Command Line: The a “methodology of the future.

”5 Hellmuth, Obata + Kassabaum (HOK), Jung/

Brannen, and Albert C. Martin & Associates soon developed their own architec-
tural applications. At the same time, computer companies including Digital
T
See Bruce Graham,
“Computer Graphics in

o t r fi
Architectural Practice,”
Equipment Corporation, Tektronix, and IBM were independently developing the in Milne, ed., Computer
potentials of “computer-aided design,” or CAD, as commercial applications Graphics in Architecture
and Design: 23–30; “SOM’s
of military technologies for office use. Computer Approach,”
The development of commercially available drafting software soon put Architectural Record
In the 1960s, two academic conferences speculated on the new computational Q an end to the era of architects-as-programmers operating under the aegis of large (August 1980): 84.

changes taking place within architecture offices and their implications for the Marvin Minsky, in offices. In 1986, SOM sold its AES system, the crown jewel developed by the
Architecture and the Y
future. Architecture and the Computer, convened at The Boston Architectural Computer: Proceedings, Computer Group, to IBM, which repackaged it as SK LI E. et the software See Nicholas Adams,
Center in 196 , brought together figures including architect Walter Gropius, First Boston Architectural never took off, as it was was over ten times as expensive as the drafting software “Creating the Future (1964–
Center Conference, 1986),” in Peter MacKeith,
historian Henry A. Millon, and cognitive scientist Marvin Minsky to assess the developed in the meantime by a new market competitor: Autodesk.6 Founded ed., SOM Journal 8
December 5, 1964
implications of the challenge, posed by Minsky, that soon “Architects will have (Cambridge, MA: 1965).
in 1982, Autodesk rose quickly with their flagship program, AutoCAD — a “word Ostfildern atje ant ,
to face the automation of design.”1 Four years later Murray Milne, an architec- See Jonathan Barnett, “Will processor for drawings” — by targeting small architectural firms with more 2013): 132.

ture professor at ale, gathered attendees at the ale Conference on Computer the Computer Change the limited budgets and drafting needs.7 Other independent software companies
Practice of Architecture?” U
Graphics in Architecture (1968) to consider a potentially “fantastic” future Architectural Record
emerged to compete, including Mc eel, which released an AutoCAD-based John Walker, ed., The
in which the computer might become a “willing and capable partner” in design (January 1965): 143–150. modeling tool for curve-based surfaces in 1998 as the program Rhinoceros. Autodesk File: Bits
of History, Words of
practice.2 Participants included Bruce Graham of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill Other companies drew on non-architectural industries, such as Wavefront
W Experience (Thousand
(SOM) and icholas egroponte, a founder of the Architecture Machine Group Murray Milne, ed.,
Technology (later Alias|Wavefront), whose program Maya was used by both Oaks: Que Pub, 1989).
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, whose interests already lay more Computer Graphics in architects and Hollywood computer graphics and industrial design houses
broadly in the potential of computation to respond “intelligently to the tiny, Architecture and Design; in science-fiction films such as Stargate (199 ).8 Gehry Partners LLP adapted I
Proceedings (New Haven: “Bill Kovacs, 56; Shared
individual, constantly changing bits of information that reflect... the coherence CATIA, a program from the aerospace industry, into new software for the firm’s an Oscar for Work in
Yale School of Art and
of the city.”3 Architecture, 1969). formally complex buildings, criticizing existing commercial programs for Computer Animation,” The
Los Angeles Times (June
The ale conference represented changes which had already begun remaining “entrenched in a paper-based, two-dimensional world.”9 The results
E 4, 2006).
to take place within the architectural profession across the previous decade. In of this adaptation eventually led to the establishment of Gehry Technologies in 1964
Nichloas Negroponte,
1958, Ellerbe Associates had acquired a Bendix G-15, an early computer the The Architecture Machine: 2003 as a technology company independent from Gehry’s architectural practice. O
Deborah Snoonian, “New
size of a refrigerator, to perform tasks ranging from personnel management to Toward a More Human By the early 1990s, architecture practices across the US had substantially
Environment (Cambridge, Gehry Technologies will
structural calculations and the drawing of floor plans and details. Other large confirmed the predictions of Minsky and Milne some thirty years earlier about enable many to boldly
MA: The MIT Press, 1970).
US architecture firms soon entered their own periods of digital experimentation. the computer as a willing design partner. The form-making potentials of digital go where only Frank has
In 1969, Caudill, Rowlett, Scott (CRS) formed a separate company, Computing R design were soon evangelized by a generation of young architects as heralding gone before,” Architectural
Kristine.K. Fallon, “Early Record (October 2003): 12.
Research Systems 2 (CRS2), to develop a suite of applications for in-house an era of “voluptuous forms, stochastic and emergent properties, and intricate
Computer Graphics
use and sale, including streamlining cost analysis, project scheduling, and equip- Developments in the assemblages.”10 The moment when computation would be reclaimed by the P
ment specifications. Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), whose offices Architecture, Engineering academic design studio, most conspicuously under the deanship of Bernard Greg Lynn, ed., Folding in
and Construction Industry,” Architecture, revised edition
operated in a studio model, formed a 15th “studio,” dubbed the Computer Group, Tschumi at Columbia through a series of “paperless studios” taught by Stan (Chichester, West Sussex;
IEEE Annals of the History of
to develop applications specific to the firm’s needs and direct the office towards Computing (June 1998): 23. Allen, Scott Marble, Greg Lynn, and ani Rashid after 199 , was just around Hoboken, NJ: Academy
the corner. — AL Press, 2004): 9.
Boston by Harvard GSD student

for commercial office buildings

IBM PC and Microsoft MS-DOS

Gehry Technologies is founded

• SOM sells AES (Architectural
• Nicholas Negtroponte founds

Optimization Program (BOP)

founds Computing Research

held by SOM at IBM Sterling

Yale Conference for computer

Engineering System) to IBM

introduced as first
• Caudill Rowlett Scott (CRS)
Boston Architectural Center

McNeel releases Rhinoceros

WestWorld, western-themed
sci fi mo ie is the first to use
• “Appalachian Conference”
IBM 360 and 1130 released

Design Systems founded in

the Architecture-Machine

HOK develops HOK Draw

Computer conference at

Columbia’s GSAPP begin

on computer integration
• SOM develops Building
“Symposium on the Use

headquarters in London
Ellerbe Associates buys

graphics in Architecture

releases MicroStation
• Bentley Systems, Inc.
Uni ac becomes first

of Computers,” at Arup
commercially available

Bendix G-15 comupter

“Paperless” studios at
• Architecture and the

AutoCAD is released
Autodesk is founded
Systems 2 (CRS2)

“personal computer”
computer graphics
Computer Group
• SOM founds the

for PC platforms
group at MIT
Eric Teicholz

Forest, NY
and Design”
computer

released
Altair
1968
1957

1958

1963

1964

1965

1966

1967

1969

1972

1975

1980

1982

1983

1986

1992

1994

1998

2002
1955

2005
1962 Cuban Missile Crisis 1990–1991 First Persian Gulf War 2001 Afghanistan War 2014
1950–1975 Vietnam War 2003 Iraq War

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