COLLABORATION AND ALTERED PROCESSES
- Publication Type:
- Article
- Issue Date:
- 2007-10-04T04:10:23Z
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The architectural technologist could be defined as a designer whose methods are driven by the
intimate and experimental use of varying digital technologies. The technologist, in this scenario,
is a designer by training, but typically, seen primarily for their technical expertise. Through an
emerging practice of the architectural technologist as a design collaborator, an identity is
forming of the technologist as a designer who balances general issues of architecture with an
analytical mind towards digital/computational methods. Collaboration exists ultimately in the
realm of design (not in production) but introduces a shift in process, where design involves the
construction of digital means and the critique of process by all participants in the collaboration.
This paper describes the necessity of this type of collaboration in relation to several specific
design projects, to which Sean Ahlquist / Proces2 participated as the technologist. At issue is
the technologist’s degree of influence on the processes, the level of exchange between
designers, and the resulting influence on the success of the design. Three projects will be
discussed to show the range of collaborative interaction. In one scenario, the technologist
worked within a stratified and somewhat traditional process based on the applying digitallyderived
systems to a specified form. A second scenario looked to find a generative,
computational method through the collaboration. The intent was to discover an architectural
pattern that had an advanced level of complexity, and simultaneously provide data for
fabrication and construction. The last project saw the collaboration as a necessity to produce an
array of highly complex 3-dimensional forms and provide means of communication between the highly digital environment and analog means for analysis and fabrication.
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