Design Technology In Contemporary Architectural Practice

Design Technology in Contemporary Architectural Practice lifts the curtain to unveil how eleven world-leading design studios integrate technology (such as computational design, BIM, and digital fabrication) as part of their day-to-day design exploration and delivery. Via first-hand accounts, the book offers rare insights about how these firms apply technology to purposefully disrupt and support their creative design processes in order to then explore how technology can be integrated on an organisational level. The resulting practice stories are loosely tied to four chapters that discuss how Design Technology corresponds to studio culture, collaboration and delivery protocols, business opportunities, knowledge sharing, staff empowerment, and more. The author is less interested in presenting the latest and greatest tools than in focusing on cultural and organisational challenges and opportunities. This book benefits both the professional market (such as design firms reflecting on their technology use), as well as the academic context (with its critical reflection on the interface between design process and technology support). Stories from the following design firms are included: Coop Himmelb(l)au Foster + Partners Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) Zaha Hadid Architects Diller Scofidio + Renfo Heatherwick Studio Morphosis Architects SO-IL Woods Bagot Herzog & de Meuron LASSA

Contemporary Architecture and the Digital Design Process introduces the reader to new developments in the computer modelling of design form in contemporary architectural practice through a series of detailed case studies. The book illustrates how evolving design practices use and exploit the potential of new computing technologies in a wide range of areas and application. A central thesis of this book is that technology follows design demand, rather than design adjusting to available new technology. Designers are not merely passive recipients of prescribed computing tools and techniques. Instead, they are increasingly able to express their intuitive design ideas through the rational medium of computing. The book features several contemporary building projects, each of which introduces a range of CAD and computing issues based upon the work of creative architectural and engineering design practices. These include the offices of Frank O. Gehry, Peter Cook and Colin Fournier, Anthony Hunt Associates, Peter Hubner, Szyskowitz-Kowalski, and Faulkner Brown. All these examples show what architects need to know and the skills they need to acquire to use advanced CAD technology.

Architecture in the Digital Age addresses contemporary architectural practice in which digital technologies are radically changing how buildings are conceived, designed and produced. It discusses the digitally-driven changes, their origins, and their effects by grounding them in actual practices already taking place, while simultaneously speculating about their wider implications for the future. The book offers a diverse set of ideas as to what is relevant today and what will be relevant tomorrow for emerging architectural practices of the digital age.

Ornament is currently acquiring a renewed status in architecture. As contemporary technologies of design and fabrication introduce unprecedented opportunities to intertwine the constructive logics and expressive articulations of buildings, ornament has re-emerged as a means to explore the interactions between function and decoration, volume and surface, structure and envelope. This book gives a systematic account of the technologies employed in the production of ornament and the strategies of its application today, examining a range of international built examples. Architects with particularly advanced approaches to the question of ornament contribute reports and reflections on their experiences: Sam Jacob of Fashion Architecture Taste (FAT), London; Andreas Hild of Hild und K Architekten, Munich; and Alejandro Zaera-Polo of Foreign Office Architects (FOA), London.

Design and the Vernacular explores the intersection between vernacular architecture, local cultures, and modernity and globalization, focussing on the vast and diverse global region of Australasia and Oceania. The relevance and role of vernacular architecture in contemporary urban planning and architectural design are examined in the context of rapid political, economic, technological, social and environmental changes, including globalization, exchanges of people, finance, material culture, and digital technologies. Sixteen chapters by architects designers and theorists, including Indigenous writers, explore key questions about the agency of vernacular architecture in shaping contemporary building and design practice. These questions include: How have Indigenous and First Nations building traditions shaped modern building practices? What can the study of vernacular architecture contribute to debates about sustainable development? And how has vernacular architecture been used to argue for postcolonial modernisation and nation-building and what has been the effect on heritage and conservation? Such questions provide valuable case studies and lessons for architecture in other global regions -- and challenge assumptions about vernacular architecture being anachronistic and static, instead demonstrating how it can shape contemporary architecture, nation building and cultural identities.

Design-Tech is an indispensable, holistic approach to architectural technology that shows you in hundreds of drawings and tables the why as well as the how of building science, providing you with a comprehensive overview. In this expanded edition, measurements and examples are listed in both metric and imperial units to reflect the global reality of architectural practice. The authors also address digital fabrication, construction documentation, ultra-high-rise structures, and zoning codes. And there's more in-depth coverage of structural design and greater emphasis on environmental forces. Numerous case studies demonstrate real-world design implications for each topic, so that you can integrate technical material with design sensibilities. Short chapters explain each topic from first principles in easy-to-reference formats, focusing on what you need to know both at the drawing board and in future discussions with engineers, contractors, and consultants. This new edition incorporates material from continuing curricular experimentation in the SCI-TECH sequence at Iowa State University, which has been recognized with awards and funding from the American Institute of Architects, the U.S. Green Building Council, and the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards.

This timely and thought-provoking collection of essays offers a detailed examination of contemporary architectural practice in the 1990s. Reflections on Architectural Practices in the Nineties grew out of a year-long symposium at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, which took stock of pressing issues in order to speculate on future paths for both education and practice. Among the many challenges the architecture profession is currently facing are a constantly volatile economic climate, rapid technological change, and a general globalization of society. Reflections presents 29 essays by leading critics, scholars, and designers, essays that grapple with these and other issues and provide strategies for confronting them. Several additional perspectives are presented through brief passages and images of built work, so that the whole forms a collage of broad, diverse viewpoints. George Baird, Thomas Fisher, and Andrew Saint are among those who provide overviews of architectural practice and education. Mack Scogin, Carl Sapers, and David Harvey, among others, discuss contemporary professional responsibilities and ethics. Forms of practice in the 1990s are discussed by a variety of participants including Max Bond, David Dillon, Rob Quigley, and Sharon Zukin. Rem Koolhaas, Saskia Sassen, and William Lazonick, with others, discuss the impact of the global economy on architecture. Finally, Peter G. Rowe presents some possible implications for design education. Reflections on Architectural Practice in the Nineties is an essential compendium for anyone in the ever-changing future of architecture.

There is no denying the transformational role of the computer in the evolution of contemporary architectural practice. But does this techno-determinist account tell the whole story? Are humans becoming irrelevant to the overall development of the built environment? Bulding (in) the Future confronts these important questions by examining the fundamental human relationships that characterize contemporary design and construction. Thirty-four contributors including designers, engineers, fabricators, contractors, construction managers, planners, and scholars examine how contemporary practices of production are reshaping the design/construction process