Computers and Architecture

During my graduate architecture study at the UCD (University of Colorado in Denver), I took a computer modeling class.  Though I still truly believe no computer design software can hold a candle to a thick pencil on a good piece of paper, I learned two very valuable concepts from the instructor, Robert Flanagan.

Robert had a background working with CAD (Computer Aided Drafting).  He had been responsible for all the computers and files in an architecture firm if I recollect correctly. He also had a very intuitive process for design.


The first thing Flanagan taught me was that computers are the next millenniums tool for information  management.  This was still true as I took the class my Second year around 1998.  This gave me a new vision  of  how to truly use a computer.

After his class, I have always thought of computers in the following way.  They can't do anything for you but store and retrieve data.  If you cant organize your information, you cant find it and therefore it's of no value.  This has helped me maintain a hierarchical folder system I still use today to find a singe item out of tens of thousands of files.  Very valuable information to get so early in my architecture career.

The 5 elements in my version of Frank Lloyd Wrights 'Price Tower'.  I've always loved the ambiguity of top vs. bottom, it's defiance of any scale, and how the buildings structure, environmental systems and function seamlessly collide.



The other and really the most important, is the development of 'an element'.  In a later design studio, Kieth Loftin was able to provide an academic process and an architectural description for what this element might be, the notion that element is developed, adapted and then iterated, but Flanagan first inspired me to consider repeatable elements as a very important architectural tool.

We actually designed a building with a a series of elements.  Some people used one or two and others like myself 5 or 6, but through scaling, mirroring, rotating and arraying, we created all kinds of things.

I at the time was interested in skyscrapers and the repeatable elements of 'floors', but enjoyed taking it to the smaller level-a repeatable section which could be pre-fabbed.


Always trying to tie the studies of one class to another, I gathered my thoughts from studying this tower in precedents, engineered the overall system and the cantilever floors, and then rendered it with minimal pieces for a second version of Flanagan's process.  And loved every minute of it.



So thank you for teaching me these two things which fully integrated into my own process of design.  Concepts which even a decade later, I take as fact;

Computers can only store information.  But they can also reproduce and alter this information to create elements, and from this you can create architecture.