Epistemology, Technology, And Organization: The Effects Of Change In Architectural Design

This paper investigates a number of changes occurring in the way we think about and produce design for the built environment. There are three major factors affecting change that will be examined: epistemology and the type of knowledge; technology and the method or process used; and organization in the division of labor. The interrelationship of each of these produces a complex matrix. This paper develops a theoretical model to map and measure these changes. It is important for educators because it provides a point of reference for preparing students and an understanding of the operational level at which academia and industry work. The goal of the paper is to present this initial idea and to obtain comment for future development. Introduction For the first time in history the technology exists to automate certain kinds of complicated cognitive design processes. Just as the Industrial Revolution freed man physically from many labor-intensive processes, the Computer and Information Technology (CIT) Revolution is freeing him or her cognitively from many tedious calculation and design tasks. No longer will young architectural interns be designing gang toilet plans, hip roof plans or basic wall sections nor will engineering interns be drawing steel framing plans or detailed shop drawings; it can all be designed by computer, the process is now automated! What will be left for the designer will be the design philosophy, the ideal value judgements and critical review of the automated design product itself. This is going to have a profound effect on the way we design, how we define it, produce it and teach it. These technological changes are going to lead to a philosophical separation between academia and industry because certain cognitive processes will be completely automated by technology, thus rendering specific types of knowledge obsolete. In the same token, certain types of knowledge used as building blocks for learning can only be gained by using obsolete technology. In addition, the technology is fostering further division and compartmentalization of work in industry whereas academia prefers a more individual and holistic approach. Herein lies the problem, industry is moving toward one set of operational platforms in design that academia cannot use under its current thinking for pedagogical reasons. In the past neither the operational or motivational differences between academia and industry produced real conflict. Each had their own domain, one theory and the other practice, that together produced a rich symbiotic relationship. Both used very similar operational platforms in terms of epistemology, technology and organization. Design was typically done by hand from P ge 830.1 “Proceedings of the 2003 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2003, American Society for Engineering Education” start to completion by one or two individuals and learned under the tutelage of a master. In this respect, the entire design process for both had not advanced much beyond the craft level. This paper will examine the underlying operational tendencies between academia and industry in three important areas: epistemology, technology, and organization. A three-dimensional model will be developed to map and show this operational divergence. New design typologies will be defined to distinguish between design that can be automated and design that cannot. In this process, conclusions will be made and recommendations given on how we should think about and teach design. Background Historical overview These proposed changes are really part of a larger evolutionary process that needs to be set in historical context. The origin of doing, or learning to do, starts with the medieval craft system. The act of doing in this system was by hand using simple tools where the same person did every step in the process. Master craftsman passed down the knowledge of doing, from generation to generation, to apprentices. This represented the entire epistemological, technological and organizational structure and the starting point from which this argument is built upon. The Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution are the two most important human developments that define modernism from the medieval craft system.1 The Enlightenment brought us the power of thought, outside the realm of a non-secular model, to explain the physical and social world. Knowledge from the singular act of doing was abstracted to form empirical and theoretical knowledge that explained and predicted phenomena without ever actually doing. From this we construct a simple epistemological structure for types of knowledge. The Industrial Revolution brought a new technology that freed us from the manual labor of doing by hand and reorganized us in a way that promoted specialization in a particular operational act. In this sense, a worker could produce a complex product without ever actually touching it during most or all of the automated or mechanized process.2 From here we develop various degrees of technological assistance and automation as a method or process of doing. We also begin to organize work in specialized categories thus creating divisions of labor. The transformation from an industrial to a post-industrial society is marked by the replacement of manufacturing economy to a service society of managers, professionals and technical workers.3 The use of raw material and practical knowledge as the mode of production is replaced with information and the use of theoretical knowledge. Knowledge is now a tool for productive power in a society of producers and consumers and an instrument of power itself. 4,5 Theoretically, this is important because it sets up the logical progression of automating cognitive processes instead of mechanical ones where information and knowledge is now the key raw material in a service economy. One can only wonder if this kind of technological automation will fully parallel the Industrial Revolution that led workers feel a of loss of control resulting in anomie, alienation and class conflict that Durkheim, Marx and Weber described a century earlier.6,7,8