A relative newcomer to the Smart Geometry Group, Sanderson has nonetheless been a vocal critic of what he sees as its overemphasis on abstract geometrical formulations as a means of achieving better “performing” buildings, at the expense of the much messier, but often times much more effective, method of managing client and stakeholder relationships. Inspired by the digital social networking models of Web 2.0, as Sanderson saw it for the profession and the building industry to evolve it needs to embrace what he described as “Building 2.0”, whereby the important role that stakeholder communication has in the design process is recognised.

Sanderson was not alone in sounding a cautionary note – the Pratt Institute’s Kyle Steinfeld used his presentation as an opportunity to decry the tendency for parametric designers to see themselves as “toolmakers” facilitating a generative process, which he saw as an “a priori visualisation of design”. Instead, he pointed to the fact that design should reflect a feedback loop between these processes, whereby design becomes a dialogue, “a maker’s reflective conversation with his materials”. Steinfeld wasn’t the only one calling for a more craft-oriented approach, either. Marty Doscher of Morphosis outlined how that practice frames its work from the perspective of “digital design and tectonics for humans”. Doscher saw the need for a human connection between design and fabrication as absolutely critical, and the practice has a process in place whereby its upcoming young stars are required to regularly spend time on building sites, to witness the crafting of their projects and better understand the design possibilities presented by these processes. As Doscher pointed out, this approach has had its revelations, not the least of which was the discovery that the use of craftspeople is often a cheaper and more effective means of realising Morphosis’ complex, digitally rendered forms than CNC fabrication. Core to Doscher’s argument was the belief that while digital tools were certainly incredibly powerful, there were some aspects of the design process where the uniquely human qualities of features recognition and intuition were irreplaceable. This observation also formed the basis of Earl Mark’s presentation, whose work for Foster + Partners has been informed by the craft of boat building. To illustrate just how powerful these two characteristics can be in their own right, Mark pointed to the fact that the b-spline curves of boat hulls have been hewn by eye for centuries. Mark saw design analysis as fundamentally beginning with intuition, but has found that many contemporary digital tools can in fact facilitate this process, pointing to his use of movie and animation software to transform and explore digitally modelled projects and discover their “sweet spot”.

As you would expect from a gathering that incorporated so many of the leading practitioners working in the field of parametrics and digital design, the Smart Geometry Conference was dumbfounding in its breadth and scope, and unfortunately we have barely scratched the surface here. The conference served as a reminder of just how prevalent these technologies have become, and how critical they have been to the development of such a huge variety of high-profile projects the world over. Perhaps the most memorable part of the conference for me was an admission made by J Parrish, architectural director of ARUP Sport, during his presentation of the Birds Nest Stadium (developed together with Herzog & De Meuron) that he was completely unable to identify which of the stadium’s multitudinous beams were providing the primary structural support for the building. It was simply too complex, even for a leader of one of the planet’s pre-eminent engineering practices. The message was simple: without parametric tools, it, along with many of the other iconic architectural projects developed in the past decade, could simply never have been built. That in itself should give pause for thought to those who would claim digital architecture remains an exclusively abstract indulgence.

Smart Geography took place on 31 March – 1 April 2009 at the
The Palace Hotel, San Francisco