Digital Participation and Collaboration in Architectural Design

Richard Laing

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351665483
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Architecture générale

The emergence of new digital and visualisation technologies in recent years has led to rapid changes in the field of architecture. Current drives to incorporate building information modelling as a part of architectural design are giving way to the increased use of IT and visualisation in architectural design, user participation and group collaboration.

As digital methods become more mainstream, Digital Participation and Collaboration in Architectural Design provides an accessible and engaging introduction to this emerging subject. Supported by selected examples from research and practice, the book offers an overview of theories, techniques and approaches which readers can apply in their own work. In doing so, it shows how these techniques can influence communication, debate and understanding and encourages readers to see familiar buildings from original and unusual perspectives.

An ideal starting point for anyone interested in the application of digital techniques, the book will help students and professionals in architectural design and digital architecture to understand and embrace new technologies.

Chapter 1
Introduction

The themes of participation and collaboration are related and share many characteristics. This chapter introduces some of the key concepts, including the notion that participation of end users in architectural design can exist across a range of activities, but to ascend the ‘ladder of participation’ requires planning and support. The subject of collaboration, particularly within design teams, is introduced.

The themes of collaboration and digitisation in architecture have been prevalent and debated in the industry for decades. Until recently, though, the themes have tended to develop and be enacted through separate activities, studies and initiatives. Therefore, an attempt to trace the lines of either academic or industry study of the themes might identify research following quite discrete paths, for example:

• collaboration within construction teams
• collaboration within architectural design teams
• membership and operation of design teams
• participation of end users and other stakeholders
• the impact of digital technology on design
• the impact of digitisation on construction and technical processes.

One could argue that this lack of connection between the study of collaboration and that of digitisation has been at least in part due to there being a lack of technological (digital) support for collaborative working. On the other hand, an important and pressing observation is that software developers will typically concentrate on the provision of software which is demanded by an industry, thus suggesting that a need for software to support collaboration and participation will be likely to emerge from such practice in a non-digital setting.

Throughout the book, a conscious attempt has been made to illustrate some key examples of connections which can usefully be drawn between digitisation, wide participation (in terms of participants) and collaboration within design. The book recognises, of course, that the participation of end users requires quite different consideration to that of collaboration among members of the design team.

The notion of participation first requires us to think deeply about who we mean by the end user, in that this could refer to people who will eventually live in, nearby or simply experience architecture through their daily lives. Particularly when we consider prominent examples of architecture, the notion of the end user becomes even wider, and people may find value in or have strong opinions about that architecture, and feel that somehow affects their lives, even if they do not use the architecture in any of the above respects.

With regard to collaboration, the topic was the central theme of key reports in the 1990s (Latham 1994, Egan 1998), which highlighted a lack of collaboration and cross-discipline working across the industry, leading to a lack of efficiency and productivity. This has in time seen government and professional body interventions attempting to address this point, often against a backdrop of shifting influences across the design team. The industry has been defined historically by the production of unique products (‘every building is different’), often with a new ‘team’ for each project. Therefore, an analogy with other forms of production (e.g. factory-based car manufacturing) can be misleading in terms of product but relevant in terms of the significant change of mindset required when migrating to a model of industrialised production (Kristensen 2011).

Against a similar time period, we have seen the emergence of digital technologies within the architectural and built environment disciplines. Initially, these tended to focus on the replacement of traditional analogue processes with digital alternatives, most obviously through the substitution of drawing boards with on-screen drawing and electronic tablets to support sketching. Whilst we can discuss the ways in which this process could still be regarded as ‘manual’, through the use of haptic sketch pads, or simply through the use of a keyboard and mouse in lieu of a pencil or pen, early approaches to digitisation were visual and produced models which did not in themselves contain information beyond visual representation. It is also worth noting at this stage, and we will return to this point, that the interface and methods through which the design team produce drawn material in a digital setting are significantly different from those for generating ideas and producing materials through the use of pen and paper.

Figure 1.1
Decision making through sketching. (Image produced by Dr Marianthi Leon.)

Collaboration was possible through sharing of drawings produced by such early digital drawing systems (via email, of images lacking data), but technology had not, in the 1990s, reached a point where it was yet possible, or at the very least easy, to share the models themselves, or to have teams collaborate on their production. Although discussion of the practicalities of building information modelling (BIM) can be traced back at least to the 1980s, the digital modelling software used most widely in the industry prior to the early 2000s tended to be based on the geometrical shapes used to represent a building, rather than the relationships between objects, materials, cost and so on. That is, the model might ‘look’ like it contains a floor, but users of the model would be unable to use data contained within it to determine if the floor was too large, small, unsupported, or whether it also appeared in drawings and models being used by the architect, engineer, surveyor and technologist. In 1988, with the publication in the UK of a new Standard Method of Measurement (SMM7), came an early attempt to coordinate the production and coding of project information (Coordinated Project Information). Although this was difficult to mandate across all disciplines, and harder still to benefit from in practical sharing of digital data, the seeds of what eventually became a standard approach to coding the components of a building project (Uniclass) had been sown.¹

At that point, however, various strands of digital innovation had yet to combine in ways which assisted with meaningful collaboration. Drawings (often two-dimensional) produced by the architectural team were not easily compatible with the parametric approached taken by structural engineers, and the production of surveyed measured quantities was still a largely manual and separate process. Furthermore, the oft-cited ‘design team’ had no mechanism (not a digitally assisted one, anyway) to collaborate, and certainly nothing which placed the models themselves at the centre of collaboration (in much the same way that participants might discuss printed drawings, sketches or site photographs).

The ways in which this situation continued to evolve form one of the core themes of this book, including discussion and elaboration on how the nature of digital participation and collaboration is now closely linked to sharing of data. Whether this extends to encompassing a wider understanding of ‘collaboration’ is debatable, and worth exploring. It is also important to think about the ways in which we can understand the characteristics of participation and collaboration themselves, and who the parties involved might be.

In order to do this, it is important for us to first understand how the notions of participation in design (or any process involving a wide constituency) can be conceptualised. In her seminal 1969 paper, Arnstein (1969) proposed a ‘ladder of citizen participation’, with the ‘rungs’ as follows:

1. citizen control
2. delegated power
3. partnership
4. placation
5. consultation
6. informing
7. therapy
8. manipulation.

We can immediately recognise that the bottom few rungs (up to ‘informing’) are prominent and established within architecture, and the desire to inform members of the public about the visual impact of new developments would take place almost routinely. However, this might typically occur without a mechanism to transparently (or otherwise) gather information about opinion, or to invite further suggestion. As we move up the ladder, and arrive at ‘consultation’ and ‘placation’, we start to think about asking end users or wider constituencies what they might think about a particular planned activity. Where this does not take place in a manner which is combined with deeper forms of participation, however, the activity would offer ‘no assurance that citizen concerns will be taken into account’ (Arnstein 1969). Methods of consultation might include attitude surveys and wide-invitation public meetings.

Arnstein’s example of ‘placation’ comes with the wry suggestion ‘to place a few hand picked “worthy” poor on boards of Community Action Agencies or on public bodies’, and brings the valid observation that, without real power or an ability to seriously influence voting patterns and outcomes, the actual influence of such participants is seriously limited. At the top of the ladder, we begin to think about genuine transfer of power to constituents, and an ability for outcomes to be influenced through a structured and meaningful participation process. Through the course of the book, we will consider practical ways in which the use of digital tools has been useful to support such activity. We will also consider, though, the dangers which can come with a blurring of responsibilities and skills, in that we should be careful to avoid asking those engaging in a participation exercise to take on design tasks in which they are inexperienced. The development of a much deeper design brief, and the facilitation of ways in which participants can engage with design throughout a process, though, intuitively bring benefits to the process as a whole.

Likewise, the subject of collaboration and collaborative practice is one which has become a key theme for debate within the industry in recent years, but perhaps for reasons which were not anticipated by many during the 1990s. At that time, a number of reports (Latham 1994, Egan 1998) identified (a lack of) collaboration within professional design and construction teams as being a serious impediment to realising development, efficiencies and industrialisation in the industry. Indeed, one could have argued that the dominance of procurement methods which excluded the partner with most knowledge of construction from the design process (i.e. the builder) made little sense, beyond attempting to secure a cheap price. Although a drive on the back of these reports suggested that collaborative practice could be facilitated through education (e.g. cross-discipline educational practice) and changed procurement practice, the advent and widespread adoption of building information modelling has seen a return to the debate regarding collaboration, but often through the lens of using technology as a way to facilitate information sharing. Whether this actually represents collaboration in itself is debatable, and is discussed later. Certainly, although some of the early demonstration case studies undertaken in the UK took place in a context of ‘no blame’ between parties, the ability of BIM software to track and identify who made certain changes to a model, and why, appears to support the opposite view. We return to this subject in Chapter 2 (in particular), where we explore the development of digital tools within design, and consider how the use of object-based and information-rich models can contribute to the deeper and more meaningful adoption of collaborative practice.

Figure 1.2
Design team collaboration. (Image produced by Dr Marianthi Leon.)

The second key strand in the book concerns the ways in which the use of digitisation in architecture can in itself be regarded as a major step towards a democratisation of planning and design. This includes discussion of the ways in which online forums have become platforms for discussion and debate, with examples which have been instigated by local ‘formal’ decision makers, designers, building users and interested parties. A fascinating aspect of such online engagement with architectural design has been the often unexpected line of discussion which can emerge through unmoderated debate (through blogging, online forums and social media). One example has been the worldwide prominence of sites dealing with the subject of ‘abandoned architecture’. One can see within the discussions themselves, at once, a genuine interest in the sites being explored, but also a wider realisation of the apparent meaning and implications in terms of a sustainable use of resources, a connection between people and buildings, and an engagement with the constructed environment in ways which go well beyond established academic forums and criteria for membership. We can observe citizens participating in debate and discussion of architecture due to personal, social and cultural connections, as opposed to them holding any particular professional or formally ‘educated’ connection to the subject matter.

In a number of later sections of the book, this notion of democratisation becomes very important. In some of the examples of projects and previous research which are presented, it would certainly be possible to use the visualisations and digital models in much the same way that they are often and typically used within architectural marketing. In such a situation, of course, anybody viewing the images who was not part of either the design team or some wider decision-making team would be unable to exert influence or make contributions which could lead to significant impact on the design itself. Although it may seem obvious to say so, this book will argue that the visualisation and digitisation processes which are being discussed and described carry genuine and quite powerful potential to act as innovative and creative tools of communication, and that communication can go in all directions. Indeed, until quite recently, it was probably the case that most visualisation and 3D modelling work undertaken within architecture and planning was instigated and completed by a formal design team. In the coming years, it is very likely that we will see the development and rolling out of methods of modelling and visualisation which can in fact be undertaken by the ‘non-expert’, and the results almost seamlessly incorporated within a formal planning and design process. In later chapters, which deal with democratisation and likely future directions of digitisation in architecture, we deal with some of these factors in greater depth, particularly regarding access to technology and the implications of smart cities.

Figure 1.3
Output from photography-based modelling (photogrammetry). (Image created by author.)

Finally, one important development in recent years has been the emergence of methods through which actual and widespread participation in digital architecture has become more accessible, less financially expensive, less dependent on taught expertise and arguably more democratic. This has in some cases taken the form of free online viewing of models prepared by others, methods through which 3D models can be produced from photographs, and less and less expensive routes through which hardware such as laser scanners can be accessed or at least simulated through cheap(er) products and methods. In some ways this represents a challenge for both the industry and wider stakeholders which is rooted in both technical and social foundations.

From a technical perspective, this again connects with the earlier introduced theme of democratisation in digital architecture, in that the cost of technology is likely to continue to decrease, and accessibility to advanced digital technology is likely to widen and become pervasive in the coming years. From a social perspective, during the 1990s when a number of influential industry and government-led policy documents² were published arguing for greater attention to be given to collaboration within the industry, the extent to which our lives were to become dominated by an information rich digital environment (the Internet, digital communication, collaboration in the cloud, and so on) was not foreseen by many. Therefore, it is useful to reassess how this wider accessibility and engagement in digital architecture will impact on the way that we work. Some of the examples of applied research which we will consider in later chapters illustrate very well how democratic access to technology can have a significant impact on both the design of the research itself and also the ways in which participants in a study or a design process are actually able to interact and participate.

In many of my own early research studies, for example, although the intention might well have been to somehow ascend the ladder of citizen participation (Arnstein 1969), the reality was that the use of any particular technology (digital modelling, accessing research studies via the Internet, capturing information about existing environments using digital tools) brought with it both opportunities for the particular study and a requirement to consider some unique limitations which might emerge as a ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Digital technologies in architectural design
• 3 Digital visualisation in practice
• 4 Democratic visualisation
• 5 Collaboration and participation
• 6 Future directions
• 7 Final remarks
• References
• Index