betz Associate Professor of Architecture Department of Architecture & Construction Management. Introduction. Technology is changing the design process Certain design acts are now automated
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Automation Takes Command: toward a design typology Joseph A. Betz Associate Professor of Architecture Department of Architecture & Construction Management
Introduction • Technology is changing the design process • Certain design acts are now automated • Some acts of design change from creation to analysis • Design acts can be categorized into Typologies • This paper develops a Design Typology • Based on the theory and argument developed in: "Epistemology, Technology and Organization: the affects of change in architectural design," Proceedings of American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) Annual Conference, at Nashville, Tenn., June 2003
Background The Dilemma Tension between academia and industry • industry is moving toward one type of technology platform for economic reasons that academia cannot use for pedagogical and assessment ones. • technology is rendering specific types of knowledge obsolete and vice versa • historical precedents in other disciplines • automation reduces the designer to observer • new act being created called design analysis
Design Typology Design Typology is used to predict whether a particular design act can be automated or not. Conceptual Evidence • progression of automated design • parallels with mechanization (mechanical automation) and design automation • software examples (see paper for examples)
Progression of Automated Software First use of design automated process • highly standardized assemblies • limited number of components • modular system • example: prefabricated industrial buildings Next step was to automate engineering aspects • prescriptive design (i.e, AISC steel design rules) • applied science, linear in decision making • measurable solution and predictable outcome
Historical Parallels Provide clues to patterns of modernization Aspects of mechanization during the Industrial Revolution: • standardization: a modular component system • assembly line: linear process of production Power source, raw material, flow and product of each: • Mechanization: internal combustion engine; iron/steel; canal/railroad; consumer items • Design automation: computer technology; information; the Internet; professional/management services
Setting the Categories • Variables organized into a chart as forecasting tool • Chart is like a diagram and is reductive • Intent is clarity over an impossibly large set of facts • Three categories: • Theoretical/Philosophical Operating Model • Mode of Production • Design Solution • Classification System • comparative polar test • preliminary only
Conclusion 1. Need to recognize that technology is driving change • evidence (technological and historical) to support this • result is the creation of a new design act 2. Ramification of not recognizing this change • effects on the graduates we prepare for the profession • relationship between academia and industry 3. Forecast for the future • fewer designers doing design creation • more designers dong design analysis • reduction in the total number of designers