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by 015UUZn8aEvW 937 days ago
What's interesting is that this huge change in design technology has produced no similarly huge change in the physical product being designed. Buildings are designed and built at about the same speed as they were then. They cost as much or more in inflation-adjusted terms.

Yes, I know that there are lots of specific things that are easier now that we have CAD and related software, but a 1950s architecture student who was told about these technologies would probably predict major resulting changes in the speed of design and construction. But this has not occurred.
2 comments
jacquesm 937 days ago
What has happened is parametric designs. That is the big game changer, the number of people working on this stuff has dropped, and the flexibility of the designs has gone up. But on the overall price of a building it never made much difference because the drafting never was a huge factor in cost.

I worked for a big dutch architect (as a freelancer) right around the time that this transition was happening, they made spaceframes, structure made of knots and pipes with threaded holes in their ends, the obvious advantage was that if you knew the dimensions of the building you could just generate a BOM and start cutting, which before then was a lot of very time consuming computation. Never before did I get confronted so visibly with the effects that my work had on others, and it was a lesson that I never forgot. Essentially I was instrumental in making a whole bunch of draftsmen redundant and they were helping me to bring that about.

The company still exists, they still make spaceframes and I highly doubt you'll even find a drafting pencil or a RotRing pen anywhere on the premises. I still have Makowski's books on my shelf 35 years later.

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zizee 937 days ago
> Buildings are designed and built at about the same speed as they were then. They cost as much or more in inflation-adjusted terms.

If that is true, I bet the % amount of labour has been reduced of the total cost, and materials and/or shifting standards have swallowed up the difference.

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