What’s the Role for Building and Electrical System Consulting Engineers and Specifiers in an Age of Computational Design?
Great design and engineering used to take equal parts of science, smarts and hard work, with a good dose of inspiration. Certainly, technology – from slide rules to today’s advance CAD and 3D modeling tools – were there to make the grunt work of calculations, and drafting endless design tweaks and changes easier, faster and more precise. But at the center of the design process were always people – the designers, engineers and specifiers working to solve real-life challenges that affect people’s work and lives. Over the years as we’ve moved from “traditional” design methods ( design to spec with high quality ) to “design thinking” approaches ( user-centric and empathetic design ), to emerging “computational design” technologies ( a computer language-like approach to harnessing massive data and computing capacity to create millions of iterative solutions ) – yet at each stage the role of “human” insight and creativity has shifted. Computational Design – Evolutionary or Revolutionary? T...