Technology and the appropriate.

At a recent awards jury (for student travel scholarships funded by Kohn Pedersen Fox), general comments arose concerning the extent to which technology, particularly in respect of visualisation, was affecting the quality of portfolios in two distinct ways. First was the extraordinary quality of some of the imagery, unthinkable only a generation ago. Second was the worry that technology in general was determining too much the quality of design outcome. These comments complemented a series of presentations at this magazine's annual London conference, where engineers showed off some of the tricks of their trade in respect of structure, services and modelling programs, allowing architects to make far more informed choices, for example, over structure and form, the placement of solid and transparent elements for energy efficiency, or ways of shape-making to maximise light sources (or avoid overshadowing).

The more compelling and desirable the presentations, the more one began to wonder who is leading whom in the eternal dance between design and technology. If the computer can generate the ideal answer, is the role of the architect subsumed in the engineer's (or mathematician's) world of algorithms? Is it just a question of punching in the site co-ordinates, desired outcome and cost envelope? In what will be an increasing market in design-your-own solutions, particularly in relation to house design, the answer may well be yes, with simpleton propositions available at the touch of a key. Is this a problem for architecture as a whole? Happily, the desire for the quick and simple (fast food, internet sampling) can co-exist perfectly happily with parallel activity (slow food, shopping as leisure activity). Good design is not about speed but intelligence, and the ability to take into account the myriad factors which even the smartest computer programs will have difficulty synthesising--client psychology, planning and heritage restrictions, aspect and prospect, to name but a few.

If technology is the answer, then what exactly was the question? as Cedric Price used to remark. That question might be: what is the most intelligent question I can ask of technology in order to consider a range of design options which may be outside my experience, or which may reinforce the design decision which intuition is guiding me towards? The unproductive question to ask is: what could be done in these circumstances which will be the easiest thing to achieve, irrespective of qualitative considerations? We know what happens if that path is pursued, with or without the benefit of sophisticated analysis: the grim world of the lowest common design denominator. Embracing the marvels of contemporary science is far preferable to distrusting its value-free aspect. Let computer analysis inform the diagram--but let there be a diagram.