From blueprint to database: Economist

Jun 5th 2008

From The Economist print edition

Computing: Aircraft and cars are designed using elaborate digital models. Now the same idea is being applied to buildings

THE advent of powerful computers has enabled architects to produce stunning images of new buildings and other structures. No proposal for a big project is complete without a photorealistic rendering of how the final design will look, or even a virtual walk-through. Perhaps surprisingly, however, those fancy graphics tend to be used only for conceptual purposes and play no role in the detailed design and construction of the finished structure. For the most part, this is still carried out with old-fashioned two-dimensional elevation and plan drawings, created by hand or using computer-aided design (CAD) software. “It’s still a 2-D profession,” says Shane Burger, an associate architect at Grimshaw, the firm that designed the Eden Project, a domed botanical garden in Cornwall, at the south-western tip of England.

And therein lies a problem, for even when it is generated by computer, a 2-D line drawing is just that: a bunch of lines. “There’s no structure that tells you that this line is a wall, stair or window,” says Chuck Eastman, a professor of architecture and computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. “If you changed a window you would have to rebuild the wall around it to make it bigger or smaller.” Given that even a small building can require thousands of drawings, and producing drawings traditionally accounts for a big chunk of an architect’s fee, making changes can be a costly and time-consuming business. “If you adjust the shape of a building late in the game, you would have a lot of drawing to do,” says Mr Burger. Moreover, such drawings give no indication of the cost of construction. Instead, architects have to keep a schedule of materials that they continually update as the design progresses. Alter the design, and you also have to alter the entire schedule.

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