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Conference Theme & Jury |
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| Architectural Information Management |
The annual ECAADE-conferences give a good overview of current architectural information technology, and its research, education and CAD-activities.
The 19 th ECAADE-conference in Finland presented CAAD-related scientific and research papers, but it also acts as a forum to present project reports of on-going educational topics. The special aim of the Helsinki conference was to concentrate on modern and near-future architectural design project information and knowledge.
Read the presentations via the schedule pages. |
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| Jury | The scientific abstract proposals were reviewed in the web [in march 2000] by an international panel of ECAADE council members, members of sister organisations and established CAAD-researchers:
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The Meaning of Architectural Information |
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Several common phrases, such as ”information society” or ”virtual reality” point out the fact that information technology, digital tools and numerous different services via various communication networks have become crucially important factors of our western lifestyle and living environment. The trends of the society afflects naturally also to the working environments of the construction field, architectural discipline among them. It is rather obscure to even imagine an architect of without PC-based tools anymore.
This evolutionar development process has --- from historical perspective just recently --- started. And the process is all the time evolving and rapidly multiplying our possibilities to use and enjoy these modern digital fruits. |
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Those sometimes unpredictable and fast changes in our working environment should make us architects nervous about the impacts of the changes. All those delicate methods and collective traditions of the several thousand year architectural discipline (!), just simply can not be transferred into digital in a few decades. Us researchers and teachers should very carefully, but still openminded and critically explore, analyze and adjust the so-called ”modern technology” into the world of architecture, construction, design, planning --- and education. We are not just ”users”, whereas we, in fact, should define what, where and how are we willing to use it (IT).
The value of information is constantly growing in our society, and in the future it evidently will be even more so. The value of information is quite hard to define with measurable or agreed concepts, but information evidently contains value-factors. The information which the architects are creating, modifying and manipulating, contains very essential and valuable core data concerning the whole built environment of our society. It affects the physical surroundings of our society, in which we will be living for decades --- hence,the information has wide coverage in time. The architectural core information also affects very strongly to the quality of life of our fellow citizens --- hence, it has deep social meaning.The essentials of architectural information relies on the tradition of centuries --- hence, it definately has acknowledged cultural values,which it is also extremely difficult to measure. |
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How could architectural information be described, then? The information covers a wide range of very heterogenious kinds of concepts, items, values, methods, tools, materials, true facts, rumours, intuition and knowledge. Plus a multitude of yet undefined or unpredictable factors, which still have to be watched and prepared for. Since the information deals with common and general subjects, it should also be described with common and general concepts. On the other hand the information also concerns minor and tiny details of certain specific projects, the architectural information should also be described with well identified and unique entities.
With our digital tools we handle all information --- also architectural --- more and more digitally. We have to handle and manipulate the information currently as digital data, which could be understood the ”raw material” of architectural information. Digital data becomes valuable information, when some kind of meaning or purpose to somebody, can be defined to it in some certain situation[s]. |
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In the early glooming days of ”digital architecture” in the 1960’s and 1970’s, researchers tried to describe architectural artifacts and even design process mathematically. The details of architectural information were just quite difficult to describe with binary alphanumeric information of main-frame machines.
The architects’ tools’ development, then lead to a trend where architects could better represent and visualize the design objects digitally. The widespread and common use of 2D-drawing and 3D-modelling tools is still very strong trend within our discipline. In fact it is ”the way” the majority of architectural information is managed today. |
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| During the last 15 - 20 years so-called conceptual modelling or product data modelling, done in various technical and construction field reserach units worldwide, has from one viewpoint clarified the basis and essence of architectural information. Hence, it’s not only CAD-software application development, but also elementary and theoretical research, that gives us valuable help to survive among the growing seas of terabits of data in the future to come.
Architectural information is something that simply can not be described just with dwg-drawings or dummy scanned photographs any more. Although drawings and photos may contain very important bits of architectural documentation, we need n-times more ”complexity layers”, concepts and tools to manage and understand the essence of architectural information today. A proper way to manage the data we are working with, has to cover the whole architectural discipline. The methods and tools also have to be valid and flexible also in the future. Remember that future is somewhere out there... it is forming up right here, all the time, and just today. Hannu Penttilä |
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| Final update 16.9.01 | |||