Randy Deutsch - Convergence: The Redesign of Design

This edition first published 2017

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ISBN 978-1-119-25621-2 (hardback)

ISBN 978-1-119-25623-6 (ePDF)

ISBN 978-1-119-25628-1 (ePub)

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Executive Commissioning Editor: Helen Castle

Project Editor: Miriam Murphy

Assistant Editor: Calver Lezama

Page design by Emily Chicken

Cover image by Aaron Laniosz

Cover design and page layouts by Karen Willcox, www.karenwillcox.com

DEDICATION

To my daughter, Michol:

May your curiosity, multivarious interests and passion for learning converge into a fulfilling lifetime of selfexpression, service, and exploration.

We often think of reading and writing as a solitary acts, but they can also be common acts of convergence. Salman Rushdie once explained, a different kind of identity is produced as reader and writer merge, through the medium of the text, to become a collective being that both writes as it reads and reads as it writes. For Rushdie, this is the greatest and most subversive gift offered by a book.

I would like to thank my team at Wiley for the opportunity to write for AD, and for their guidance, support, and encouragement throughout the writing of this book. Special thanks to Amanda Miller, vice president and publisher; Dr. Paul Sayer, publisher; Miriam Murphy, project editor; Amy Odum, senior production editor; Justin Mayhew, associate marketing director; and Calver Lezama, who has now worked with me on several books.

A hearty thank you to Helen Castle for recognizing the promise of the book from the very beginning and for helping to shepherd the initial idea for the book into its present state.

Also special thanks to my contributors Brian Ringley, Nathan Miller, Toru Hasegawa, Robert Yori, Robert Vierlinger, Sam Miller, Anthony Buckley-Thorp, the folks at PARTISANS, Philip Beesley, Markku Allison, Yun Kyu Yi, Mani Golparvar Fard, Jamie Farrell, Nels Long, M A Greenstein, Jose Sanchez, Carin Whitney, and Matthew Krissel for their generosity of time, and sharing of their experience and insights.

Lastly, my thanks to Aaron Lanoisz, who not only rendered the expert, colorful diagrams throughout the book, but also provided the inspiration for the cover. Aaron proved to be a gifted, trusted and creative collaborator and always-reliable sounding board throughout the writing of the book, and for thatand his wisdom and patienceI am grateful. I am confident that he is on his way to become a leading architect.

This convergence will be recognized as the largest, most complex, and most surprising event on the planet up until this time.

Kevin Kelly

There is today a pronounced and accelerated convergence in architecture. This convergence is occurring in building design, fabrication, and construction because of doers, not thinkers, and in practice, not academia. It is about solution-centric individuals engaging in real-time problem solving, not in abstractions. The nature of this convergence, where things are converging, and what that convergence means for architecture is the subject of this book.

The emergent forces and technologies that have come together in the second decade of the twenty-first century have developed to the point where real-time integration of all facets of the design and construction process is now possible. Computational tools, collaborative work processes, and the cloud make real-time/right-time convergence today a reality. However, tools arent the only things causing this convergence: its also due to the maturity of the design community. Those who have been at this for a while, as they attest throughout this book, recognize a convergence of forces, technologies, and workflows not only in their own work, but throughout the profession and industry.

There is even another force at work: millennials. No longer restricted to use of the tools created and distributed by software manufacturers, and impatient with the old guard, standard procedures, business as usual, and the status quo, young and emerging professionals are driving this movement toward convergence by taking matters into their own hands via employee-created and freely disseminated software plug-ins and add-ons, along with user-empowered scripting and visual programming, thereby improving workflows and increasing efficiencies.

Design professionals today recognize that technology and work processes are converging in their area of practice or expertise. Convergence refers to two or more things coming together, joining together, or evolving into one. It is manifested in such things as building information modeling (BIM) and computation; gaming and spatial analysis that join in virtual reality; design optimization and fabrication; and reality capture co-joining in photogrammetry, visual sensing laser scanning, drones, and robotics. What design professionals dont realize is that these convergences are taking place in all facets of the design professions and construction industry. Moreover, they dont have a thorough understanding of how the pieces fit together, what the potential impacts are, ormost importantly for their practiceswhere all of this is heading. The convergence referred to in the book title has both practical and emergent antecedents. Architecture is a complex undertaking requiring the input of many individuals with varying interests, backgrounds, and expertise. This has not changedand will not change. What