Jason Hu ARCH1101 2015

What may be seen as continuing and increasing waves of pressure and distraction have really been several discrete disruptions. According to Phil, we’ve had several disruptions — and we are currently in one right now!
The disruptions we are about to hear about affect the way we design and make things. And the latest one is starting to radically change our industry.
“Everything was done by hand,” Herrera said. “There was a tangible human touch in that. It wasn’t quite a lifetime of a project, but there was something tangible to it.”
Now, architects do all of that on a computer. Changes can be made on the fly and the entire team can be managed and notified of tasks and changes from the cloud. What used to take a lifetime now only takes a few months.
We see a truly awesome example of an architecture firm so advanced it has created a CNC machine to bend rebar in a variety of shapes, tag each one so the construction crews knows exactly where to place it, and then the architects can watch the building being made each day using 3D scans and point clouds against the 3D model of the building design. The building in progress compared to the building that was meant to be. How cool is that?
Using tailored software tools, ATLV is able to employ algorithms alongside electronic hardware and robotics to seek broader ideas of design, fabrication, and process. High speed feedback allows for large numbers of design iterations to be investigated, allowing accelerated feedback and flexibility to respond to various design and business situations.
“The best designers manipulate data, not forms,” says Phil.
“Developers will take all of this in-house, realize it saves them a ton of money, and start rolling out buildings faster than ever,” he said. “From a design perspective, that’s not a good thing. From a financial perspective, they’ll make hand over fist.”
“I don’t believe the buildings we build today will last as long as those built back when it took a lifetime to build one building,” Herrera said. Those buildings, he said, will stand the test of time while more modern buildings won’t. But, Herrera said, there’s nothing at all wrong with that. It’s just, well — it’s telling.
“Particularly good architecture reflects the society it’s building for, and that’s our society today,” he said. “Four centuries from now, when people look back on our time period, they’ll think of the kings of our time — Facebook, Google, banks — and there are monuments to them that are slapstick buildings, built cheap and efficiently.”

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