Reading Abstract 2: Ali Rahim

Patrick Franke
Digital Media 320
Professor Del Signore
17 February 2009

The design process is constantly changing as a result of technological advancements. This is true for every industry, architecture included. In Ali Rahim’s published work, “Catalytic Formations Architecture and Digital Design”, he addresses the role and importance of these advancements in regards to the design processes of the current time. In the first part of the reading, Rahim explains the difference between technology and technique, and how the two affect the design process. The second part deals with the definition of time as applied to contrasting modes of architectural design. Rahim’s take on contemporary design and its movement into the future is one that advocates the incorporation of diverse strategies, or techniques, in association with preexisting ones.
Essential to the forward-moving process of design is technology. Rahim defines technology to be “the application of a purely technical or scientific advance to a cultural context” (p. 11). The technology is then an outlet through which any design or idea can become manifest. This process involves the use of technique, which is a systematic way of solving a certain design problem. As these techniques build upon each other, the technology then advances, a process Rahim refers to as the “feedback loop.”
Following this process, then, it is evident that innovative technique is essential to the furthering of the design technology. It is when techniques become overly commonplace and typical that the current technology fails to be innovative. At this point, to design is simply to go through the motions using what creative tools are at hand. It is the designers who look out beyond the commonplace- drafting board, AutoCAD, etc- and search for alternative technique wherever appropriate. For example, Charles and Ray Eames chose not to limit the technology at their disposal to their particular industry. Instead they borrowed ideas and techniques from the automotive, material mass production, and glue industries, amongst others.
Choosing to branch out brought success and opportunity that would never have touched the Eameses otherwise. Their experimentation was not for the sake of efficiency; rather, it was an investigation of new ways to do things. In the context of their time, mass production was the overriding idea behind design. It is true that the Eameses chair designs and their Eames House design were developments in mass production. However, their aim was not to speed up the current process, but rather to adapt it to their ideas using alternative methods.
Fast-forward to today, the digital age and the computer. It is evident that the same challenges still exist. There are old architects who draw up an idea and give it to a person of less importance to merely be translated into a digital format. This process does not involve the digital technology in the design process. There are no changes in the design that take place as a result of the computer, and it is therefore used as a passive design tool in this instance.
Contrast this process with the line-of-thought followed by Frank Gehry’s office. They ran into a barrier regarding the ability to relate complex togological forms to the building industry. Rather than dumbing down the design, Gehry created a new office to develop the possibilities of the software, called CATIA. This new office took the software’s capabilities past its previous limits, opening up new possibilities to the design industry.
The second part of Rahim’s publication describes two different approaches to design in regards to differing definitions of time. The first, called analytical design, treats time as a reversible process. In this sense, parts A, B, and C are added together to create object ABC. This object can then be broken back down into its respective parts, thus it is a reversible process.
The next design process affirms that time is thermodynamic. This means that once a transformation is made, the parts composing it are no longer reversible. In this sense, the building has a synergy. The whole is not equal to its separate parts, but is superior in its function and purpose.
While this is an interesting commentary on two different design approaches, Rahim’s examples do not seem to validate the argument. In the Hydrogen House, Rahim describes how the architect created “pressure fields” that respond to both the sun and the highway in order to influence the design. While this is a nice idea, there is not any evidence of how exactly the “pressures” are related to the building. It seems to be research that was done solely for the sake of having research, providing little practical application. The resulting building’s exposure to the highway simply twisted different ways to allow points of transparency between the building and passing motorists, not particularly related to the specifics of the “pressure field” data.