“Professionalism and tools are tightly connected”, wrote Jennifer Whyte recently, “making it hard for a professional to put down their tools and retain their identity.” This essay by Robert Bevan, writer and architecture critic for the London Evening Standard, was written following a series of conversations with WestonWilliamson+Partners. It is one in a series marking the 30th anniversary of the practice in 2015.
1. Early 3D CAD study model of London Bridge Station – Borough High Street Ticket Hall utilising MicroStation Mac. At this time renders were in their infancy and simple three-dimensional volumetric studies were simpler to produce and less demanding of limited computing power.
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hyte, a professor in innovation and design at the University of Reading, has been weighing in to a debate prompted by the release of David Ross Scheer’s 2014 book The Death of Drawing: Architecture in the Age of Simulation. Scheer claims that digital working is fundamentally reshaping architecture in a way without parallel for centuries: “I believe that we are in the midst of a transformation that will ultimately reshape architecture to an extent not seen in over 500 years,” he writes. He contends that while traditional architectural drawing uses a coordination of hand, eye and mind to create something representational – providing a way to deeply understand a building through investigative drawing – digital design is simulation, substituting itself for what it depicts and creating a false experience that claims reality. It is a long way from Brunelleschi to BIM – and to many architects it is not at all helpful to frame the discussion as oppositional, with digital progressives versus pen and paper nostalgics – but how are these different tools affecting architectural practice? Both approaches thrive in Weston Williamson’s studio. Being involved in complex infrastructure projects, the practice was an early adopter of CAD software, using MicroStation for Mac for its Jubilee Line station at London Bridge (the digital really comes into its own when a site is buried underground and invisible). Weston Williamson was also among the first practices to see the value of pioneering visualisers such as Alan Davidson of Hayes Davidson, who was one of the first to be able to create images with ambience and verified visualisations. “What Alan was doing was so exciting,” says Andrew Weston. “We couldn’t wait to get our hands on it.” Of course, with advances in software and more powerful hardware, these once-specialist tasks are now undertaken in-house without blinking. That said, hand drawing still plays an important role.
“We agree with Scheer’s notion of transformation,” adds partner Steve Humphreys, “but that doesn’t mean that we are tied to particular tools or styles; it is how we understand their possibilities and the constraints and implications that counts. Tools may evolve, but tools remain at the heart of how we work – they are only enablers to intellect and the exploration of ideas.” Fellow partner Travis Walsh, who has a focus on the digital, and deft draughtsman Humphreys collaborate frequently – especially when preparing competition images. A rough, 3D massing diagram might be created digitally in SketchUp by Walsh, and then Humphreys will elaborate on these initial images by hand. Physical models are also made when the project demands it. The analogue can offer more when determining an appropriate scale (often lost on screen after so much zooming in and out), while the digital wins hands-down when investigating complex sections.
Managing Expectations From a client and contractor’s point of view there is now usually the expectation of – and even the contractual obligation for – the production of hyper-realistic renderings to persuade planners, the media and other stakeholders of a project’s merits. But as Walsh notes, “Presenting something as realism at the beginning of a ten-year project can be dangerous.” A scheme can evolve enormously after such a period, by which time the original image can be out of date. However, the original image can later be seen as a fixed record of what is promised, to which the end result can be compared. In short, the digital rendering can offer the illusion of certainty – flexible ideas can become fixed and entrenched in a short time-frame and misunderstandings may arise. There are expectations that these renderings have an extra polish that makes them stand out in a room full of hundreds of competition entries. There is a dilemma here, accepts Humphreys, between selling an idea and acknowledging that an idea will change. Added to this, the apparent ease (as far as the client is concerned) of making digital images (as opposed to scratching out with a blade or setting out a new two-point perspective on paper) leads to, at best, the production of more drawings than necessary – without first deciding the purpose of an image and what it is trying to say – and, at worst, constant changes or design by committee, where endless iterations circulate. So, despite the idea among client groups and the construction industry that the digitised process provides more certainty (with the digital image a virtual precursor of the finished product), the opposite may be true.
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2. Prior to the availability of modelling software and its widespread adoption by the profession, threedimensional studies were undertaken using a range of traditional drafting skills, illustrated here in a study for a commercial entrance interior for the Brunel Works in Swindon.
3. WW+P’s proposal for a new Visitor Centre in the Fens illustrates the practice’s current output of highly realistic renderings. Here, not only the form of the building is expressed but the proposal is explored in its setting. The aim is to present the reality – or the potential reality – of the concept.
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4. WW+P’s entry for a House of the Future Competition in Japan. Here this referential sketch – the first indication of the potential of an idea.
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In his book, Scheer also argues that the digital not only promotes apparent certainties over tentative propositions, it also produces architecture that is lacking in the ‘intimacy’ that drawn schemes carry over into buildings. Little evidence is given to support his view. Undoubtedly though, the problem-solving that is experienced through the slow craft of drawing is of a different type to that generated in a computer – just as writing longhand utilises a different way of thinking than typing. As the art critic John Berger put it: “For the artist, drawing is discovery”. For Weston Williamson, this slow craft of drawing brings a critical and analytical dimension to the work, allowing time to absorb and reflect on ideas before making new marks; the drawn line is vital in allowing new ideas to form.
Tools for the Task In 2012, Michael Graves argued similarly in a celebrated essay for the New York Times. For Graves, drawings can be divided into three types: the referential sketch, the preparatory study and the definitive drawing – this last now almost exclusively the preserve of the digital. He suggests, however, that the referential sketch “serves as a visual diary, a record of an architect’s discovery” that is inherently fragmentary and aims to capture an idea: “When I draw something, I remember it.” Recent psychological studies in the US by Pam Mueller and Daniel Oppenheimer have similarly investigated the differences between writing longhand and typing to establish the importance of this visceral connection. Their findings suggest that students using the former have a better grasp of a subject. The right tool for the right task then? This would be fine if younger architects knew when to draw by hand and when to reach for the mouse, but hand-drawing skills are rarely taught in today’s architecture schools, so such decisions are too often uninformed or not even recognised as decisions to be made. Some have difficulty even reading traditional paper plans. This represents a substantial generational change in the culture and conduct of architecture. The triumph of the digital also means, however, that the profession has been opened up to those who may not be the best at drawing. Some architects have built hugely successful careers without being particularly talented at drawing. It can be argued, then, that technology has widened the talent pool that the profession can recruit from, democratising architecture in the process.
5+6. WW+P’s premiated competition entry for Glasnevin Crematorium in Ireland. To the near right, the ‘referential sketch’ which sets out the aspirations of the team, and, alongside this, the developed render – here, the idea is made real.
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Weston Williamson goes out of its way to employ graduates who are handy with a pencil when it is required. If nothing else, the handdrawn allows an infinite amount of ambiguity – the tentative, endless variations in the way that mood and atmosphere can be explored – as opposed to the finite options provided by a particular programme. In the past, drawing has been used to represent ideals, not simply to describe a building’s elements. Think of how Helmut Jacoby helped disseminate the aspirations of modernists such as Johnson, Saarinen and Breuer. His famous aerial drawing of Milton Keynes was intended to be persuasive about the very idea of a new town. Of course, the digital can be similarly persuasive, but the individuality of a practice’s vision can be lost when handed over to a renderer for hire – be they digitisers or hand-drawers. This is a drawback of even the most skilled visualiser – Norwegian visualisation studio Mir or London’s Peter Guthrie may produce beguiling images, but they are Mir and Guthrie images rather than those of their clients. The extent of internal details and furnishings in visualisations can also be driven by the ready availability of a manufacturer’s digitally compatible offering. Today, it is far more difficult to differentiate individual practices from the images that they produce. Exceptions to this trend are made even more noticeable by their rarity – BIG’s Frank Miller-style zine approach in Yes is More or OMA/AMO’s Content are cases in point (and have their antecedent in Archigram’s pop art aesthetic). These are also, notably, publishing exercises, not project drawings. A more substantive issue is not new modes of representation in themselves but how the shift from the drawn to the digital has changed the nature of architectural form. This shift saw a slow evolution between the ’60s and early ’80s but then accelerated, commensurate with the increased rate of processing power. It was in the ’80s that 3D renders of solid models became properly available. Famously pioneered by Frank Gehry in 1982 using Dassault Systèmes’ CATIA Version 1 software, creating these 3D renders involved a process of reverse engineering – scanning physical models for subsequent digital manipulation in order to create something economically buildable. Zaha Hadid and Peter Eisenman followed a similar path. The actual was being turned virtual in order to then re-actualise it.
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7. Helmut Jacoby’s hand-drawn rendering of central Milton Keynes – a persuasive illustration of the very idea of a ‘new town’ and the potential future it presents.
Helmut Jacoby, Milton Keynes City Centre, Completion 1990, (Published 1974)
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8. WW+P’s design for the Tomihiro Art Museum, Gunma Prefecture, Japan. A key concept for the proposal integrated the building into the steeply contoured, densely wooded site overlooking a natural lake. The sketch focused upon merging and fusing the form of the building into this natural setting.
9. Ron Herron’s 1964 illustration for Archigram’s Walking City. The diagram is used to focus on the concept – reality is irrelevant and the expression of an idea is the aim, here less is more.
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Others, such as Greg Lynn, dived into the virtual to directly generate architecture – with an emphasis on the biomorphic – using calculus to initiate what became parametric architecture. Blob architecture was born, captured in Lynn’s article for Any magazine, ‘Blobs, or Why Tectonics is Square and Topology is Groovy’. Add to this tool the arrival of CAD/CAM for CNC machining and it was an entirely new trajectory for built architecture (as opposed to the fantasy architecture of sci-fi films and comics). This was true even if Lynn’s own early projects – such as the New York Presbyterian Church, which used animation software in its creation – was far more conventional than, say, the Pompidou Centre from an earlier generation.
Humanising the Digital In the decades that have followed, and in the 21st century in particular, parametrically driven architecture has become so ubiquitous that it has become a cliché. Too often, the tools are producing novelty act architecture that appears to prioritise surface over substance. So common are its tropes, so readily reproduced, that some say it is time that architects at least begin to write more of their own coding. Graves’ opinion that the designs are complex and interesting in their own way, but they lack the emotional content of a design derived from hand seems to hold some truth. Do we, as humans, recognise something intrinsically artificial about parametrically driven architecture, even when it is informed by the mathematics of the natural world? Weston Williamson rejects the idea that the digital necessarily precludes emotion, and instead argues that it is a useful medium for this, not least because it allows the creative merging of different media. For Humphreys, “How we humanise the digital is the challenge in all aspects of the technological revolution – including artificial intelligence.” This includes the issue of how we as humans perceive and connect with space and architecture, and how the digital affects this. “At what point,” continues Humphreys, “does the specific impact of the digital have an impact on and potentially constrain the ‘interpretational’ aspects of an idea, and the perfect image constrain, change or kill the emotion?” This potential tipping point is, of course, not simply physiological; it will vary across time, cultures and the socio-economic context of the individual.
10. WW+P’s Wuhan Station, China. Exploratory studies of the roof form and entrance expression.
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11. WW+P’s design for the Guggenheim Museum, Helsinki. Photorealistic render exploring form, feeling and mood – here detail and reality are irrelevant and emotion key.
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The re-discovery of materiality may suggest that, at least partially, an analogue backlash is in the offing; however, running counter to this are the risk-averse demands of contractors and clients, and the interoperability convenience but reductivist aesthetics of BIM. At the same time, digital architecture is only just getting started with exploring immersive technologies and augmented realities. The question remains – with drawing at least very sickly, if not dead, among much of the profession – whether the fundamental changes described by Scheer are ushering in a renaissance in architectural creativity, or a software-defined orthodoxy and a dark age for individuality. Being aware that this is even a question is the crucial starting point if we are to avoid the latter.
12+13. WW+P’s design for the Ullswater Yacht Club. Further exploration of both architectural form and the senses, and how the two may be realised.
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14. WW+P’s concept for skyscrapers with bridge crossings. The digital tool demonstrates its true potential here – an idea is expressed, explored and projected.
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15. Experimenting with tools and technology is a key component of continued improvement. We can then select the best presentation techniques appropriate to the audience and the context.
Picture Credits: 1. © WestonWilliamson+Partners 2. © WestonWilliamson+Partners 3. © WestonWilliamson+Partners 4. © WestonWilliamson+Partners 5. © WestonWilliamson+Partners 6. © WestonWilliamson+Partners 7. © Helmut Jacoby - Illustration 8. © WestonWilliamson+Partners 9. © Ron Herron - 1964 Illustration 10. © WestonWilliamson+Partners 11. © WestonWilliamson+Partners 12. © WestonWilliamson+Partners 13. © WestonWilliamson+Partners 14. © WestonWilliamson+Partners 15. © WestonWilliamson+Partners