Thoughts on Technology and Design

Thoughts on Technology & Design October 1, 2020 | Elevar Design Group N. John Tsuchiya

Thoughts on Technology & Design N. John Tsuchiya, Designer Elevar Design Group September 11, 2020

I. Can Technology Aid the Art of Design?

On a September evening in 1997, concert-goers in Tokyo attended the opening of the new concert hall at the Opera City development. Not only did they find themselves seated under the hall’s soaring pyramidal ceiling unlike any seen in previous concert halls, they were rewarded with acoustics that listeners and performers consider to be on par with the best halls in the world1. Most of the audience, however, were unaware that this also marked a triumph in science-based technology in the field of concert hall design over what was considered by many acousticians to be an art form. Acousticians may have calculated some criteria like reverberation time, but the overall design of a hall and its details traditionally depended on the experience of successful precedents, on trial-and-error “tuning” of a hall after it opened, and, like other art forms, on intuition thought to be beyond the grasp of numbers. At this pioneering Tokyo concert hall, however, acousticians Leo Beranek and Takayuki Hidaka led the acoustical team by relying on a science-based technological approach that freed TAK Architects to implement their creative design2. The hall did not take the derivative and safe design route of mimicking the form of previous successful halls but broke entirely new ground made possible by the use of sciencebased technology.

The path to reach this point, though, just like other scientific challenges to fields of artistic and intuitive knowledge, required many decades of perseverance and the overcoming of notable failures. Beranek himself was instrumental in perhaps the greatest disaster of modern acoustics---the highly anticipated Philharmonic Hall at Lincoln Center in New York City which initially opened in 1962. In the years leading up to the design of Philharmonic Hall, Beranek had researched concert halls around the world and developed a series of principles3 he thought governed their acoustics beyond the basic reverberation principle. While the hall’s poor acoustics could be attributed to multiple causes, Beranek had unfortunately missed a key principle at the time that is now considered critical to the quality of a concert hall: side reflections of sound which promote a feeling of three-dimensionality of the orchestra’s sound4.

As is the case with the development of other technologies, the failure of Philharmonic Hall resulted in acoustical concert hall design in many instances reverting back to safe, tried-and-true precedent-based designs, like the classic “shoebox” style5, or a reliance on an acoustician’s artistic intuition. In fact, the interior of Philharmonic Hall itself was gutted several years after its original opening and rebuilt (renamed Avery Fisher Hall and

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Thoughts on Technology & Design October 1, 2020

reopened in 19766) in a safe “shoebox” design. The hall’s new acoustician even proclaimed, “There will be no experimenting in the new Fisher Hall,”7 and he and other acousticians were still skeptical of relying on the technological approach even after at the opening of the hall at Tokyo Opera City8. However, Beranek and others, including acousticians in Japan, had carried on after the failure of Philharmonic Hall. With the opening of the concert hall at Tokyo Opera City, Beranek redeemed his reputation, and it marked a turning point on the transformation of concert hall acoustics from what many believed to be largely an art form into a more science-based technology.

The roller-coaster trajectory of the development of science-based technology occurs in many fields of technology. An example outside of the field of building design shows how universal this is: in America’s Cup racing yacht design, the woefully slow tank-tested yacht, Mariner, hindered science-based technological development in American campaigns9. Not understanding the flaws in the method of tank-testing utilized10, this spawned a return to safe, intuition-based designs by American campaigns parallel to what occurred in acoustics. And similar again to acoustics, outside forces eventually propelled scientific technological development forward again. In the case of the America’s Cup, the outside force was the Australian campaigns of the 1970’s and early 1980’s, leading to the unique and victorious Australia II yacht in 1983. Australia II’s engineering analyses11 enabled the Australian yacht designer, Ben Lexcen, to successfully implement his truly creative ideas---this reignited science-based technological development, opening the path of creativity and innovation to the unique foiling yachts of today’s America’s Cup.

II. Implementing Technology in Building Design Some designers cling to the notion that more and more sciencebased technology in building design restricts creativity and leads to soulless mechanical designs. History, however, indicates the precise opposite. While artistic expression itself might be outside of the bounds of scientific processes, improvements in technology aid the creative design process by expanding the space of design possibilities as a result of more clearly

Expand Design Space Through Technology Poor Designs

Poor Designs

Unknown Good Designs

Good Designs

Urban Design Research Informs Large Building Design

the primary corridors having continuous line of sight to the main common area, and this common area being the shared portion of the three main corridor loops.

A second way technology aids building design is simply by speeding up the design process.

Building design involves many interconnected criteria, so iterative design is a commonly used method, just as iterative methods are often used to solve complex systems of equations in mathematics13. Speeding up each iteration in an iterative process means more iterations over a certain amount of time which tends to lead to better design. At Elevar, we encourage our staff (and provide the learning opportunities) to explore and develop a variety of time-saving Dynamo scripts and macros. One good example we have developed is custom code that helps automate a task in school design that is traditionally time-consuming when done manually. The state of Ohio has a standard spreadsheet-based format for space planning of schools that are funded or partially funded Figure 1: Diagram of the proposed corridor layout for Summit by the state. The spreadsheet contains a Behavioral Healthcare. The main common area is at the top left large amount of data to help design and to of the plan. ensure compliance with state standards. In the first step, we at Elevar have custom code, written in the Dynamo scripting language, that automates converting this data directly from the illuminating the boundaries between successful and unsuccessful spreadsheet into data-rich custom space planning designs. Designs based on precedents and artistic intuition objects in Autodesk’s Revit software14. In the second step, these are by nature limited by the fog of the unknown that shrouds space planning objects in Revit help speed schematic design the space of known good design possibilities. The unique by locking in the square-foot requirements: when designers expressiveness of the Opera City concert hall was achieved due layout spaces in Revit, the planning objects, which include both to the science-based acoustical technology giving the architects rectangular and L-shaped spaces, automatically maintain the the confidence to implement their creative design, just as Ben required space area---for example, for a rectangular space, as Lexcen’s radical and creative design for Australia II was made the width is reduced, the length automatically increases. In possible by the solid foundation of the science-based technology the third step, at the completion of schematic design, another of the yacht’s engineering team. The following three examples show how science-based technology helps open up design freedom in building design at Elevar.

The first example is Summit Behavioral Healthcare, a 320,000-square-foot hospital (funded by the Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services) spread out mostly across one story. Large-scale buildings function more like small urban areas instead of the buildings traditionally studied in a typical architectural design education. Evidence-based concepts from the field of urban design, including those researched by Bill Hillier, who was a professor of Architecture and Urban Morphology at the University of London, informed the design of the building’s corridor system. Hillier, through research studies of urban areas in London, developed an analysis method relating the physical structure and the interconnectedness of urban street design to how streets are utilized12.

Applying this technique to the corridor design of this building complex gave confidence that the geometry of the corridor system---in terms of widths, sightlines, and how each corridor connects with others---corresponded with intended uses and, thus, supported the overall building design instead of fighting it. Some notable features resulting from this analysis are

Automation Speeds Iterative Design

Figure 2a: Sample data from the state of Ohio’s standard school planning spreadsheet.

Elevar Design Group N. John Tsuchiya

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Automation Speeds Iterative Design

custom Dynamo script converts the space objects into Revit room objects15. The room objects are customized to include parameters that store the planning requirement information.

A third example shows how developing an underlying technical understanding of a design problem clears the way for creativity in design in contrast to a restrictive design process based on precedents. In this particular case, geometry is used to reconcile the exterior design of school gymnasiums with the off-center interior layout dictated by seating requirements. Having a building’s exterior be a direct expression of its interior often results in undesirable exterior design or vice versa. Developing an underlying geometric strategy for the gymnasium design allowed each of three schools, Westwood School, Oyler School, and Sayler Park School, to reconcile the interior and exterior, respecting both the interior geometry and exterior expression.

Furthermore, the strategy allowed the freedom to accomplish this at each school in a way that suited the particular design of each building.

III. Future of Technology in Building Design Figure 2b: Dynamo script to convert the spreadsheet data directly into Revit data.

Developing science-based technology in building design clarifies the boundaries of the space of design possibilities. Without such clarity, designs tend to remain conservatively within the space of previous successful designs. As technology increasingly develops in the future, the known space of design possibilities is expanded allowing for more creative designs. One avenue of future technological development leverages the rich custom coding capabilities in today’s building design software.

Autodesk’s Revit software, for example, includes both Dynamo (the relatively easy-to-learn “visual programming” language) as well as a robust and powerful macro programming environment.

A Dynamo script that makes automatic approximations of usable and rentable office square footage based on parametrically defined overall building geometry is an example of the capabilities of Revit software (see Figure 4). Revit now also includes an impressive “generative design” engine based on a genetic algorithm, which in conjunction with Dynamo is intended to help designers generate and evaluate multiple parametric designs.

Figure 2c: Space planning blocks imported from the spreadsheet (above) and used to develop the schematic design (below).

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Thoughts on Technology & Design October 1, 2020

Another powerful technological tool that is having great impact now and will continue into the near future is deep learning, which is currently the state-of-the-art in artificial intelligence.

Deep learning when successfully applied to a complex problem can derive rules which are too complex for a person to feasibly spell out manually. It does so by analyzing a large set of example problems and their solutions. The complex interactions of many design requirements---including planning requirements, building codes, and engineering criteria---in building design makes this suited to deep learning. The many software libraries freely available for deep learning brings this technology easily within reach of a wide audience educated in computer coding.

With so much potential for the future, it will be exciting to see how creativity in design blossoms alongside improvements in technology.

Varied Design Expression Built on Geometric Strategy

a. Oyler School

b. Sayler Park School

c. Westwood School

Figure 3: Interior elevation (reflected), plan, and exterior elevation of gymnasium at three schools.

Future Design Includes More Analysis and Parametric Design

Figure 4: A Dynamo script (above) that instantly approximates usable and rentable office square footage based on a parametric overall building design. The isometric view (right) shows two parametrically defined towers with a visual indication of total gross square footage generated by the script.

Elevar Design Group N. John Tsuchiya

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About the Author N. John Tsuchiya, Designer John Tsuchiya has nearly 25 years of experience in providing viable design solutions and managing projects for commercial, athletic, recreational, hospitality, healthcare, and educational facilities. Mr. Tsuchiya’s degree in Art and Design as well as a minor in Civil Engineering make him a valuable asset to the design team with his wealth of knowledge in these fields.

Notes 1 Takayuki Hidaka et al, “Acoustics of Tokyo Opera City Concert Hall,” Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, January, 2000, p.351.

2 James Glanz, “Art + Physics = Beautiful Music,” New York Times, April 18, 2000.

3 Leo Beranek, Music, Acoustics, and Architecture (1962), Chapter 14.

4 Manfred Schroeder, Fractals, Chaos, and Power Laws (1991), Chapter 2.

5 Mike Barron, “The Development of Concert Hall Design,” Proceedings of the Institute of Acoustics, Vol.28, 2006.

6 John Rockwell, “Fisher Hall Tries Again for Sound of Perfection,” New York Times, April 9, 1976.

7 Harold Schonberg, “Lincoln Center to Gut Fisher Hall and Start Afresh,” New York Times, March 26, 1975.

8 James Glanz, “Art + Physics = Beautiful Music,” New York Times, April 18, 2000.

9 William Wallace, “Mariner to be Rebuilt After Third Loss,” New York Times, June 29, 1974.

10 Jerome Milgram, “Naval Architecture Technology Used in Winning the 1992 America’s Cup Match,” SNAME Transactions, Vol. 101, 1993.

11 Joop Slooff, Australia II and the America’s Cup, 2016.

12 Bill Hillier, “Specifically Architectural Theory,” Harvard Design Review, Volume 9 (1993).

13 Equations where direct analytical solutions do not exist or are impractical to calculate such as systems of nonlinear equations.

14 Revit is the primary software used to design the building and create the design and construction documents.

15 Room objects are how a typical Revit model manages room information, including room name, room number, department, occupancy type, area, finishes, etc.

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Thoughts on Technology & Design October 1, 2020