Cumincad : CUMINCAD Papers : Search Results

CumInCAD is a Cumulative Index about publications in Computer Aided Architectural Design
supported by the sibling associations ACADIA, CAADRIA, eCAADe, SIGraDi, ASCAAD and CAAD futures

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_id	e35f
authors	Monedero, Javier
year	1998
title	The Role of the Architect in the Age of Automatic Reproduction
source	Computerised Craftsmanship [eCAADe Conference Proceedings] Paris (France) 24-26 September 1998, pp. 158-163
doi	https://doi.org/10.52842/conf.ecaade.1998.158
summary	This paper is a general reflection on the relationship between computer architectural education and professional practice or, in other words, the social role of architects. This reflection is grounded on the experience of the author as director of a Master program on computerized architectural projects and as professor of two general school courses: one consisting on a theoretical review of computer applications in architecture, the other consisting on a practical development of modeling and visualization techniques. The main argument is that little attention is being given in recent publications and CAAD conferences to the actual role of architect in society and that a big gap is growing between what is currently taught in architectural schools and what happens in real life. This gap has as one pole what is loosely called the "star system" of famous architects that create singular buildings and that constitute the main reference of our architectural culture and, as another pole, the rigid laws of the market that dictate the types of most residential buildings. This lack of attention manifests itself in the unbalanced weight of papers on multimedia, historical modeling or visualization techniques and papers on housing or architectural current elements analysis. Some very interesting lines of research, perhaps distorted due to an insufficient analysis of the general notion of type in architecture, have been abandoned without much comment. The conclusion is that a discussion on this line would perhaps help to define better the distance between computer craftsmanship and architectural education.
series	eCAADe
more	http://www.paris-valdemarne.archi.fr/archive/ecaade98/html/33monedero/index.htm
last changed	2022/06/07 07:58

_id	e78b
authors	Akin, O. and Akin, C.
year	1998
title	On the process of creativity in puzzles, inventions, and designs
source	Automation in Construction 7 (2-3) (1998) pp. 123-138
summary	The most common means of identifying creativity has been through its products. In architecture, music, writing, art, even puzzle solving and scientific discovery, the prerequisite for considering creativity has been the presence of a creative product. Alternatively, anecdotal descriptions have been used to identify processes that are considered creative. Many scientific discoveries have been linked to a sudden realization or unexplainable revelation punctuated with the AHA! response. Outside of the creative product itself and the AHA! response, the kinds of concrete evidence that point to the process of creativity are precious few. Our purpose here is to further examine these phenomena and develop hypotheses about the nature of the creative process. Our ultimate aim is to develop a general theory of creativity. We intend to base this theory on a set of conditions that are necessary for the creative process to take place in a number of domains: puzzles, scientific discoveries, and design, with special emphasis on architectural design.
series	journal paper
more	http://www.elsevier.com/locate/autcon
last changed	2003/05/15 21:22

_id	56
authors	Barron, Alicia and Chiarelli, Julia
year	1998
title	Proyecto Para la Red de un Estudio de Arquitectura (Project for the Network of a Studio of Architecture)
source	II Seminario Iberoamericano de Grafico Digital [SIGRADI Conference Proceedings / ISBN 978-97190-0-X] Mar del Plata (Argentina) 9-11 september 1998, pp. 418-425
summary	A consequence of the globalization on information processes in the way in which new technologies influence on design and production processes. There is no doubt that there is an increasingly and a big change in the areas of architecture design concerning to the operational and working methodology on graphic and alphanumeric information. Now a day it is not a far away Utopia, but a soon to come reality that architects interact in a virtual manner with their individual or institutional clients in their own country, as well as in foreign countries. Keeping these considerations in mind, we elaborated this Paper in order to present one of the existing criteria for the organization of graphic information jointly with its spatial relationship. The work presented herewith shows the development of an informatic net for an ideal mega-studio which in its professional and entrepreneurial profile covers tasks such as design, construction, graphic design and representation of foreign concerns. In the net design and in the selection of equipment for computing design area are covered all the variables at every instance.
series	SIGRADI
email
last changed	2016/03/10 09:47

_id	f288
authors	Bille, Pia
year	1999
title	Integrating GIS and Electronic Networks In Urban Design and Planning
source	Architectural Computing from Turing to 2000 [eCAADe Conference Proceedings / ISBN 0-9523687-5-7] Liverpool (UK) 15-17 September 1999, pp. 722-728
doi	https://doi.org/10.52842/conf.ecaade.1999.722
summary	In 1998 I undertook an inquiry into the use of information technology in Urban Design and Planning in Danish municipalities and among planning consultants. The aim was to find out who was working with the IT and for what purposes it was used. In education there seems to be barriers to a full integration of the new media, and I wanted to find out if that was also the case in the practise of architects and planners. Surprisingly I discovered that there was a computer on almost every desk, - but there were big differences in the use of the technology. The investigation described here is based on interviews with planners in selected municipalities and with urban planning consultants, and the results have been summarised in a publication.
keywords	Urban Planning, Electronic Collaboration, GIS, Data Bases
series	eCAADe
email
last changed	2022/06/07 07:54

_id	10
authors	Bund, Elizabeth and Barros, Diana Rodriguez
year	1998
title	Imagen Digital: Proceso Proyectual Confluyente (Digital Image: Confluyent Design Process)
source	II Seminario Iberoamericano de Grafico Digital [SIGRADI Conference Proceedings / ISBN 978-97190-0-X] Mar del Plata (Argentina) 9-11 september 1998, pp. 84-93
summary	The introduction of new technologies in architectural projects causes, in first place, their adaptation as an operative and instrumental resource, without considering the deep changes that their use generates. The digital image, understood as a reference of this process, is spreading and conquering new fields on ideation, representation and communication. The absence of theoretical support, that would offered another point of view is evident, so consequently we believe that is necessary to consider approaches qualitatively new, from epistemologic, methodologic, perceptive and aesthetic fields, in order to transfer them into professional an teaching practice. Today, the annulment of universal validity rules, and the different and contradictory interpretations, oblige to center our view in the interrelationships and,connections, rather than in the definition of each entity. This work develops synthetically a study which confronts and compares traditional project process - composition and heuristic design supported by linear proceeding and analogic media, with confluent project process, based on digital data and hypermedia links, generated simultaneously. The variants of the topics analyzed are at the same time the project itself, the underlying thinking model, and the project communication strategies.
series	SIGRADI
email
last changed	2016/03/10 09:47

_id	2a12
authors	Burry, Mark and More, Gregory
year	1998
title	Representation, Realism and Computer Generated Architectural Animation
source	Cyber-Real Design [Conference Proceedings / ISBN 83-905377-2-9] Bialystock (Poland), 23-25 April 1998, pp. 241-249
summary	This paper documents a simple architectural form which, but for computer generated animation, has no ready alternative explanatory process for its complex generation. The subject is a column in the nave of the Sagrada Familia Church in Barcelona conceived by Gaudí at the beginning of this century without the contemporary opportunities for animated design exploration. The column is based on a set of counter-rotating mutually interfering profiles. As the column gains height, the profiles increase in interference with each other resulting in an increasingly fluted cross section, a tendency towards the Doric Order. For most, however, there is no easy access to a plausible explanation of the inherent rationale for the column. Animating the generation of the column reveals a unique and concealed sublimation of natural patterns of growth. Animation aids an understanding of the effect of the fourth dimension on design itself by releasing a meaning of time from an otherwise inanimate object. Here animation is used to decipher one aspect of the mystery of Gaudí's design while strengthening another: the source and conceptual power of Gaudí to anticipate this phenomenon. Rather than trivialising this design mystery, the explanatory role of the animation enriches comprehension of the formal concept of mutation through displacement or an evolutionary design paradigm. The paper discuss the implications of this ability to show transition, translation and dislocation without delving too deeply into how the animation was made, nor indeed the subject which, after all, requires animation to fully represent its less tangible qualities.
series	plCAD
email
last changed	2003/05/17 10:01

_id	ad5b
authors	Chu, K.
year	1998
title	Genetic Space
source	A.D.: Architects in Cyberspace II, vol.68, no.11-12, pp.68-73
summary	The twentieth century is the century of convergence. No other century has witnessed the development and profusion of new ideas as the twentieth century, and no other century has experienced the range and scope of events that transpired globally to the extent as this century. Various historical formations and discoveries, unleashed by the Enlightenment, have profoundly changed and transformed the course of human civilization and lead to the maturation of the idea of modernity in this century. With two years left to the start of the next millennium, we are experiencing the effects of modernity that have channeled powerful innovations into the dawn of a new era that could lead, potentially, beyond modernity. More than anything, it signals one of the major premises of the enlightenment to radicalize the substance of nature through the substance of reason and, thereby, altering the modality of the cultural universe of humanity into a genuine cosmopolitical concept. The synthesis of energy, matter and information into a three-parameter system of explanation has created conditions that allow us to think the unthinkable and extend our imagination to the limits of the conceivable. Modernity, from a metaphysical standpoint, brings to light the concept of a transcendental reason that aims to clarify the conditions of possibility for reason as an apriori given. As a consequence, it paved the way for a systemic constitution of a cosmic concept of reason that partakes in the arrival of alien intelligence and one that seems destined to project itself into an ontological domain of its own making. If modernity is an unfinished project, as claimed by some, its program is, nonetheless, being transformed into a cosmogenetic principle where synthesis is the pre-eminent outcome of a return to a second nature, i.e., a transcendent concept of nature. Even though the transcendental dialectic of critical reason is directed towards the timeless unity of the unconditioned, the genitive logic implicit within cosmic reason, itself a form of recursive self-propelling intelligence, appears to be animated by a projective force capable of engendering and pro-creating in the evolutionary sense of the term.
series	other
last changed	2003/04/23 15:50

_id	1de5
authors	Darken, R.P., Allard, T. and Achille, L.B.
year	1998
title	Spatial Orientation and Wayfinding in Large Scale Virtual Spaces
source	Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, 7 (2), pp. 101-107
summary	Just as the Pathfinder used the lake and the oak tree to reconstruct his environment, so do we structure our environment with streets and houses, landmarks and guiding principles to aid spatial orientation and wayfinding. The basic process of navigation-extracting information, forming mental representations, and using that representation for route planning and moving about-transcends the physical elements of the environment itself. In practice, we use whatever the environment gives us to solve navigation problems as they arise, in the process, continually refining and updating our internal model of the external environment. Although the virtual environments we speak of may be vastly different in their appearance from the Pathfinder's world, the principles underlying spatial orientation and wayfinding in large-scale virtual spaces have many commonalities.
series	journal paper
last changed	2003/04/23 15:50

_id	5477
authors	Donath, D., Kruijff, E., Regenbrecht, H., Hirschberg, U., Johnson, B., Kolarevic, B. and Wojtowicz, J.
year	1999
title	Virtual Design Studio 1998 - A Place2Wait
source	Architectural Computing from Turing to 2000 [eCAADe Conference Proceedings / ISBN 0-9523687-5-7] Liverpool (UK) 15-17 September 1999, pp. 453-458
doi	https://doi.org/10.52842/conf.ecaade.1999.453
summary	This article reports on the recent, geographically and temporally distributed, intercollegiate Virtual Design Studio based on the 1998 implementation Phase(x) environment. Students participating in this workshop had to create a place to wait in the form of a folly. This design task was cut in five logical parts, called phases. Every phase had to be finished within a specific timeframe (one day), after which the results would be stored in a common data repository, an online MSQL database environment which holds besides the presentations, consisting of text, 3D models and rendered images, basic project information like the descriptions of the phases and design process visualization tools. This approach to collaborative work is better known as memetic engineering and has successfully been used in several educational programs and past Virtual Design Studios. During the workshop, students made use of a variety of tools, including modeling tools (specifically Sculptor), video-conferencing software and rendering programs. The project distinguishes itself from previous Virtual Design Studios in leaving the design task more open, thereby focusing on the design process itself. From this perspective, this paper represents both a continuation of existing reports about previous Virtual Design Studios and a specific extension by the offered focus. Specific attention will be given at how the different collaborating parties dealt with the data flow and modification, the crux within a successful effort to cooperate on a common design task.
keywords	Collaborative design, Design Process, New Media Usage, Global Networks
series	eCAADe
email
last changed	2022/06/07 07:55

_id	852a
authors	Falabella, T., Fernández, L.R. and Goyeneche, H.
year	1998
title	Utilizacion de la Grafica Digital en la Gestion del Mantenimiento de Edificios (Use of Digital Graphics in the Management of the Maintenance of Buildings)
source	II Seminario Iberoamericano de Grafico Digital [SIGRADI Conference Proceedings / ISBN 978-97190-0-X] Mar del Plata (Argentina) 9-11 september 1998, pp. 446-451
summary	The study and development of an informatic application as part of the Research Project informatic application for the building maintenance action", consist on the peripheric and software surface outline, frequently used in this discipline, like the Data Base of the programs Access of Microsoft and Autocad of Autodesk. The outline of data base implies the concept of sensitive matrix, necessary for the systemic analysis of the information. This software not only let you make the initial diagnostic of the buildings, necessary for the Plan of Corrective Maintenance (PMC) and Plan of Preventive Maintenance (PMP), but also it is used as an efficient tool of the maintenance, which allow the constant up to date information, the exact on time diagnostic, to make the necessary adjustments to the PMC and PMP. Besides, a good technical documentation is necessary for an efficient maintenance action. The entail of the Data Base with the CAD Systems allows a fast access to a big volume of centralized information to consult or change. To formulate a pattern of integral maintenance action on buildings, implies the systematic conception of them and the Philosophy of the Preventive Maintenance. They are less than the Model and do not consider the former concepts. It is difficult to define and solve the matrix system (inside or outside the software) and the relations where the information run. The informatic application outline in its different steps (planning, operation, evaluation) with the elements (technical, administrative, of control) are the structural axis of a new form of the Maintenance Action.
series	SIGRADI
email
last changed	2016/03/10 09:51

_id	50a1
authors	Hoffman, Donald
year	1998
title	Visual Intelligence
source	Norton Publishing, New York
summary	After his stroke, Mr. P still had outstanding memory and intelligence. He could still read and talk, and mixed well with the other patients on his ward. His vision was in most respects normal---with one notable exception: He couldn't recognize the faces of people or animals. As he put it himself, "I can see the eyes, nose, and mouth quite clearly, but they just don't add up. They all seem chalked in, like on a blackboard ... I have to tell by the clothes or by the voice whether it is a man or a woman ...The hair may help a lot, or if there is a mustache ... ." Even his own face, seen in a mirror, looked to him strange and unfamiliar. Mr. P had lost a critical aspect of his visual intelligence. We have long known about IQ and rational intelligence. And, due in part to recent advances in neuroscience and psychology, we have begun to appreciate the importance of emotional intelligence. But we are largely ignorant that there is even such a thing as visual intelligence---that is, until it is severely impaired, as in the case of Mr. P, by a stroke or other insult to visual cortex. The culprit in our ignorance is visual intelligence itself. Vision is normally so swift and sure, so dependable and informative, and apparently so effortless that we naturally assume that it is, indeed, effortless. But the swift ease of vision, like the graceful ease of an Olympic ice skater, is deceptive. Behind the graceful ease of the skater are years of rigorous training, and behind the swift ease of vision is an intelligence so great that it occupies nearly half of the brain's cortex. Our visual intelligence richly interacts with, and in many cases precedes and drives, our rational and emotional intelligence. To understand visual intelligence is to understand, in large part, who we are. It is also to understand much about our highly visual culture in which, as the saying goes, image is everything. Consider, for instance, our entertainment. Visual effects lure us into theaters, and propel films like Star Wars and Jurassic Park to record sales. Music videos usher us before surreal visual worlds, and spawn TV stations like MTV and VH-1. Video games swallow kids (and adults) for hours on end, and swell the bottom lines of companies like Sega and Nintendo. Virtual reality, popularized in movies like Disclosure and Lawnmower Man, can immerse us in visual worlds of unprecedented realism, and promises to transform not only entertainment but also architecture, education, manufacturing, and medicine. As a culture we vote with our time and wallets and, in the case of entertainment, our vote is clear. Just as we enjoy rich literature that stimulates our rational intelligence, or a moving story that engages our emotional intelligence, so we also seek out and enjoy new media that challenge our visual intelligence. Or consider marketing and advertisement, which daily manipulate our buying habits with sophisticated images. Corporations spend millions each year on billboards, packaging, magazine ads, and television commercials. Their images can so powerfully influence our behavior that they sometimes generate controversy---witness the uproar over Joe Camel. If you're out to sell something, understanding visual intelligence is, without question, critical to the design of effective visual marketing. And if you're out to buy something, understanding visual intelligence can help clue you in to what is being done to you as a consumer, and how it's being done. This book is a highly illustrated and accessible introduction to visual intelligence, informed by the latest breakthroughs in vision research. Perhaps the most surprising insight that has emerged from vision research is this: Vision is not merely a matter of passive perception, it is an intelligent process of active construction. What you see is, invariably, what your visual intelligence constructs. Just as scientists intelligently construct useful theories based on experimental evidence, so vision intelligently constructs useful visual worlds based on images at the eyes. The main difference is that the constructions of scientists are done consciously, but those of vision are done, for the most part, unconsciously.
series	other
last changed	2003/04/23 15:14

_id	1873
authors	Ji, Guohua and Feng, Jinlong
year	1999
title	Structural Approach to the Organization of Information: A Teaching Experiment at SEU
source	CAADRIA '99 [Proceedings of The Fourth Conference on Computer Aided Architectural Design Research in Asia / ISBN 7-5439-1233-3] Shanghai (China) 5-7 May 1999, pp. 153-159
doi	https://doi.org/10.52842/conf.caadria.1999.153
summary	Design studio still plays a very important role in architectural design education today since teachers and students can exchange their thinking directly. In the whole teaching/learning process, there are a lot of information to be exchanged between the teachers and the students. How to organize the information and record the whole teaching/learning process is very interesting to us. The increasing use of CAD raises some problems with its advantages when the amount of compute-files becomes very big and they are in different formats. In the third year design studio teaching in the academic year 1998/99 at Department of Architecture in Southeast University, we try to use WWW techniques and features to organise the design information. We try to integrate the teaching programme, the project information, the reference material and the students' work together, to record and monitor the teaching process. Since the teaching programme is clearly organised, we could use some strategies and ideas to control the organisation of file storage and presentation. It creates the basis for the further development of applying network to aid the studio teaching.
series	CAADRIA
last changed	2022/06/07 07:52

_id	4f90
authors	Kalay, Y.E.
year	1998
title	P3: Computational environment to support design collaboration
source	Automation in Construction 8 (1) (1998) pp. 37-48
summary	The work reported in this paper addresses the paradoxical state of the construction industry (also known as A/E/C, for Architecture, Engineering and Construction), where the design of highly integrated facilities is undertaken by severely fragmented teams, leading to diminished performance of both processes and products. The construction industry has been trying to overcome this problem by partitioning the design process hierarchically or temporally. While these methods are procedurally efficient, their piecemeal nature diminishes the overall performance of the project. Computational methods intended to facilitate collaboration in the construction industry have, so far, focused primarily on improving the flow of information among the participants. They have largely met their stated objective of improved communication, but have done little to improve joint decision-making, and therefore have not significantly improved the quality of the design project itself. We suggest that the main impediment to effective collaboration and joint decision-making in the A/E/C industry is the divergence of disciplinary `world-views', which are the product of educational and professional processes through which the individuals participating in the design process have been socialized into their respective disciplines. To maximize the performance of the overall project, these different world-views must be reconciled, possibly at the expense of individual goals. Such reconciliation can only be accomplished if the participants find the attainment of the overall goals of the project more compelling than their individual disciplinary goals. This will happen when the participants have become cognizant and appreciative of world-views other than their own, including the objectives and concerns of other participants. To achieve this state of knowledge, we propose to avail to the participants of the design team highly specific, contextualized information, reflecting each participant's valuation of the proposed design actions. P3 is a semantically-rich computational environment, which is intended to fulfill this mission. It consists of: (1) a shared representation of the evolving design project, connected (through the World Wide Web) to (2) individual experts and their discipline-specific knowledge repositories; and (3) a computational project manager makes the individual valuations visible to all the participants, and helps them deliberate and negotiate their respective positions for the purpose of improving the overall performance of the project. The paper discusses the theories on which the three components are founded, their function, and the principles of their implementation.
series	journal paper
more	http://www.elsevier.com/locate/autcon
last changed	2003/05/15 21:22

_id	10f9
authors	Kvan, Th., West, R. and Vera, A.
year	1998
title	Tools and Channels of Communication
source	International Journal of Virtual Reality, 3:3, 1998, pp. 21-33
summary	This paper proposes a methodology to evaluate the effects of computer-mediated communication on collaboratively solving design problems. When setting up a virtual design community; choices must be made between a variety of tools; choices dictated by budget; bandwidth; ability and availability. How do you choose between the tools; which is useful and how will each affect the outcome of the design exchanges you plan? A commonly used method is to analyze the work done and to identify tools which support this type of work. In general; research on the effects of computer-mediation on collaborative work has concentrated mainly on social-psychological factors such as deindividuation and attitude polarization; and used qualitative methods. In contrast; we propose to examine the process of collaboration itself; focusing on separating those component processes which primarily involve individual work from those that involve genuine interaction. Extending the cognitive metaphor of the brain as a computer; we view collaboration in terms of a network process; and examine issues of control; coordination; and delegation to separate sub-processors. Through this methodology we attempt to separate the individual problem-solving component from the larger process of collaboration.
keywords	Expertise; Collaboration; Novice
series	journal paper
email
last changed	2002/11/15 18:29

_id	612c
authors	Madrazo, Leandro
year	1998
title	Computers and Architectural Design: Going Beyond the Tool
source	Digital Design Studios: Do Computers Make a Difference? [ACADIA Conference Proceedings / ISBN 1-880250-07-1] Québec City (Canada) October 22-25, 1998, pp. 44-57
doi	https://doi.org/10.52842/conf.acadia.1998.044
summary	More often than not, discussions taking place in specialised conferences dealing with computers and design tend to focus mostly on the tool itself. What the computer can do that other tools cannot, how computers might improve design and whether a new aesthetic would result from the computer; these are among the most recurrent issues addressed in those forums. But, by placing the instrument at the center of the debate, we might be distorting the nature of design. In the course KEYWORDS, carried out in the years 1992 and 1993 at the ETH Zurich, the goal was to transcend the discourses that concentrate on the computer, integrating it in a wider theoretical framework including principles of modern art and architecture. This paper presents a summary of the content and results of this course.
series	ACADIA
email
last changed	2022/06/07 07:59

_id	6397
authors	Marx, John
year	1998
title	A Proposal for Alternative Methodologies in Teaching Digital Design
source	Digital Design Studios: Do Computers Make a Difference? [ACADIA Conference Proceedings / ISBN 1-880250-07-1] Québec City (Canada) October 22-25, 1998, pp. 58-73
doi	https://doi.org/10.52842/conf.acadia.1998.058
summary	Computers have the potential to radically change the process of architectural design, and match more closely the formal aspirations of contemporary designers. What, then, should be the direction educators take in response to the opportunities created by the use of computers in the design process? There are, perhaps, two obvious methods of teaching Digital Design at a university level; a course adjunct to a design studio, or a course offered independently of a design studio. The computer is a facilitator of design ideas, but by itself, is not a creator of content. The primary responsibility of the design studio is the creation of content. It is the implementation of theory and critical analysis which should be the core concern of studio instruction. Given the limited time students are exposed to design studio it would seem appropriate, then, that the digital tools, which facilitate the design process, be taught separately, so as not to dilute the design studios importance. Likewise, this separation should allow the student to concentrate attention on Digital Design as a comprehensive process, beginning with initial massing studies and ending with high resolution presentation drawings. The burden of learning this new process is difficult as well as time consuming. Students are generally struggling to learn how to design, much less to design on the computer. In addition, the current lack of digital skills on the part of design faculty makes it difficult to create a level of consistency in teaching digital design. Compounding these problems is the cost to architectural departments of providing hardware and software resources sufficient to have a computer on every studio desk.
series	ACADIA
email
last changed	2022/06/07 07:59

_id	4b60
authors	Mortola, E., Giangrande, A., Mirabelli, P. and Fortuzzi, A.
year	1998
title	Introducing Hypermedia Tools in Community Planning and Design
source	Computerised Craftsmanship [eCAADe Conference Proceedings] Paris (France) 24-26 September 1998, pp. 172-177
doi	https://doi.org/10.52842/conf.ecaade.1998.172
summary	IT in Europe tends to become a passive reflection of American commercial interests instead of a mean of the production of European culture and society. A change of paradigm is needed from the passive, what we "can" do, towards the active way, what we want to do, deciding what is good and bad, to give an answer to needs and wishes of the society we are building. In the late years the research and teaching activity of CAAD Laboratory at DiPSA concentrate on sustainable planning, community planning and interactive design, developing computer based tools aimed at aiding the process and improving its effectiveness. The research work has been going on rapidly and successfully (some CDs and web sites were edited) but coming at real-life application we faced completely different problems and needed a completely different approach. We were not free anymore to run with "advanced" technology following a vision of the future thus avoiding any form of verification, but we found ourselves obliged to evaluate the present utility of the technology used. This caused a dramatic shift of focus from the technology itself to people who could take advantage of it and the target to reach. In other words working not to create gaps between people who can buy the latest equipment and knows how to use it and people who cannot. Our intention was to increase social participation not reduce it, by selecting people to be involved in building the environment. This meant not only lowering "technological le
series	eCAADe
email
more	http://www.paris-valdemarne.archi.fr/archive/ecaade98/html/34mortola/index.htm
last changed	2022/06/07 07:58

_id	6
authors	Neiman, Bennett and Bermudez, J.
year	1998
title	Entre la Civilizacion Analoga y la Digital: El Workshop de Medios y Manipulacion Espacial (Between the Analogue and Digital Civilization: Workshop of Media and Space Manipulation)
source	II Seminario Iberoamericano de Grafico Digital [SIGRADI Conference Proceedings / ISBN 978-97190-0-X] Mar del Plata (Argentina) 9-11 september 1998, pp. 46-55
summary	As the power shift from material culture to media culture accelerates, architecture finds itself in the midst of a clash between centuries old analog design methods (such as tracing paper, vellum, graphite, ink, chipboard, clay, balsa wood, plastic, metal, etc.) and the new digital systems of production (such as scanning, video capture, image manipulation, visualization, solid modeling, computer aided drafting, animation, rendering, etc.). Moving forward requires a realization that a material interpretation of architecture proves limiting at a time when information and media environments are the major drivers of culture. It means to pro-actively incorporate the emerging digital world into our traditional analog work. It means to change. This paper presents the results of an intense design workshop that looks, probes, and builds at the very interface that is provoking the cultural and professional shifts. Media space is presented and used as an interpretive playground for design experimentation in which the poetics of representation (and not its technicalities) are the driving force to generate architectural ideas. The work discussed was originally developed as a starting exercise for a digital design course. The exercise was later conducted as a workshop at two schools of architecture by different faculty working in collaboration with it's inventor. The workshop is an effective sketch problem that gives students an immediate start into a non-traditional, hands-on, and integrated use of contemporary media in the design process. In doing so, it establishes a procedural foundation for a design studio dealing with digital media.
series	SIGRADI
email
more	http://www. arch.utah.edu/people/faculty/julio/studio.htm
last changed	2016/03/10 09:56

_id	ga0026
id	ga0026
authors	Ransen, Owen F.
year	2000
title	Possible Futures in Computer Art Generation
source	International Conference on Generative Art
summary	Years of trying to create an "Image Idea Generator" program have convinced me that the perfect solution would be to have an artificial artistic person, a design slave. This paper describes how I came to that conclusion, realistic alternatives, and briefly, how it could possibly happen. 1. The history of Repligator and Gliftic 1.1 Repligator In 1996 I had the idea of creating an “image idea generator”. I wanted something which would create images out of nothing, but guided by the user. The biggest conceptual problem I had was “out of nothing”. What does that mean? So I put aside that problem and forced the user to give the program a starting image. This program eventually turned into Repligator, commercially described as an “easy to use graphical effects program”, but actually, to my mind, an Image Idea Generator. The first release came out in October 1997. In December 1998 I described Repligator V4 [1] and how I thought it could be developed away from simply being an effects program. In July 1999 Repligator V4 won the Shareware Industry Awards Foundation prize for "Best Graphics Program of 1999". Prize winners are never told why they won, but I am sure that it was because of two things: 1) Easy of use 2) Ease of experimentation "Ease of experimentation" means that Repligator does in fact come up with new graphics ideas. Once you have input your original image you can generate new versions of that image simply by pushing a single key. Repligator is currently at version 6, but, apart from adding many new effects and a few new features, is basically the same program as version 4. Following on from the ideas in [1] I started to develop Gliftic, which is closer to my original thoughts of an image idea generator which "starts from nothing". The Gliftic model of images was that they are composed of three components: 1. Layout or form, for example the outline of a mandala is a form. 2. Color scheme, for example colors selected from autumn leaves from an oak tree. 3. Interpretation, for example Van Gogh would paint a mandala with oak tree colors in a different way to Andy Warhol. There is a Van Gogh interpretation and an Andy Warhol interpretation. Further I wanted to be able to genetically breed images, for example crossing two layouts to produce a child layout. And the same with interpretations and color schemes. If I could achieve this then the program would be very powerful. 1.2 Getting to Gliftic Programming has an amazing way of crystalising ideas. If you want to put an idea into practice via a computer program you really have to understand the idea not only globally, but just as importantly, in detail. You have to make hard design decisions, there can be no vagueness, and so implementing what I had decribed above turned out to be a considerable challenge. I soon found out that the hardest thing to do would be the breeding of forms. What are the "genes" of a form? What are the genes of a circle, say, and how do they compare to the genes of the outline of the UK? I wanted the genotype representation (inside the computer program's data) to be directly linked to the phenotype representation (on the computer screen). This seemed to be the best way of making sure that bred-forms would bare some visual relationship to their parents. I also wanted symmetry to be preserved. For example if two symmetrical objects were bred then their children should be symmetrical. I decided to represent shapes as simply closed polygonal shapes, and the "genes" of these shapes were simply the list of points defining the polygon. Thus a circle would have to be represented by a regular polygon of, say, 100 sides. The outline of the UK could easily be represented as a list of points every 10 Kilometers along the coast line. Now for the important question: what do you get when you cross a circle with the outline of the UK? I tried various ways of combining the "genes" (i.e. coordinates) of the shapes, but none of them really ended up producing interesting shapes. And of the methods I used, many of them, applied over several "generations" simply resulted in amorphous blobs, with no distinct family characteristics. Or rather maybe I should say that no single method of breeding shapes gave decent results for all types of images. Figure 1 shows an example of breeding a mandala with 6 regular polygons: Figure 1 Mandala bred with array of regular polygons I did not try out all my ideas, and maybe in the future I will return to the problem, but it was clear to me that it is a non-trivial problem. And if the breeding of shapes is a non-trivial problem, then what about the breeding of interpretations? I abandoned the genetic (breeding) model of generating designs but retained the idea of the three components (form, color scheme, interpretation). 1.3 Gliftic today Gliftic Version 1.0 was released in May 2000. It allows the user to change a form, a color scheme and an interpretation. The user can experiment with combining different components together and can thus home in on an personally pleasing image. Just as in Repligator, pushing the F7 key make the program choose all the options. Unlike Repligator however the user can also easily experiment with the form (only) by pushing F4, the color scheme (only) by pushing F5 and the interpretation (only) by pushing F6. Figures 2, 3 and 4 show some example images created by Gliftic. Figure 2 Mandala interpreted with arabesques Figure 3 Trellis interpreted with "graphic ivy" Figure 4 Regular dots interpreted as "sparks" 1.4 Forms in Gliftic V1 Forms are simply collections of graphics primitives (points, lines, ellipses and polygons). The program generates these collections according to the user's instructions. Currently the forms are: Mandala, Regular Polygon, Random Dots, Random Sticks, Random Shapes, Grid Of Polygons, Trellis, Flying Leap, Sticks And Waves, Spoked Wheel, Biological Growth, Chequer Squares, Regular Dots, Single Line, Paisley, Random Circles, Chevrons. 1.5 Color Schemes in Gliftic V1 When combining a form with an interpretation (described later) the program needs to know what colors it can use. The range of colors is called a color scheme. Gliftic has three color scheme types: 1. Random colors: Colors for the various parts of the image are chosen purely at random. 2. Hue Saturation Value (HSV) colors: The user can choose the main hue (e.g. red or yellow), the saturation (purity) of the color scheme and the value (brightness/darkness) . The user also has to choose how much variation is allowed in the color scheme. A wide variation allows the various colors of the final image to depart a long way from the HSV settings. A smaller variation results in the final image using almost a single color. 3. Colors chosen from an image: The user can choose an image (for example a JPG file of a famous painting, or a digital photograph he took while on holiday in Greece) and Gliftic will select colors from that image. Only colors from the selected image will appear in the output image. 1.6 Interpretations in Gliftic V1 Interpretation in Gliftic is best decribed with a few examples. A pure geometric line could be interpreted as: 1) the branch of a tree 2) a long thin arabesque 3) a sequence of disks 4) a chain, 5) a row of diamonds. An pure geometric ellipse could be interpreted as 1) a lake, 2) a planet, 3) an eye. Gliftic V1 has the following interpretations: Standard, Circles, Flying Leap, Graphic Ivy, Diamond Bar, Sparkz, Ess Disk, Ribbons, George Haite, Arabesque, ZigZag. 1.7 Applications of Gliftic Currently Gliftic is mostly used for creating WEB graphics, often backgrounds as it has an option to enable "tiling" of the generated images. There is also a possibility that it will be used in the custom textile business sometime within the next year or two. The real application of Gliftic is that of generating new graphics ideas, and I suspect that, like Repligator, many users will only understand this later. 2. The future of Gliftic, 3 possibilties Completing Gliftic V1 gave me the experience to understand what problems and opportunities there will be in future development of the program. Here I divide my many ideas into three oversimplified possibilities, and the real result may be a mix of two or all three of them. 2.1 Continue the current development "linearly" Gliftic could grow simply by the addition of more forms and interpretations. In fact I am sure that initially it will grow like this. However this limits the possibilities to what is inside the program itself. These limits can be mitigated by allowing the user to add forms (as vector files). The user can already add color schemes (as images). The biggest problem with leaving the program in its current state is that there is no easy way to add interpretations. 2.2 Allow the artist to program Gliftic It would be interesting to add a language to Gliftic which allows the user to program his own form generators and interpreters. In this way Gliftic becomes a "platform" for the development of dynamic graphics styles by the artist. The advantage of not having to deal with the complexities of Windows programming could attract the more adventurous artists and designers. The choice of programming language of course needs to take into account the fact that the "programmer" is probably not be an expert computer scientist. I have seen how LISP (an not exactly easy artificial intelligence language) has become very popular among non programming users of AutoCAD. If, to complete a job which you do manually and repeatedly, you can write a LISP macro of only 5 lines, then you may be tempted to learn enough LISP to write those 5 lines. Imagine also the ability to publish (and/or sell) "style generators". An artist could develop a particular interpretation function, it creates images of a given character which others find appealing. The interpretation (which runs inside Gliftic as a routine) could be offered to interior designers (for example) to unify carpets, wallpaper, furniture coverings for single projects. As Adrian Ward [3] says on his WEB site: "Programming is no less an artform than painting is a technical process." Learning a computer language to create a single image is overkill and impractical. Learning a computer language to create your own artistic style which generates an infinite series of images in that style may well be attractive. 2.3 Add an artificial conciousness to Gliftic This is a wild science fiction idea which comes into my head regularly. Gliftic manages to surprise the users with the images it makes, but, currently, is limited by what gets programmed into it or by pure chance. How about adding a real artifical conciousness to the program? Creating an intelligent artificial designer? According to Igor Aleksander [1] conciousness is required for programs (computers) to really become usefully intelligent. Aleksander thinks that "the line has been drawn under the philosophical discussion of conciousness, and the way is open to sound scientific investigation". Without going into the details, and with great over-simplification, there are roughly two sorts of artificial intelligence: 1) Programmed intelligence, where, to all intents and purposes, the programmer is the "intelligence". The program may perform well (but often, in practice, doesn't) and any learning which is done is simply statistical and pre-programmed. There is no way that this type of program could become concious. 2) Neural network intelligence, where the programs are based roughly on a simple model of the brain, and the network learns how to do specific tasks. It is this sort of program which, according to Aleksander, could, in the future, become concious, and thus usefully intelligent. What could the advantages of an artificial artist be? 1) There would be no need for programming. Presumbably the human artist would dialog with the artificial artist, directing its development. 2) The artificial artist could be used as an apprentice, doing the "drudge" work of art, which needs intelligence, but is, anyway, monotonous for the human artist. 3) The human artist imagines "concepts", the artificial artist makes them concrete. 4) An concious artificial artist may come up with ideas of its own. Is this science fiction? Arthur C. Clarke's 1st Law: "If a famous scientist says that something can be done, then he is in all probability correct. If a famous scientist says that something cannot be done, then he is in all probability wrong". Arthur C Clarke's 2nd Law: "Only by trying to go beyond the current limits can you find out what the real limits are." One of Bertrand Russell's 10 commandments: "Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric" 3. References 1. "From Ramon Llull to Image Idea Generation". Ransen, Owen. Proceedings of the 1998 Milan First International Conference on Generative Art. 2. "How To Build A Mind" Aleksander, Igor. Wiedenfeld and Nicolson, 1999 3. "How I Drew One of My Pictures: or, The Authorship of Generative Art" by Adrian Ward and Geof Cox. Proceedings of the 1999 Milan 2nd International Conference on Generative Art.
series	other
email
more	http://www.generativeart.com/
last changed	2003/08/07 17:25

_id	ddss9846
id	ddss9846
authors	Rigatti, Decio
year	1998
title	Rubem Berta Housing Estate: Order and Structure, Designand Use
source	Timmermans, Harry (Ed.), Fourth Design and Decision Support Systems in Architecture and Urban Planning Maastricht, the Netherlands), ISBN 90-6814-081-7, July 26-29, 1998
summary	The main goal of this paper is to investigate, through some space configurational based tools, a quite common phenomenon found in many different locations in Brazil, concerning the process of urban changes individually introduced by dwellers of public housing estates. A significant number of housing estates, particularly those designed according to rationalist concepts, seem to be unable to support space related social requirements and are then widely transformed when compared to the original layouts. Beyond the quantitative features, the morphological changes that take place in those housing estates mean a fundamental new approach to understand how completely new urban structures can arisefrom the space produced by a comprehensive urban design, took as a starting point for the transformations made by the dwellers of those settlements. As a case study is analysed the Rubem Berta Housing Estate which was built in Porto Alegre/RS, Brazil, for 20,000 people in the late 70’s. Since the begining of its occupation in 1986 and the invasion that took place in 1987, the urban transformations there have never stopped. It’s possible to realize that the dwellers individually use some constant physical rules to define the new settlement which are very similar within the estate itself and, at the same time, very similar to those found in other transformed housing estates of this sort. The physical rules introduced change the features of the entire settlement in two different levels: a) locally, through the transformations introduced in order to solve individual needs; b) globally, the local rules of physical transformations produce a new overall structure for the whole urban complex. The knowledge of this process makes it possible to bring to the surface of architectural theory some generic configurational codes that can be used as a tool for designing public housing estates in Brazil.
series	DDSS
last changed	2003/08/07 16:36

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