Berlin-Crane City: Cardboard, Bits, and the Post-industrial Design Process (1997)

abstract⁄This paper explores the impact of information technology on the architectural design processas seen through different design studios from three schools of architecture in SouthernCalifornia over a two year period. All three studios tested notions of representation, simulation andthe design process in relation to a postindustrial world and itsimpact on how we design for it. The sites for two of these studioswere in the city of Berlin, where the spearhead of the informationage and a leftover of the industrial revolution overlap in an urbancondition that is representative of our world after the cold war.The three studios describe a progressive shift in the use ofinformation technology in the design process, from nearly pureimagedriven simulation to a more lowtech, highly creative usesof everyday computing tools. Combined, all three cases describean array of scenarios for contentsupportive uses of digitalmedia in a design studio. The first studio described here, from USC, utilized computermodeling and visualization to design a building for a site located within the former nomans’land of the Berlin Wall. The second studio, from SCIArc, produced an urban design proposalfor an area along the former Berlin Wall and included a pangeographic design collaborationvia Internet between SCIArcLos Angeles and SCIArcSwitzerland. The third and last studiofrom Woodbury University participated in the 1997 ACSADupont Laminated GlassCompetition designing a consulate general for Germany and one for Hong Kong. Theyemployed a hybrid digitalnondigital process extracting experiential representations fromsimple chipboard study models and then using that information to explore an ’enhancedmodel’ through digital imaging processes. The end of the cold war was coincidental with the explosive popularization of informationtechnology as a consumer product and is poised to have huge impact on how and what wedesign for our cities. Few places in world express this potential as does the city of Berlin.These three undergraduate design studios employed consumergrade technology in anattempt to make a difference in how we design, incorporating discussions of historicalchange, ideological premise and what it means to be an architect in a world where image andcontent can become easily disconnected from one another.