Instant Access To Architecture Design Data Practice Competency in The Era of Computation 1st Edition Phillip Bernstein Ebook Full Chapters

Full download ebooks at ebookmeta.
com
Architecture Design Data Practice Competency in

the Era of Computation 1st Edition Phillip
Bernstein
https://ebookmeta.com/product/architecture-design-data-
practice-competency-in-the-era-of-computation-1st-edition-
phillip-bernstein/
OR CLICK BUTTON
DOWLOAD NOW
Download more ebook from https://ebookmeta.com

More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant
download maybe you interests ...
Sublinear Computation Paradigm: Algorithmic Revolution

in the Big Data Era 1st Edition Naoki Katoh
https://ebookmeta.com/product/sublinear-computation-paradigm-
algorithmic-revolution-in-the-big-data-era-1st-edition-naoki-
katoh/
Dada Data: Contemporary Art Practice in the Era of

Post-Truth Politics 1st Edition Sarah Hegenbart
https://ebookmeta.com/product/dada-data-contemporary-art-
practice-in-the-era-of-post-truth-politics-1st-edition-sarah-
hegenbart/
The Changing Shape of Architecture Further Cases of

Integrating Research and Design in Practice 1st Edition
Michael Hensel (Ed.)
https://ebookmeta.com/product/the-changing-shape-of-architecture-
further-cases-of-integrating-research-and-design-in-practice-1st-
edition-michael-hensel-ed/
Contemporary Museum Architecture and Design Theory and

Practice of Place 1st Edition Georgia Lindsay
https://ebookmeta.com/product/contemporary-museum-architecture-
and-design-theory-and-practice-of-place-1st-edition-georgia-
lindsay/
Data Analytics in the Era of the Industrial Internet of
Things Aldo Dagnino
https://ebookmeta.com/product/data-analytics-in-the-era-of-the-
industrial-internet-of-things-aldo-dagnino/
Modern Data Architecture on Azure: Design Data-centric

Solutions on Microsoft Azure 1st Edition Sagar Lad
https://ebookmeta.com/product/modern-data-architecture-on-azure-
design-data-centric-solutions-on-microsoft-azure-1st-edition-
sagar-lad/
Computation in Science Second Edition From concepts to

practice Hinsen
https://ebookmeta.com/product/computation-in-science-second-
edition-from-concepts-to-practice-hinsen/
Theory and Practice of Computation Proceedings of the

Workshop on Computation Theory and Practice WCTP 2019
September 26 27 2019 Manila The Philippines 1st Edition
Shin-Ya Nishizaki (Editor)
https://ebookmeta.com/product/theory-and-practice-of-computation-
proceedings-of-the-workshop-on-computation-theory-and-practice-
wctp-2019-september-26-27-2019-manila-the-philippines-1st-
edition-shin-ya-nishizaki-editor/
Claude Nicolas Ledoux Architecture and Utopia in the

Era of the French Revolution 2nd Edition Anthony Vidler
https://ebookmeta.com/product/claude-nicolas-ledoux-architecture-
and-utopia-in-the-era-of-the-french-revolution-2nd-edition-
anthony-vidler/
architecture design data
Phillip G. Bernstein
Practice
Competency
in the Era
of Computation
design
data Birkhäuser
Basel
To my always supportive family, and architects worldwide who work
every day to make the world a more livable and valuable place.
Contents
preface �� 6
1 — introduction 1.1 A Systemic Transformation �� 12
2 — agency 2.1 The Digital Transformation of Design �� 18

2.2 Defining Design Intent: Depiction, Precision and Generation �� 32
2.3 The Evolution of Responsible Control and Professional Care �� 42
2.4 Preparing Digital Designers �� 54
2.5 Building Performance Design ��66
3 — methodology 3.1 Procedures, Process and Outcomes �� 78

3.2 Information Coherence ��90
3.3 Designing Design: Optimizing, Solving, Selecting �� 102
3.4 Building Logic and Design Insight �� 114
3.5 Design Demands of Digital Making �� 126
4 — value 4.1 Creating New Value through Design �� 138

4.2 Producing Design Process �� 148
4.3 Calibrating Design Values �� 158
4.4 New Values in the Systems of Delivery �� 170
5 — conclusion �� 182
Bibliography �� 188

Illustration Credits �� 193
About the Author �� 195
Key Terms and Names �� 196
Colophon �� 200
Preface
Making is a matter of feeling, not thinking: just do it. Does it break?

Try again… and again… and again. Or even better, let the computer try
them all (optimize).
Mario Carpo in The Second Digital Turn: Design Beyond Intelligence1
In 1990 I was a young architect working for Cesar Pelli when we purchased
our first raft of personal Compaq computers, each equipped with an early
version of AutoCAD along with an equally expensive HP plotter. It was an
exciting time, because the transition from hand drafting to computer-aided
design (CAD) felt important, a move into the modern age. Of course, archi-
tects were decades late to the party of the first digital turn, waiting for the
curves of descending cost and ascending graphic capabilities to cross. And
now we had a fleet of exotic machines, each of which cost as much as a de-
cent car, sitting behind our drafting tables, and we wasted little time putting
them to work.
During a project review with Cesar we plastered an entire wall of the
studio with a series of plotted plan explorations, neatly organized by series (1,
2, 3, etc.) and then sub-options (A, B, C), using our new toys to demonstrate
how thoroughly we had explored this particular problem. Cesar, decidedly
nonplussed about the work, declared that we were confusing drafting with
thinking, and declared, as he examined our 50-odd options, that we were “us-
ing the computer for the systematic generation of useless alternatives.”
Ouch.
Technology certainly does not replace thinking, but it may change
the frame in which it happens, for better or worse. In the intervening years
since our comeuppance from Cesar, a lot of digital technology has made its
way onto the studio floors of the world’s architects, but few of the fundamen-
tals of the architect’s work or role in the overall systems of project delivery
have changed, with the possible exception of certain formal opportunities to
1 Mario Carpo, The Second Digital Turn: Design Beyond Intelligence, “Writing Architecture,” (Cambridge, MA: The MIT
Press, 2017), p. 163.
6|
generate and manage complex geometry. Early digital tools like 3D modeling
and scripting have yielded some compositionally exuberant results, but
done little else to empower architects to function in the increasingly com-
plex environment of building, where speed to market, sustainability require-
ments, automation on the job site and digital building control systems — to
name just a few of the things making our work so much more complex — raise
the expectations of owners, increase our liability and consume time and ef-
fort, which are increasingly less available from the tighter, more competitive
fees that resulted from the global economic crisis of 2008.2
We may be, however, at a tipping point in the equation that balances
the architect’s agency and methodology of design with the potential of what
The Second Mario Carpo has called The Second Digital Turn, or the era of intensive com-
Digital Turn putation. The space between the first turn (computer-based geometric mod-
eling) and the second (cloud-based, big-data-enabled machine learning and
artificial intelligence) was bridged by another technology, building informa-
tion modeling (BIM). As the price/capabilities curves of personal computers
brought very powerful desktop machines with graphics processors to the
architect’s and engineer’s studio, building design could move from tools that
simply described geometry to those that brought an understanding of a
building to bear on the problems of design and construction. Where once a
computer represented a wall or a window as a three-dimensional collection
of lines projected (even at full scale) in space, that same wall or window in
BIM understands its construction assembly and relationship to floors, walls
and other building systems. Despite BIM’s immediate utility as a technical
drawing generator (it produces perfectly coordinated drawings as an artifact
of a single data representation of the building) its real importance, potential-
ly, is as an epistemological structure upon which lots of other smart compu-
tation — including machine learning and simulation — can be built.
The early days of BIM — from 2002, when Autodesk made the Revit
acquisition and declared a strategic shift away from AutoCAD, through 2009,
when large numbers of American architects began to adopt BIM3 — includ-
ed much discussion about how the technology might be weaponized in the
war of control between architects and contractors. Each side declared that
the power of BIM information gave them primacy in the struggle for superior-
ity in the design-to-build process. As adoption became widespread, however,
and enthusiasm tempered by the downturn of 2008, both architects and con-
tractors began to work through the questions of what sort of information
2 Email conversation with the author and AIA Chief Economist Kermit Baker, January 2018.
3 BIM adoption in the US is measured in various ways, varying mainly by the definition of BIM and what software is
connected to its alleged use. A more sophisticated model is based on tool usage, as described in Wooyoung Jung and
Ghang Lee, “The Status of Bim Adoption on Six Continents,” International Scholarly and Scientific Research &
Innovation 9, no. 5 (2015).
7|
was useful during design and construction, and how it might best be ex-
changed cooperatively to the benefit of the project. Builder-owners and
managers, in a moment of clarity, declared through a manifesto that im-
provement was a function of owner-driven innovation in information and risk
sharing enabled by new technologies like BIM.4
New delivery structures like integrated project delivery (IPD) emerged,
but little else changed on the broader playing field. Customers and technol-
ogists alike realized that design models (like those created by BIM) and con-
struction models (those necessary to build) were different animals, and that
a more complex and nuanced set of solutions was going to be necessary to
reach the integrated digital promised land.
With the informational infrastructure of BIM creating a reference
framework for design, and cloud computing providing the computational
and storage firepower necessary to wrangle the enormous datasets that are
needed to represent buildings, we are coming to a time where technology
and thinking are perhaps not so separate anymore, and a need to re-examine
the methodologies of design is apparent. How does the complex of informa-
tion that results from the digitization of design create both opportunities
and threats for architects? This question is largely unanswered in an age of
high-resolution building models disgorged by the architect’s normative prac-
tice with BIM today. Simulation and analysis, soon to be bolstered by ma-
chine learning, create a design environment where a range of outcomes,
from cost conformance, constructibility and code compliance through to,
eventually, occupant behavior can be predicted a priori and those predic-
tions can be used to hone the design. This structure of looped analysis and
insight will make it possible to optimize any design in ways only the most
experienced architects could have achieved today — and none will be able
to achieve tomorrow unless assisted by technology.
That same ability to generate and study alternatives and predict per-
formative outcomes gives architects a far more potent tool to enhance our
role in delivery structures than could have ever been anticipated by the ‘BIM
data control’ arguments of fifteen years ago. Understanding and prediction
are precedent to making business commitments and structuring the archi-
tect’s agency, and compensation based on predicted outcomes — rather
than commoditized promises of limited fees — changes the very value prop-
osition of practice itself.
With our new machines years ago, we took advantage of the capabili-
ties of an emergent CAD platform to design a curving laboratory building on
4 Construction Users Roundtable (CURT), “Collaboration, Integrated Information, and the Project Lifecycle in Building
Design, Construction and Operation,” in CURT Whitepapers (Construction Users Roundtable, 2004). In this
whitepaper, a building owners’ association declared that four changes in industry practice were necessary: owner
leadership, integrated project structure, open information sharing and use of virtual building models.
8|
a very tight site, something that would likely have been impossibly complex
and time-consuming if drawn by hand. Of course, little did we know that ev-
ery single sheet of the resulting hundreds of working drawings would take as
long as 12 hours to output, with one of us supervising the oft errant plotter.
Technology gives, and it takes away.
In The Second Digital Turn Carpo imagines a time when traditional
scientific knowledge is replaced with gigantic datasets of experience, in-
dexed in such a way that science and engineering return to the more heuris-
tic approaches of craftsmanship — trying things just to see if they work, but
letting the computer generate the alternatives. The maker simply ‘feels’ that
a solution is right, and if not, the computer just generates another attempt.
For as long as architecture has an ineffable dimension, architects will con-
tinue to rely on feelings and instincts, but unlike the past, those instincts will
be well-supported by computational assurances, especially for the aspects
of building where, technically or otherwise, risk is high. With instincts backed
by support along both axes, architects will be empowered. This book out-
lines some theories and strategies for architects to maintain and expand
0.1 their expertise as designers of the built environment.
0.1 Boyer Center for Molecular Medicine, Yale University by Pelli Clarke
Pelli Architects
9|
1
intro
duc
tion
1.1
A Systemic
Transformation
In their seminal exploration of the importance of technology, The Second

The Second Machine Age,1 MIT’s Brynjolfsson and McAfee argue that the advent of ICT
Machine Age (information and communication technology) is as significant a develop-
ment in human progress as the steam engine. The construction of modern
buildings would not be possible without the successors to those engines,
but similar reliance on ICT has only now begun in earnest, in the first two
decades of the twenty-first century. This is not to suggest that certain forms
of digital technology — primarily drafting and rudimentary communication
tools, like CAD and email — were not important earlier, but it would be diffi-
cult to argue that they have had transformative effects on the role of archi-
tects or the process of designing and making buildings. If anything, effects
have been formal and compositional, leading to more complex, expressionis-
tic shapes and a more intricate interweaving of systems. In this spirit, soft-
ware for building is largely created for, and used by, architects and engineers
toward these relatively straightforward ends. Yet other fundamental human
The second digital turn: endeavors are dramatically changed in the second digital turn. Modern fi-
cloud-enabled big data nancial systems are entirely reliant on high-speed, global ICT infrastructure.
and machine learning
Agriculture and manufacturing are both heavily automated, having moved
far beyond the machinery of the first industrial revolution. Medicine depends
on high-resolution imaging, electronic medical records, big data analysis
and increasingly on robotic methods in the surgery suite. With these chang-
es in technology came similar transformations in process, professional
methodology and production as well as roles, obligations and values.
This book will argue that a similar systemic transformation is under-
way in the building industry, with particular implications for architects. The
canonical obligations of the architect — to coordinate a project to manifest
‘design intent’ in order to enable a builder to create the actual, physical as-
set — are evolving in an era where information, insight and predictions gen-
erated during design move into construction no longer essentially via draw-
ings but other, more profound media. The structures of design, production
1 Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant
Technologies (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2014).
12 | 1.1
and delivery themselves will transform as a result, and this book proposes to
create a framework within which those changes can be understood and ex-
plicitly managed by a profession which must become better equipped to di-
rect its future.
With the advent of increasing connectivity and the computational
The cloud: delivering power and storage capacities of the cloud, new technological capabilities
hosted computation greet today’s architect in waves. High-resolution modeling and simulation,
and storage
3D printing, robotics, drones and the internet of things are some of the inno-
over the internet
vations with potential to empower but also disrupt processes of design
and construction. In their above-mentioned book, Brynjolfsson and McAfee
suggest that combinations of these technologies — rather than single
tools — are the sources of real innovation and change, catalyzed by the new-
found capabilities of this second digital turn.
Architecture has been in the thrall of the digital for decades, inherit-
ing and repurposing technologies created for other ends. Drafting tools built
for engineers became the CAD platforms that replaced manual drawing.
Form-generating tools created for the gaming industry were adapted to gen-
erate and manage complex geometry. The first major built-for-purpose tech-
Building information nology to invade architecture was arguably building information modeling
modeling as a general (BIM), which presaged the shift from orthogonal two-dimensional represen-
purpose technology
tation of buildings through drawings to three-dimensional digital simula-
tions of a design, a change that occurred three decades ago in manufactur-
ing and product design. Like many disruptive innovations, BIM was first put
to best use, ironically, in the service of enhancing established methods, in
this case creating more accurate technical drawings. Widely adopted today,
BIM has become what Brynjolfsson and McAfee call a ‘general purpose tech-
nology,’ in that it is used to support the building design, construction and
building operation. However, in combination with the cloud, another general
purpose technology, BIM enables profound changes in how design happens,
and what design may mean. Under the influence of these developments,
projects will rely less on the intuition and judgment of designers (who are
held personally responsible for the implications of the use of that intuition)
and more upon predictive strategies of how a building will actually look, op-
erate and feel when complete. As a consequence, substantial changes in the
roles of the architect, the methodologies of practice and the relationship of
design to the delivery systems of construction — value propositions, in cur-
rent parlance — will evolve. Eventually, architecture will, in a sense, ‘catch up’
with other disciplines, professions and institutions that are fully engaged in
the second digital turn.
These changes will be both evolutionary and revolutionary, and in or-
der to best explain them the book proposes two organizational strategies.
Agency, On the first level, it will explore technology through the lenses of agency
methodology, value (what is the role of the architect and what does the architect control?);
13 | 1.1
methodology (what are the processes of design most concerned by transfor-
mation?); and finally value (what does the architect deliver to the system of
building and how is it valued, socially and financially?). On a second level,
each of these topics will be examined in the course of time: historically, es-
tablishing the arc of current practice, and then speculatively, defining trans-
formations and their implications.
Design, technology and professional practice are largely taught sepa-
rately in today’s schools of architecture. Design studio is a pedagogical plat-
form in and of itself, while both technology and practice are taught as sup-
port courses — or not at all. Professional practice classes are often a litany
of war stories and management strategies, disconnected from any other as-
pect of the design curriculum. Many aspects of professional education out-
side the studio are driven by the external demands of practice and licensure,
creating a strange divide between the core value proposition of architecture
(creating a design) and the agency of the architect (actualizing that design
for a client). What is more, architectural education today largely treats digital
tools as mechanisms for making artifacts, without much context as regards
their implications in the broad world of practice, where recent graduates are
the most technologically skilled and, at the same time, the least experienced
members, while their elders, who make the important decisions in an archi-
tecture practice, are the opposite. The most technologically skilled members
of practice are often those with the least understanding of the implications
of those tools. This text argues that all architects — both the next genera-
tion and their mentors — must understand and correlate our role in future
practice as design agents empowered by technology within the economic
and technical systems of delivery, and undertakes to create a framework to
build that understanding.
14 | 1.1
2
agency
2.1
The Digital
Transformation
of Design
How does technology change architectural process by refac-

toring the means of representation and design reasoning, and
the relationships between the architect and others in the
building process?
In the Renaissance, as now, new information technologies, instead of

building technologies, were the agents of change. New information
technologies brought about some new devices of design that in their
turn revolutionized the process of building and changed architectural
forms.
Mario Carpo in “Building with Geometry, Drawing with Numbers”1
At its core, architectural design is speculation. The architect, charged by a

client to translate aspiration to form, navigates two speculative leaps in the
service of the project: projecting the experience and operation of the build-
ing when it is in use by creating the design, and converting the design into a
built artifact. While the client is most interested in the former, it is the route
to the latter that constitutes the core value of the architect’s services in that
the architect is absolutely necessary for that conversion. Design reasoning
is the means to both of these ends, supported by instruments of representa-
tion and analysis.
Representing As explored in this text, ‘representation’ means the ways by which a design is
and reasoning about depicted, explored, illuminated and communicated. Over thousands of years
design
of designing and building, the drawing has been the prime means of such
representation. Drawing gives architects a portable, inexpensive means to
explain a complex, enormous thing like a building using the abstraction of
graphics. In the development of civilizations, architects developed over time
specific languages of building expression, graphical coding systems of sorts,
by which the basic dimensional, formal and technical aspects of a building
design could be explained. Constructs like the (floor) plan, building eleva-
1 Mario Carpo, The Second Digital Turn: Design Beyond Intelligence.
18 | 2.1
tion, cross-section and specific details evolved as a language of representa-
tion. As buildings and the systems by which they were created become more
complex, so did the means of representation necessary to create them. In
this way, representation and creation are intricately linked. This tradition
goes back centuries, with a particularly beautiful example in Figure 2.1.1, a
drawing by Robert Symthson that describes both the expression and fabrica-
2.1.1 tion strategy for a complex, double-curving window.
2.1.1 Robert Smythson, “A Rounde Window in a Rounde Wall” of 1599
19 | 2.1
‘Analysis,’ or the process by which the implications of a design are
explored, has relied almost exclusively on the experience and intuition of de-
signers, augmented by mathematics, prior to the digital age. Medieval build-
ers, who considered Euclid a mason and surveyor,2 deployed tools of geome-
try to project the dimensional characteristics of early buildings, a crude early
‘analytical model’ that both asserted the structure’s physical characteristics
and allowed for the necessary abstractions to put the design on paper. The
results were generated by geometric formulas. As the discipline of engineer-
ing emerged, analytical models were instantiated with formulas and stan-
dards, using the parameters of a project as inputs and using the outputs as
preliminary validations of the characteristics of the design. Formulas could
project rationalized conclusions about things like structural spans, deflec-
tion of columns, air temperature or required water volumes. But these ana-
lytical procedures were largely limited to the realm of design problems char-
The ‘wicked’ acterized by Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber3 in 1973 as ‘tame’ — solvable
and the ‘tame’ through linear, systematic analysis grasped and deployed by trained profes-
sionals. Peter Rowe, in his subsequent application of this thinking to archi-
tectural design, suggested that the real purpose of design was to wrestle
with what Rittel and Weber called ‘wicked problems,’ and these are the chal-
lenges that rely on the designer’s experience, judgment and intuition:
Architectural design problems can also be referred to as being ”wick-

ed problems” in that they have no definitive formulation, no explicit
”stopping rule,” always more than one plausible explanation, a prob-
lem formulation that corresponds to a solution and visa versa, and
that their solutions cannot be strictly correct or false. Tackling a
problem of this type requires some initial insight, the exercise of some
provisional set of rules, inference, or plausible strategy, in other
words, the use of heuristic reasoning.4
Before geometry-based computational simulations replaced human calcula-

2.1.2 tion, analysis was performed by solving formulae, as shown in Figure 2.1.2.
So in the pre-digital age it was pretty easy to identify and characterize
both the means of representation (drawings) and techniques of analysis (for-
mulas and protocols), both of which were generated and managed by com-
pletely manual processes. This setting was enhanced with the availability of
printing (and paper) in the Renaissance. More than five hundred years later,
2 Anthony Gerbino et al., Compass and Rule: Architecture as Mathematical Practice in England, 1500–1750 (London,
Oxford, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press; in association with Museum of the History of Science; in association
with the Yale Center for British Art, 2009), pp. 17–18.
3 Horst W. J. Rittel and Melvin M. Webber, “Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning,” Policy Sciences 4, no. 2 (1973).
4 Peter G. Rowe, “A Priori Knowledge and Heuristic Reasoning in Architectural Design,” Journal of Architectural
Education 36, no. 1 (1982).
20 | 2.1
2.1.2 Analytical formulae
Problem to be solved Example formula Note
Compute moment in a wl2

Mmax (at center) . . . . . . . = 5
simple beam, uniformly 8
loaded l
x wl
R R
Flow resistance of air p

Sh(V) = ∙V 6
through a small opening 0,845 ∙ A2
in an exterior wall where
Sh is the flow resistance [Pa ∙ m3/s]
p is the density of the air [kg/m3]
A is the area of the hole [kg/m2]
Required capacity of Qh = (a × i) × (ß × F) 7
rainwater downpipes a = the reduction factor for the rain intensity for flat roofs
and gutters a = 0.60 flat roof with ballast of gravel
a = 0.75 for the other flat roofs
As flat roofs discharge the water at a slower pace, for all other cases (therefore
all pitched roofs)
applies a = 1,
i = rain intensity and is 1.8 (litre/minute)/m2
ß = reduction factor for the roof width is determined by the pitch roof
F = surface of the roof
new digital platforms based on principles of computation are transforming

the means of representation and analysis once again, and with them the role
of the architect in the systems of building delivery writ large. And along the
way, the once clear boundary condition between ‘wicked’ versus ‘tame’ prob-
lems will be redefined as well.
Computation Like most things in the building industry8 this change is slow but steady. The
emerges in the advent of the computer itself made barely a ripple in design and construc-
building industry
tion due to the enormous cost and complexity of available machines through
the mid-1980s. As computation became democratized when personal com-
5 American Forest and Paper Associatation, “Beam Design Formulas with Shear and Moment Diagrams,”
http://www.awc.org/pdf/codes-standards/publications/design-aids/AWC-DA6-BeamFormulas-0710.pdf.
6 Axel Berge, Analysis of Methods to Calculate Air Infiltration for Use in Energy Calculations, Thesis, Chalmers
University, 2011, http://publications.lib.chalmers.se/records/fulltext/147421.pdf.
7 Nedzink Company, “Determining the required capacity of rainwater downpipes and roof gutters,” http://www.nedzink.
com/en/info-and-advice/roof-drainage-system/112/determining-the-required-capacity-of-rainwater-downpipes-
and-roof-gutters.
8 In this text, the term “building industry” refers to the network of organizations, participants and supply chain
connections (including clients, designers, builders, fabricators and suppliers) necessary to deliver built artifacts into
the economy.
21 | 2.1
puters became widely available, the first hints of process change emerged.
Hand-typed specifications and project correspondence gave way to
word-processed text; accounting and eventually cost estimating transferred
from ledger sheets to spreadsheets. By the mid-1980s, the first graphics and
CAD programs ran on computers that were affordable and available to archi-
tects and engineers; these platforms largely replaced their heavier, more ex-
pensive mainframe and mini-computer predecessors by the early 1990s, and
the digital age in design was under way in earnest.
In the intervening decades there has been a veritable explosion in dig-
ital instruments available to the architect and her collaborators. In order to
build the argument outlined above with more precision, we need to expand
the broad categories affecting design processes beyond just representation
and analysis, namely to include two additional process typologies: realiza-
tion (the transfer of information between the digital and the physical worlds)
Representation, and collaboration (the means by which the various players in the design/con-
analysis, realisation, struction delivery continuum access, organize and transact information). In
collaboration
these four categories of representation, analysis, realization and collabora-
2.1.3 tion (represented in Figure 2.1.3), digital tools act in concert to change the
reasoning, role and responsibilities of the architect.
The evolution of representational technologies from the 1970s to the
turn of the century has been explored extensively elsewhere and will not be
the subject of this discussion.9 It will suffice here to say that these histories
correlate the evolution of computational mathematics and associated rep-
resentational software with corresponding changes in the form-making po-
tential of the architect, in both shape and manufacturing technique. Com-
puters empowered both architects and builders to understand, manipulate
and manage very complex, especially curving forms during design, fabrica-
tion and construction. The resulting co-dependence between data genera-
tor (the architect) and data consumer (the fabricator) presages changes in
the relationship between the two that digitally empowered delivery models
anticipate today.
Digitized In that first iteration of digital technology in design, computers were used
documentation primarily in the service of a more sophisticated generation of form and the
documentation of design through geometry. To the extent that it became
easier to draw (and, allegedly, build) curving walls, facades and roofs, also
conventional — dare I say mainstream — architects transitioned from hand
drawings to computer-aided design (CAD). Drawings were generated by soft-
ware like Autodesk’s AutoCAD or Bentley’s Microstation, text and numbers
9 For a complete if personalized examination of this question, see Greg Lynn’s series of exhibitions in the Canadian
Centre for Architecture’s project “Archaeology of the Digital” and the associated publications.
22 | 2.1
2.1.3 Technology taxonomies
3D printing
Robotics
x
CNC/CAM
Laser scanning
Commissioning
How are ideas defined and How are ideas simulated How are ideas translated
memorialized? and evaluated? from digital to physical form?
(Models, metadata, Simulation, analysis, Construction planning,

drawings) scripting, optimization procuring, assembling
R E P R E S E N TAT I O N A N A LY S I S R E A L I Z AT I O N
C O L L A B O R AT I O N
How are ideas captured, managed and shared?
Reference data Project record External knowledge
by software like Microsoft Word and Excel. Even though the transfer from the
analog to the digital was in some sense complete, all three techniques — writ-
ing, drawing and calculation — ultimately manifested in Renaissance results:
printed on pieces of paper before real use, particularly in a client meeting or
on the construction site. Maybe this was not such a big change after all.
Interestingly, there is an argument to be made that spreadsheet soft-
ware was as important during this time as was CAD. While organizing and
systematizing the various numbers that support an architectural design
(space requirements, code calculations, cost estimates, project manage-
ment budgets), Excel gave architects important capabilities in the two other
tool buckets of analysis and realization. In the same way that the business
world relies on spreadsheet-based financial models to test the implications
of various decisions, so could architects and their collaborators build vari-
ous analytical models of those ‘tame’ aspects of the design subject to math-
ematical evaluation. Energy models, cost estimates, space allocation track-
ing and other structured numerical problems yielded easily to the increased
2.1.4 ubiquity of the PC-based spreadsheet, to their benefit.
23 | 2.1
2.1.4 Technology categories and their evolution
Technology Category In the pre-digital age In the early era of CAD
Representation Hand drawing, typed text CAD drafting, word processing,

spreadsheets (tables)
Analysis and Simulation Formulas, experience, intuition Early computational analysis software,
spreadsheets (calcs)
Realization Physical translation of construction Transfer of numerical control information

approach from drawings from CAD geometry
Collaboration Catalogues, telephone, tables of standards, Email, file servers, online databases, FTP
postal and overnight services, faxing
See also 2.1.6, p. 28
That same utility, the systematic organization and structure of the

spreadsheet, also provided an important conduit of design data from the de-
signer to the fabricator. Complex curving shapes described in the computer
were based on underlying mathematical models, like splines and NURBS,
that were otherwise impossible to document in the traditional form of
two-dimensional projections with measurements on pieces of paper. No
matter how many dimension lines the architect overlaid on the drawing of
the blobby form she was creating, the fabricator was still largely at sea trying
Shop drawings: detailed to understand how to build it. Shop drawings, the fabricator’s attempt to de-
drawings of the scribe in detail back to the designer how something was to be assembled,
assembly approach
introduced more time and transactional friction to the process. To the res-
used for fabrication
cue came spreadsheet software, where complete spatial coordinates (X, Y
and Z planes) could be extracted, compiled and transmitted to a fabricator
from the original design model. In this sense, spreadsheets were the first re-
alization tools available to the building industry. This method used data in-
stead of graphics to bridge intent to execution. Other more robust tools and
strategies were to follow.
Divisions of labor While this numeric means of jumping the gap between design speculation
and built artifact gave some early adventuresome architects and builders
Architecture, and fabricators a chance to cooperate directly,10 the industry writ large re-
engineering and mained hewed to traditional models of collaboration dictated by similarly
construction
hidebound roles and responsibilities. Designers still were responsible for
(AEC) industry
creating something called ‘design intent’ — a speculative description of a
project as it might be once built — and contractors for ‘the means and meth-
10 Probably the most well-known example of such an architect is Frank Gehry, whose firm pioneered both new formal
ideas and the technologies and business models necessary to create them.
24 | 2.1
ods of construction’ — translating that design intent into all the processes,
procedures, supplies, contracts and assemblies that result in a finished
building. Under this model, which largely persists today, responsibilities and
exchanges of information are carefully parsed along the lines of perceived
risk of a lawsuit, with said risk management often taking a higher priority
than the requirements of the project itself.
Digital means of collaboration, as another category in the design pro-
cess, lagged behind its representational and analytical counterparts, partic-
ularly in the age of early CAD where there were few means to transmit the
large files necessary to describe a complex building. Until the advent of an
internet where larger files could be exchanged, ‘sneaker nets’ of floppy disks,
often moving via overnight courier, connected project teams who otherwise
communicated by phone and fax machine. Up-/download times over tele-
phone lines made the physical transmission of digital media more reliable
and often faster.
On balance, the computerization of design in these early stages felt
important and disruptive to the architects, as if we were finally entering the
modern age of computers. But those who implemented it relied strongly on
long-established analog methods: drawing things, direct face-to-face com-
munication, moving physical artifacts like disks and computer plots. Strate-
gies for delivering projects remained largely the same.
From digital drawings In this context, various types of design-enabling technologies are evolving
to simulative models rapidly, and with them important implications for the architect.
Representation has largely transfigured in modern construction
economies from drafting-centric tools of CAD to building information mod-
eling (BIM), software that creates three-dimensional, behaviorally simulative
digital doppelgänger of the design from which the drawings are extracted
like reports from a database. A correspondingly dramatic increase in avail-
Metadata: data able information — both precise geometry coordinated in three-dimension-
about the data al space, and associated metadata11 — can now be created by the architect.
Analytical tools, empowered by cloud computing, stretch across a
spectrum of project characteristics from testing structural integrity to eval-
Triple Bottom uating sustainable Triple Bottom Line impacts,12 further accelerated by the
Line evaluation resulting collection of big data that can be leveraged for future evaluation.
Those tools will soon shift from fixed algorithms (where evaluation is prede-
termined and instantiated into the software code itself) to machine learning,
AI-based validation based on neural networks able to adapt evaluation crite-
11 Metadata, or ’data about the data,’ refers here to the additional information associated in BIM with a given
represented element. For example, the shape, depth and configuration of a door comprise its geometric data; the
door’s fire rating, construction type, cost of installation and associated hardware would be considered metadata.
12 “Triple Bottom Line” economics is a theory that suggests that sustainably designed buildings have three benefits which
must be considered, measured and balanced for success: financial, social and environmental.
25 | 2.1
ria. The pipeline between the digital and physical has widened in both direc-
tions: for example, model-based design information more easily transits to
computer-controlled fabrication equipment (when the business conditions
are right), while high-res three-dimensional scanning allows users to easily
integrate documentation of existing physical conditions into digital design.
Documentation, design resolution and, eventually, fabrication and construc-
tion are accelerated as a result.
Finally, high-capacity, ubiquitous connectivity and online storage are
a platform for a new generation of physically separated but informationally
integrated teams, where designers or builders can be pretty much anywhere.
Technology provides so many toys, and potentially tools, and with them,
many opportunities.
These technologies portend a potential seismic shift in both process
and role for architects. First, and perhaps most obviously, more enabled
tools make it more likely that architects can keep up — or even set the pace
for — the design of today’s increasingly complex buildings that demand
more exacting and complete information to actuate. If they act as the profes-
sionals at the center of the design process, architects empowered with new
technologies have the opportunity to remain the integrator and coordinator
of an ever-increasing retinue of specialty consultants and building technics
requirements. The resulting infrastructure of information that comprises the
design deliverable is of enormous potential use to builders and fabricators,
who are turning toward computationally driven industrialized construction
techniques based on huge collections of data which could be delivered by
the architect and her consultants.
Intent versus Today’s traditional delivery systems separate the responsibilities of
execution the architect (intent) from those of the builder (execution), either in concept
or in practice or both. The polarity of this relationship will reverse, bringing
closer interdependencies between architect and builder, entailing new con-
tractual, risk and compensation models that more accurately reflect the val-
ue of the combined effort. The emergence of integrated project delivery
models (see Chapter 3.3: “Designing Design: Optimizing, Solving, Selecting”),
catalyzed by the possibilities of BIM, is but one example of this change. De-
livery models themselves have evolved in parallel with technologies — at
2.1.5 least in the US — as described in Figure 2.1.5.
Project delivery models, the organizational structures that establish
the business relationships between owners, architects and contractors,
have been elaborated decade by decade, starting in the 1970s when almost
every project was “good old-fashioned Design Bid Build,” where builders
were selected based on lowest cost. But the economic context of a given
decade are the precedent to the evolution of the next model in the following
ten years. In the 1980s, very high interest rates drove construction to be as
fast as possible, creating the idea of fast-tracked construction management.
26 | 2.1
2.1.5 The evolution of project delivery models, 1970–2020
70s 80s 90s 00s 10s 20s
Decade
Worldwide
Economic High Interest Rates Liability Crisis Digital Design Data Digital Fabrication
Downturn + Early
context High Energy Costs Savings + Loan + Interconnectivity + Big Data
Sustainabililty
Project Design Fast Track Design Build Integrated Design + Construction /

delivery Bid + + Building Lifecycle
model Build Original CM Flavored CM
Measured Performance + Outcomes
O
O O O O
C
A C A CM D B D B
A
Evolution Building Information Modeling Connected Systems

of design
techno- Objects
logy Computer-Aided Drafting
Layered Production
Tracing Paper
O Owner A Architect C Constructor CM Construction D Designer B Builder

Manager
The liability crisis of the 1980s led to consolidated lines of contract responsi-
bility (where clients could file one single lawsuit) and thus to Design Bid
Build. Deep collaboration, made possible by BIM in 2000, opened up the pos-
sibility of integrated project design. In the future, analysis and simulation will
further drive outcome-based delivery models, bringing the owner, architect
and contractor even closer together in integrated models yet to be seen.
Predicting Construction itself is notoriously challenging and risky, and the industry is
outcomes of design rife with studies about degrees of low productivity, inefficiency and unpre-
and construction
dictability. Labor productivity in construction has remained flat for de-
cades,13 and industry efficiency itself is generally considered to be around
65% per dollar spent on the job site in the US. Business deals for designers
and builders are almost always based on promises of lowest first cost, and
13 See Paul Teicholz, “Labor-Productivity Declines in the Construction Industry: Causes and Remedies (Another Look),”
in AECbytes, March 14, 2013, http://www.AECbytes.com/viewpoint/2013/issue_67.html, and McKinsey Global Institute,
“Solving the Productivity Puzzle: The Role of Demand and the Promise of Digitization” (2018).
27 | 2.1
2.1.6 Technology categories and their evolution: BIM > Machine Learning
Technology Category In the era of BIM modeling In the era of machine learning
Representation Parametric models of geometry and Artificial intelligence-informed design

metadata through interlinked digital models
Analysis and Simulation Digital analytical models tied to scripts that Big data-based neural networks that predict
test and choose results complex outcomes
Realization Model-based simulation of construction Information originating from the design

yielding build-ready data process drives self-learning automated
machinery on the project site.
Collaboration Web-based, social-media-enabled real-time Real-time interaction enhanced by virtual

connection and data exchange. and augmented reality supplemented with
predictive collaboration through AI.
See also 2.1.4, p. 24
such commoditized environments not unexpectedly create razor-thin profit

margins that further dis-incentivize innovation. Many of these problems re-
sult from the speculative gap between design and construction, and many
design and build teams struggle to translate their design objectives into pro-
cesses that can meet owner objectives, including budget and schedule. Pre-
dicting these things in concert is devilishly challenging, and thus results in
the risky and litigious environment that dominates today.
But what if the informational and analytic infrastructures evolving
from today’s technologies — which put simulation and prediction on the ba-
sis of computation, big data evaluation, even machine learning — shifted the
essential organizational structures of the building process? Instead of as-
sembling teams with delivery systems connected by promises of lowest
costs, those models could be based on predictive outcomes: essentially
promises to deliver a project with specific performative characteristics.
Those characteristics, agreed upon in advance by the team and the client,
would be correlated directly, as incentives, with paying fees connected to
accomplishing them, and their predicted outcomes would be deeply under-
stood from the representational, analytic and realization capabilities provid-
ed by emergent technologies. Meeting technical challenges in terms of bud-
gets, schedule and energy usage are first-step changes in the transformation,
but as computers enhance our powers of analysis, simulation and optimiza-
tion, the objectives of building can be more complex and interesting, stretch-
ing to building performance and human experience. Thus the architect, em-
powered with the necessary tools to make the view across the speculative
gaps much more clear, moves closer to the act of construction, embraces
28 | 2.1
2.1.7 Production efforts in design
Design Services of the Architect and Engineer
Concept
Design
Technical Design
Construction Docs
Procure
Construction
Scheme generation
Engineering coordination
Cost estimating
Production Tasks
Project management
Code analysis
Routine engineering
Visualization
Document Production
Bid evaluation Construction observation
Negotiation Document management
Task likely to be automated Pay certification
Inspections, punchlists
Task likely to remain performed by a person
Change order negotiation
Submittals review
and manages the risks of results, and changes her value proposition to the
2.1.6 entire enterprise of building.
In his interpretation of Rittel and Webber’s ‘tame’ versus ‘wicked’
problems, Peter Rowe did not address the ‘tame’ components of the design
process per se. In the aggregate of the design process, ‘wicked’ comprises a
large number of ‘tame’ problems solved by procedural and analytic means.
The more prosaic components of working out a building design — laying out
a toilet room, organizing a door schedule — are hardly wicked. Where such
knowledge was once the exclusive province of experienced designers, it can
now be recorded and accessed digitally in the form of parametric models
and scripted generational procedures. Some of these procedures are hard-
wired into representation engines; any decent BIM software can easily gen-
erate a simple door schedule. Scripting languages today encode the design-
er’s knowledge of manipulation, usually of geometry, and those scripts are
often paired with analysis programs that evaluate the output. An energy use
simulator might be paired, for example, with a modeler that is using a script
to test different massing forms, simultaneously generating the building
29 | 2.1
2.1.8 ‘Wicked’ vs. ‘tame’ problems
‘Tame’ design challenges ‘Wicked’ design challenges
Computing areas Choosing a design strategy for the overall organization

of the building
Determining toilet capacities Making tradeoffs between ambiguous priorities
Coordination of structure and mechanical systems Managing client expectations

for clashes
Checking shop drawings for geometric conformance Composing the aesthetic expression of an element,
space or building composition
Counting and coordinating electrical fixtures Translating design intent to the contractor
shape and telling the designer the resulting energy use implications. There is
a direct business need to face this question of ‘wicked’ vs. ‘tame’ problems
with clarity: about 40% of an architect’s fee14 in a typical project is assigned
to portions of the work that are mostly ‘tame production’ (such as working
2.1.7 drawings) and that work is likely to be automated in the future. Figure 2.1.7
speculates which of the architect’s responsibilities, across the spectrum of
typical services, are likely to be automated.
Taming wicked Clearly the boundary between ‘wicked’ and ‘tame’ problems is starting to
problems blur, and the tamer the problem, the more likely it is to be assigned to a com-
petent computer. While this suggests a reduced need for architects working
in the realm of the tame, my earlier argument — that we could have a great-
er role in outcomes paired with a deeper connection to fabrication and
building — may offset the loss, much like when industrialized machinery be-
gan to replace farm workers in the twentieth century, many of those farm
workers found jobs in the factories that made the equipment. The strategy
must be one of replacing the evaporating value proposition of production
work like creating construction drawings with a different one, such as com-
putationally supported, outcome-based delivery, including a deep connec-
tion from design to making.
14 The largest portion of an architect’s services (and fee) are related to the technical delineation of the project and
related production tasks necessary to complete a detailed specification that articulates the design intent for the
builder. In the United States, such work can comprise as much as 40% of that effort (say, half of the design
development phase which comprises 20% of the fee, and most of the construction documents phase which
comprises 35% of the fee). These are the first parts of architectural work likely to be automated, with a concomitant
reduction in necessary work.
30 | 2.1
Finally, Rowe’s conclusion that solving ‘wicked problems’ requires the
use of heuristic reasoning is today cautionary rather than reassuring. In the
era of computation, surely only humans can accomplish those tasks that re-
quire heuristics, techniques that build on experience and trial and er-
ror — finding ‘answers that work.’ And yet, perhaps the most important
emergent technology to affect all knowledge work does not fit neatly into
our categories of technologies affecting design, but rather cuts across them
all: machine learning. The victory of IBM’s Watson over the reigning Jeopardy
champion in 201115 presaged the widespread commercial availability of com-
puters capable of learning, reasoning inferentially and drawing complex con-
clusions. IBM sells Watson as a platform now, and machine learning technol-
ogies that use neural networking techniques to study large lakes of data to
build an understanding of a given knowledge set already have applications in
the building industry. A recent research project, for example, uses machine
learning to examine thousands of construction records to predict risk fac-
tors for projects.16 Turning the attention of such technology on the burgeon-
ing data sets that are today’s computer-enabled design/construction proj-
ects will have obvious implications for the wicked aspects of both design
and construction. Machines will learn to design, and fundamentally change
2.1.8 the design process.
I have argued elsewhere that architects should embrace, rather than
be threatened by, the growing role of computation in design,17 and five years
after making that case I still endorse it, if for slightly different reasons related
to the emergent need to proactively address the emergence of machine
learning. Buildings will continue to increase in complexity, as technical, eco-
nomic, social, even aesthetic phenomena and the design process must prog-
ress in concert, with the resulting challenges. Being an architect will thus
entail facing and solving far more ‘wicked problems’ in the future, likely chal-
lenging the capabilities of even the most accomplished artificial intelli-
gence-based design system. If we can deploy emergent technologies in the
service of, rather than as a replacement for, our abilities to attack wicked
problems we may well have a better chance of solving them. Our responsibil-
ities to the building process will evolve accordingly.
15 “IBM‘s Watson Supercomputer Destroys Humans in Jeopardy,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFR3lOm_xhE.

16 In this project, a group of contractors pooled project information across hundreds of jobs to provide a big data source
for analysis. See Autodesk BIM 360 Glue, for example https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/bim-360-glue/
learn-explore/caas/video/youtube/watch-v-nuWlpqevfIk.html.
17 Phillip G. Bernstein, "Digital Workflows Book Launch." In 100, edited by Columbia GSAPP Lecture (New York, NY:
Columbia University GSAPP, 2013).
31 | 2.1
2.2
Defining Design Intent:

Depiction, Precision
and Generation
How does technology change reposition design information

(and design responsibility) relative to creation of a completed
artifact and redefine the concept of design intent?
Architects often hark back to the simpler times of the so-called ‘Master
2.2.1 Cover of Alberti’s Builder,’ when a single individual controlled all aspects of building-making.
L’Architettura In that putative era — think Brunelleschi and the Florentine Duomo during
the Renaissance18 — the transmission of information from designer (the ar-
chitect) to executor (the builder) was relatively simple because roles were
conflated, buildings relatively straightforward (by modern standards) and
schedules often stretched to decades. It was Alberti, working at the same
time as Brunelleschi, who suggested that ideas were artifacts of their own,
separate from buildings, and that there was a specific role in creating those
ideas, to wit, the professional architect. The architect was responsible, as
described and translated by Mario Carpo, for giving the builder “sound ad-
vice and clear drawings” which said builder was to follow without deviation.
This advice allegedly ended at the completion of the design. As Carpo de-
scribes Alberti:
Designers first need drawings and models to explore, nurture, and de-
velop the idea of the building… (those) models should also be used to
consult experts and seek their advice; as revisions, corrections and
new versions accumulate, the design changed over time; the whole
project must be examined and re-examined… The final and definitive
version is attained only when each part has been so thoroughly exam-
ined that any further addition, subtraction or change could only be
2.2.1 for the worse.19
The act of design itself forms a project, according to Alberti, “conceived in

the mind, made up of lines and angles, and perfected in the learned mind and
18 Ross King, Brunelleschi’s Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture (New York: Walker & Co., 2000).
19 Mario Carpo, The Alphabet and the Algorithm. “Writing Architecture” (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2011).
32 | 2.2
2.2.2 Execution and efficacy gaps
Execution
Design Construct
Operate
Efficiency
imagination.”20 Further, once those repeated revisions and refinements were

completed and the drawings and models handed over to the builder, “no
more changes may occur”21 and the builder is to proceed exactly as instruct-
ed. Of course, once the roles of designer and builder are distinct, it is incum-
bent on the former to communicate ideas with clarity to the latter (and every-
one else) so as to reach this Albertian state of design-to-construction fidelity.
Design and the The demand that the design communicate intent clearly remains despite the
architect’s intent obvious fact that the environment in which we build today differs enormous-
ly from Alberti’s time. Buildings are more complex in form, performance re-
quirements, use and interaction of materials, relationship of systems, regula-
tory constrains (like sustainability), even aesthetic expression. Where in the
past all responsibilities were conflated in the Master Builder, today’s projects
have specific roles, relationships, responsibilities and standards measured
by professional commitments and certification, legal standards and evolving
methodologies of design and construction. Rivers of information created by
the architect course throughout the project, intended to communicate the
evolving design and, ultimately, the intention for the final result. This vision
of the project, and the various mechanisms meant to allow others to under-
Design intent stand it, is what we call ‘the architect’s design intent.’
The definition of ‘design intent’ is not, surprisingly, explicit in practice
standards as provided in contracts, but architects Atkins and Simpson pro-
20 Leon Battista Alberti, On the Art of Building in Ten Books. Transl. Joseph Rykwert, Neil Leach and Robert Tavernor
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1988).
21 King, Brunelleschi’s Dome.
33 | 2.2
vide a cogent explanation of the distinction between the obligations of the
2.2.2 designer and the builder:
it’s evident that the architect’s drawings alone cannot be used [for
building by the contractor] because they are conceptual in nature
and inherently inadequate for that purpose. If design drawings were
sufficiently complete and adequate for construction, there would be
no need for the general contractor. The architect would be providing
the plan for putting the work in place… In developing a ‘complete set
of instructions for building the building’ the architect would already
have determined the means and methods for placing the work.22
This is a modern explanation of a very old idea. Since the Enlightenment, de-
sign intent has been articulated to the constituents of the building pro-
cess — including various collaborators and consultants, decision-makers,
regulators, purchasers, administrators, suppliers and builders — using phys-
ical (models), textual (writing) and graphical (drawings) tools that were large-
ly stable until the advent of digital technologies in the late twentieth century.
Instruments of service Irrespective of format, these various outputs are termed ‘instruments of ser-
vice’ in modern parlance to denote that they are not products in and of them-
selves but rather vectors by which design intent is transmitted, as a result of
the architect’s professional judgment, to any consumer of said information.
That judgment is exercised in the creation of the design itself. In one sense,
the architect’s design intent is comprised of her ‘vision’ of the project, that
coordinated, three-dimensional conception of the building as a physical ob-
ject that exists in toto only in her mind’s eye, at least before construction
begins. It cannot possibly be complete, as the final product is comprised of
thousands of pounds of materials, many more interrelationships and often
unexpected or unanticipated conditions.
In another sense, that vision is an assertion about the way the build-
ing will appear and operate as a place for human occupancy, function and
aspiration. Along the way, design intent must transform from a representa-
tion to a built artifact that can then be occupied. Thus the architect has two
overall strategic objectives in generating ‘design intent’: to jump from the
Execution to ‘learned imagination’ into construction (the ‘execution gap’) and into a fin-
efficiency gap ished object in a state of use (the ‘efficacy gap’). Digital technology restruc-
2.2.2 tures both the strategy and for outcomes of each of these jumps.
22 James B. Atkins and Grant A. Simpson, Managing Project Risk: Best Practices for Architects and Related Professionals
(Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2008), p. 138.
34 | 2.2
2.2.3 BIM geometry and metadata
Design depiction The advent of building information modeling represents a quantum leap in
and analysis depictive power. At a basic level, BIM-based design was the first step in more
directly connecting the architect’s vision of the building to its realization
without the intermediate step of orthographic projections like plans, sec-
tions or elevations. Describing the design as a model allowed such projec-
tions, still very necessary to the design process, to be extracted from a
three-dimensional digital manifestation of the building. Further, the BIM rep-
resentation conflates graphic and notational information about the design,
as the digital representations of discrete elements of the building (such as a
door, wall or window) include not just their spatial locations but also metada-
ta — characteristics like weight, size, energy performance — and, by impli-
cation, the relationships between these data with other building elements.
Processes that were computationally challenging in a world where all design
intent was graphic, like quantity take-offs or area calculations, become
by-products of the design process itself.
Information about building elements is stored in a building informa-
tion model as data that can be displayed in various ways, including as a
three-dimensional projection and characteristics of a specific element, as
2.2.3 shown in the BIM screen shot in Figure 2.2.3.
More importantly, a building designed with BIM gives the designer a
powerful new platform to enhance and accelerate her judgment and improve
the design. Those models are, in part, behaviorally provocative simulations
35 | 2.2
2.2.4 Analysis dashboard
of the emerging building itself, and thus tools that can be interrogated, iter-
ated rapidly to enhance Alberti’s recommendation that the building be “per-
fected in the learned intellect and imagination.”23
Combined with the extended power of cloud computation and the
arrival of an arsenal of simulation tools that analyze and evaluate the impli-
cations of model behavior, the tools of design intent are extended from mere
Depiction depiction to prediction – from the depiction of a vision to the prediction of a
to prediction future reality. For centuries of building, architects and engineers used expe-
rience, judgment, intuition and some procedural knowledge (like formulas)
to project the performance of building. The arrival of both analytical soft-
ware and machine learning based evaluation of real world data extends the
designer’s capabilities for prediction enormously; prediction now becomes
an explicit component of the expression of the design, instantiated into the
2.2.4 instruments of design intent themselves.
Design generation But architects have never relied, in the digital turn, exclusively on algorithms
provided by software providers. Since the early days of programs like Auto-
CAD, designers could roughly automate certain procedural design ap-
proaches by scripting drafting commands with the software that made the
drawings. This strategy has been dramatically extended in the twenty-first
23 Carpo, The Alphabet and the Algorithm.
36 | 2.2
2.2.5 Design alternative generation
century through a discipline called ‘computational’ or ‘generative’ design,

where complex scripts manipulate digital geometry and give architects mas-
tery over forms previously too mathematically and graphically challenging to
accomplish by human hands and brains alone.
In the digital turn, algorithms allow designers to combine the repre-
sentational potency of BIM and the evaluative opportunities of predictive
analytical software for a third component of design intent: generation If sim-
ple scripting can create a wide range of geometric options for a given design
problem, more complex generative strategies reframe the proposition of de-
sign intent itself. The range of possible options is greatly expanded, the op-
portunity to explore far more alternatives engaged and the likelihood of new
solutions enhanced. The evolution of a range of planning solutions, generat-
2.2.5 ed via algorithm, is shown in Figure 2.2.5.
And since designing a building comprises solving an array of prob-
lems from the sublime to the ridiculous — or, as Rittel might suggest, from
the ‘wicked’ to the ‘tame’ — the application of these combined techniques
will likely begin with tamer problems while releasing the designer’s energy to
focus on the more wicked.
Let us speculate about the following example of a BIM-based design
process where the assignment is to design a small community library for a
public client. The architect is trying to find an appropriate concept that
meets certain constraints: the project brief calls for a modest reading room
plus shelving for a small collection within a relatively tight budget and strin-
37 | 2.2
gent energy performance characteristics. The architect creates a simple
BIM with adjustable parameters for the building’s dimensions (including
height), site orientation and access strategy. She decides that the primary
variables are building dimensions, orientation toward the sun and the ratio
of glass openings to solid wall, and she wants to understand the code, ener-
gy and cost implication of several alternatives, so she deploys the following
tools:
—  Building information modeling as the primary representational platform

—  Analytical software for cost estimating, energy analysis and building
code evaluation
—  A scripting platform like McNeel’s Grasshopper or Autodesk’s Dynamo
—  A reference library of the architect’s past projects, residing on the firm’s
servers
She first scans her library of past projects with a machine learning routine
that suggests key performance characteristics of a successful design, and
she tweaks these conclusions to suit the constraints of the current assign-
ment. Then a simple generative script that varies her key parameters creates
a wide range of alternatives, many of which fall outside the performance
boundaries returned by the analytical software, helping pare the possibili-
ties. The toolkit above has expanded the range of possible solutions (using a
‘tame problem’ strategy) and likely not yielded a ‘correct’ answer (because
that is a ‘wicked problem’) but has certainly expanded her understanding of
the range of solution ideas.
Two of the more intractable aspects of the design challenge — sys-
tematically generating alternatives that might be interesting, and fully evalu-
ating each for cost, code and energy — have been automated. The objec-
tives of the design process itself were established from both the client’s brief
and past history of other projects; in the past, only the former would have
been an explicit requirement. The process of establishing design in-
tent — and the instruments of service themselves — have expanded to ex-
plicitly include depiction, prediction and generation.
Evolving methods of Given the inexorable march of technology, it is likely that this rather mild ex-
determining intent ample represents just the beginning of the tripartite (BIM, analytics, scripts)
Depiction, prediction evolution of new strategies to generate design. Each category — depiction,
and generation prediction and generation — will continue to increase in capacity, capability
and implication. While it is unlikely that drawing itself will ever disappear
from architecture — it is far too efficient and effective — the design ideas
that result, ultimately, in those depictions will be more accurate and of high-
er fidelity. The ability to represent a building in far greater levels of detail will
increase with computation and storage capacity, and depiction will no long
38 | 2.2
er be constrained by the need for abstraction (unless this is necessary for a
given moment in the design process). As computational modeling becomes
more robust, models themselves will include or connect to other digital rep-
resentations of building components, thereby providing insight into assem-
bly, installation, maintenance and operational data.
Predictive tools, which are today largely software that applies vast
computational resources to complex analytical algorithms, will be enhanced
by the insights gained by collecting, measuring and evaluating actual results
of design decisions. Today IBM advertises how its machine learning platform
Watson can predict the performance of a basketball player or the productiv-
ity of a vineyard a priori, presaging the widespread availability of such capa-
bilities. This will be an enormously important tool in the built environment
where there are literally millions of functioning examples — operating build-
ings — in existence and available for indexing, reference and insight. Com-
mon design errors that are the result of the failure to predict how something
is built, used or behaves will be reduced or eliminated.
Generative design approaches that do the ‘heavy lifting’ of alternative
creation will combine with predictive tools to expand the range of possible
solutions, as schemes can be more systematically explored by algorithmic
generation. As a precondition, framing a design problem so it can be proper-
ly evaluated computationally will become as important as the creative pro-
cess of finding the solution. Designer heuristics will transition to the ‘wicked
problems’ of framing design parameters and the strategies for exploring
solutions rather than generating them. Defining the design problem by set-
ting its parameters, as inputs into the generative tools, will rise in impor-
tance relative to the actual process of solving the design problem.
Bridging intent Demand for digital design information to drive increasingly automated con-
to execution struction inexorably draws the architect and builder together. Depiction will
include not just information about a given architectural element’s geometry
and physical state, but the implications of how it should be made and what it
will do once it is in place. Providing this information will certainly not replace
what Atkins and Simpson declare as the fundamental responsibility of the
architect to monitor design intent, but rather inform the creation of design
information while smoothing its route to the job site.
The architect ‘Master Builder’ of yore based decisions almost exclu-
sively on experience, judgment and intuition. Pre-digital architects, with
shorter deadlines and much more complicated projects, worked much the
same way, outsourcing the ‘prediction’ of technical performance to consul-
tants and generating solutions to ‘wicked problems’ heuristically. Second-era
digital tools, evolving in the way suggested here, will shift the architect’s role,
responsibility, and the underlying presumptions of the efficacy of design in-
tent itself.
39 | 2.2
Modern architects have had, at best, an ambivalent attitude to jump-
ing the execution gap, working in uneasy relationships to construction. Ar-
chitects see involvement in construction as a risky, unpredictable proposi-
tion with little upside, and as a consequence are parsimonious with the
information they generate during design. At the same time, builders often
cite “unusable architect’s documents”24 as a primary reason for their difficul-
ties, and rare is the builder who truly understands the difference between
the architect’s obligations to create ‘design intent’ documents versus ‘con-
struction planning’ documents,25 although they are, in fact, completely dif-
ferent things. But construction will eventually yield to the improvements
made possible by digital, robotic or automated production and the inputs to
those processes begin with the architect. To maintain strategies where that
information is either firewalled from the builder, or worse, replicated in low
fidelity, hardly advances the causes of efficiency or effectiveness. Higher-
fidelitydepiction and more accurate prediction make the digital assets of
design intent production very valuable to builders, reducing risk and thereby
beginning to close that execution gap, which (as I have argued elsewhere26)
is a fundamental barrier to effective construction.
Execution to Bridging the efficacy gap proves, in the long run, to be the most important
operation objective in the restructuring of design intent. Modern society relies on the
expertise of professionals to guide it through complex, specialized undertak-
ings like design. The legal standard by which the performance of the archi-
Standard of care tect is measured, the standard of care (see Chapter 2.3, “The Evolution of
Responsible Control and Professional Care”) essentially defines competency
as the sound judgment in a situation according to which an otherwise capa-
ble architect would have operated. One might argue that sound judgment is
the fundamental value of a good architect, and what clients ultimately are
looking for when they ask for professional help.
Clients have many motivations for creating buildings: artistic expres-
sion, embodiment of values and social role, even brand. These are the more
‘wicked’ aspects of a designer’s obligations. But every client, save the pure
patron of the arts, also wants a platform for living, working or other activity
and sees a building as an enabler of those aspirations. Anticipating how a
building operates as a living, breathing and occupied organism comprised of
spaces, light, materials, energy and other systems is a fundamental value de-
24 Harvey M. Bernstein, “Managing Uncertainty and Expectations in Building Design and Construction,“ in Harvey M.
Bernstein (ed.), McGraw Hill Smart Market Reports (New York: McGraw Hill Construction Analytics, 2014).
25 Atkins and Simpson, Managing Project Risk, p. 138.
26 Phillip G. Bernstein, “Thinking Versus Making: Remediating Design Practice in the Age of Digital Representation,” in
Branko Kolarevic and Kevin R. Klinger (ed.), Manufacturing Material Effects: Rethinking Design and Making in
Architecture (New York: Routledge, 2008).
40 | 2.2
livered by architects. The evolution of tools that more precisely depict the
intent of the design and make its performative outcomes more understand-
able and, even more importantly, more likely to be achieved, can not only
improve the reputation of architects but enhance our value in the creation of
the built environment.
The inherent dangers of such an approach, where the fundamental
value of an architect shifts to her ability to predict the future of her building,
are twofold. As a profession we must take care not to allow prosaic, proce-
dural and analytic issues to overwhelm the expressive and ineffable qualities
of architecture, lest we find ourselves living in a world of machine-generated
blandness. There is surely enough of such ‘‘systematic’ building lining the
commercial strips of today’s cities, where the architect’s only value seems to
have been to sign and seal drawings that resulted in a building permit.
The secret here is to assure that the inherent potential of new depic-
tive, predictive and generative tools is to create new, unseen and important
opportunities for innovation, progress and expression. High-resolution ren-
dering, big data analytics and algorithms in general may yield, ultimately,
higher-quality results by virtue of the opportunities of precision and simula-
tion. If those things do not give the architect first more productive cycles,
and second, more insight to use in defining and elegantly solving the ‘wicked’
challenges of architecture, then we will have, as a profession, squandered an
opportunity not likely to be offered again. But more importantly, as the tools
that yield the results of design become more sophisticated, insightful and
automated, it will be equally important to apportion our efforts and reaffirm
the ‘wicked’ nature of design itself. Buildings, like all things made by humans,
sometimes demand simple and uninteresting solutions that instruments of
the ‘tame’ can surely solve, particularly if those buildings do not require
human habitation (think data centers or warehouses). But otherwise our
profession must deploy these new-found capabilities in the service of ever-
improving architecture.
41 | 2.2
2.3
The Evolution of
Responsible Control
and Professional
Care
In what way does the professional role of the architect evolve
in the digital age and how does this affect normative measures
of competency and related legal standards?
All technical submissions, which are (a) required by public authorities

for building permits or regulatory approvals, or (b) or intended for
construction purposes, including all addenda and other changes to
such submissions, shall be sealed and signed by the architect. The
signature and seal may be electronic. By signing and sealing a tech
nical submission the architect represents that the architect was in
responsible control (emphasis added) over the content of such tech-
nical submissions during their preparation and has applied the re-
quired professional standard of care.
National Council of Architectural Registration Boards (NCARB),
Legislative Guidelines27
The National Council of Architectural Registration Boards (NCARB), a con-

sortium comprised of 54 state/protectorate architectural licensing boards in
the US, provides its members with model legal guidelines to create local reg-
ulations that govern the practice of architecture, from which the quote
above has been excerpted. These guidelines represent the consensus think-
ing, a ‘national sense’ as it were, of how architectural practice should be de-
fined, regulated and administered. The quote describes a central concept, a
raison d’être, at the heart of the state’s interest in creating professional archi-
tects: ”responsible control,” wherein a specific person granted the status of
”architect” must both control and take responsibility for the technical delin-
eation of an architectural project. A competent architect maintains this “re-
sponsible control” over a project during its design (and in some jurisdictions,
construction) in order to assure the public’s heath, welfare and safety. Un-
packing the real implications of this concept, which is present in many coun-
27 National Council of Architectural Registration Boards, Legislative Guidelines and Model Law — Model Regulations
2016–2017 (Washington, DC: NCARB, 2016), p. 17.
42 | 2.3
tries in different forms, in the second digital turn is central to understanding
and defining the current and future role of architects in the systems of deliv-
ery that create buildings.
Allocating The existence of architectural licensing regulations presumes that the state
responsibility has a vested interest in creating safe and appropriate buildings for the use of
the public and that professionals are necessary to assure that this is accom-
plished. Not unlike doctors or lawyers (who presumably protect the public’s
health and legal rights, respectively), professional architects serve the public
in two important ways. First, they are expected to have the experience, educa-
tion and certification that demonstrate a degree of competence sufficient to
Protecting the public is protect the public’s health, safety and welfare.28 Second, and equally import-
the main ant, an architect delivering her services toward this end must do so as an indi-
reason for licensure
vidual who can be held personally responsible for that competence. Profes-
sional services are thus distinct from, say, creating and selling a product, in
which a customer purchases a thing like a car or television from a corporate
entity that produces it. In the rare cases where that thing might cause harm,
the corporation (and not its managers or employees) is held responsible. While
the contractor for the project makes a product — the building — the archi-
tect provides services to assist the client in getting that building to happen.
Thus architects, in reality, render their judgment and cannot distance
or disabuse themselves of personal responsibility for the results. Society has
decided, through regulatory structures and law, that such professionals, in
exchange for the tremendous freedom and responsibility offered by their
trade, must be ‘on the hook’ for the resulting consequences. Professionals
are expected to be personally competent.
Defining competence But the state regulations do not stipulate what competent practice looks
like, nor are they in any way specific about the performance requirements for
professionals much beyond the description of responsible control above. A
professional can only be ‘measured’ in comparison with other practi-
Standard of Care tioners — under a challenging concept called “the Standard of Care,” de-
fined as follows:
The Architect shall perform its services consistent with the professional
skill and care ordinarily provided by architects practicing in the same or
similar locality under the same or similar circumstances. The Architect
shall perform its services as expeditiously as is consistent with such
professional skill and care and the orderly progress of the Project.29
28 The standard or duty of care has similar definitions in the United States and the United Kingdom.
29 Dale L. Munhall, “Standard of Care: Confronting the Errors-and-Omissions Taboo up Front,” AIA
Best Practices (February 2011), p. 1.
43 | 2.3
In other words, the competence of the architect’s work is measured
by somehow comparing it to what others in similar situations would have
done, as likely measured in court under threat of a negligence lawsuit. Many
such lawsuits stem from issues far beyond questions of the public’s health,
safety and welfare but rather result from disappointments in the execution
and delivery of a building on the part of contractors and clients, usually asso-
ciated with broken budgets, schedules or technical failures. (Questions of
negligence and professional liability are further explored in Chapter 3.6, “Op-
portunities, Risks and Rewards.”) An ‘ugly design,’ unless it somehow com-
promises building codes or otherwise threatens the public, is not a breach of
the standard of care.
The state enforces its interest in protecting the public’s health, safety
and welfare by (1) establishing and regulating the profession of architecture
(and limiting who can call themselves an architect), (2) stipulating that per-
forming the services that architects provide is the ‘practice’ of architecture,
and (3) requiring that documents that have been certified by a professional
architect (‘signed and sealed,’ in popular parlance) are required before the
state will authorize construction of a building by issuing a building permit. It
is a common misperception that the main thing that distinguishes an unli-
censed ‘architectural designer’ from a ‘real registered architect’ is that seal.
Practicing architecture is providing the broad spectrum of services de-
scribed in the traditional phases like schematic design, design development,
and so on — and doing so without a license is a violation of the statutes.
Signing the final working drawings precedent to applying for a building per-
mit is just the final step.
Delivering expertise Of course, many ‘products’ are created as the architect delivers her services:
drawings, reports, models, data files and renderings, to name a few. These
artifacts, however, are better known as “instruments of service”30 precisely
because they are not ends in themselves, but rather the conduits by which
professional judgment is delivered. Despite efforts by clients to own these
artifacts, national law based on an international treaty (The Berne Conven-
tion for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works of 1886), in this case the
US Architectural Works Copyright Protection Act of 1990, stipulates that the
architect remains the owner of her instruments of service, and provides a li-
cense to users of those items — engineers, contractors or clients — to pro-
vide others with access.
30 “Instruments of Service” are defined in US contracts as follows: “representations, in any medium of expression now
known or later developed, of the tangible and intangible creative work performed by the Architect and the Architect’s
consultants under their respective professional services agreements.” American Institute of Architects, A201 2007
General Conditions of the Contract for Construction (Washington, DC: American Institute of Architects, 2007), p. 9.
44 | 2.3
The architect’s preparation of any document requiring her signature
and seal must include putative supervision and control over the preparation
of that document in order to directly connect the responsibility of the archi-
tect for competence to the underlying mechanisms of delivering her judg-
ment. NCARB provides the following definition of ”responsible control” in
their guidelines:
That amount of control over and detailed professional knowledge of

the content (emphasis added) of technical submissions during their
preparation as is ordinarily exercised by a registered architect apply-
ing the required professional standard of care, including but not lim-
ited to an architect’s integration of information from manufacturers,
suppliers, installers, the architect’s consultants, owners, contractors,
or other sources the architect reasonably trusts that is incidental to
and intended to be incorporated into the architect’s technical sub-
missions if the architect has coordinated and reviewed such informa-
tion. Other review, or review and correction, of technical submissions
after they have been prepared by others does not constitute the exer-
cise of responsible control because the reviewer has neither control
over nor detailed professional knowledge of the content of such sub-
missions throughout their preparation.31
A chain of opportunity, certification and responsibility can be see in these

related concepts: the state fulfills a social need for appropriate buildings (to
protect health, welfare and safety) by creating a class of professionals (via
licensure) who are responsible for their design (professional liability). Ideas
about that design are articulated by various means (the instruments of ser-
vice), and competence is measured accordingly (the standard of care). The
architect’s fundamental responsibility in these arrangements is predicated
today on the concept explained earlier (see Chapter 2.2, “Defining Design In-
tent”), having defined that intent during the design phases of the work, en-
forced it during construction in collaboration with the builders and cement-
ed it to the requirement of personal responsibility by obliging the architect
to directly supervise design work (responsible control).
In the pre-digital era, each of these concepts was stable and clear.
Professional training was founded on the basic division of labor (design ver-
sus execution) between the architect and the builder. Instruments of service
were hand-drawn, sketched or sometimes typed, and relatively limited in
scope and detail. In fact, the concept of responsible control was understood
31 National Council of Architectural Registrations Boards, “Model Regulations,” Legislative Guidelines 2014–2015
(Washington, DC, 2015), p. 16.
45 | 2.3
Another Random Document on
Scribd Without Any Related Topics
“A written message?” asked the Secretary of State.
“No, a verbal one. With everyone else in Washington, I have
taken great interest in the terrible murder of my old friend. The
man’s statement aroused my interest, and, having a few minutes of
leisure, I told my secretary to show him in.”
“What did he look like?” inquired the Secretary of State, deeply
interested.
“A tall, dark chap; his hair and beard were black, and he had the
bluest eyes I’ve ever seen in human head.”
“Was he well dressed?”
“No, his clothes were shabby but fairly neat. He looked as if he
had spruced up for the occasion. I can’t say I was prepossessed in
his favor by his appearance.”
“Did he give you his name?”
“No.”
“Do you think he was an American?” put in Douglas.
“It’s hard to say. At first I sized him up as being a Spaniard.”
“Didn’t you ask his name?” again inquired the Secretary of State
impatiently.
“I did, and his errand. He ignored my first question, and in
answer to the second said that he had come to examine some
records. I informed him that he had come to the wrong office, and
that my clerk would direct him to the proper room. He then made
the astounding statement that he had an appointment to meet
Senator Carew here in this office at twelve o’clock. I was taken
completely by surprise by the man’s statement and asked: ‘What day
did you expect to meet Senator Carew here?’
“‘This morning, at twelve o’clock,’ he answered, and then added,
‘He is late.’
“Thinking the man a little daft or drunk, though I could detect no
sign of liquor, I said abruptly, ‘A likely tale; Senator Carew is dead.’
“‘Dead!’ he shouted, springing out of his chair.
“‘Yes, dead—murdered last Monday night.’ I hadn’t anticipated
giving him such a shock, or I would have broken the news more
gently. The effect on my visitor was appalling. He collapsed on the
floor in a fit. The electric bells in this office are out of order, and,
although I shouted for help, no one heard me. I sprang out of my
chair, undid the man’s necktie and collar, threw the contents of my
ice pitcher in his face, and then bolted into the other room to get
assistance. Most of the clerks had gone out to their lunch. I called
two men who happened to be eating their lunch in an adjoining
room, and we hastened back here only to find my strange visitor
gone!”
“Gone!” ejaculated the Secretary of State.
“Vanished. The only sign of his presence was the spilled ice water
on the floor, and that chair overturned,” pointing to the one Douglas
was occupying.
“Did no one see him slip out of the door into the hall?” asked
Douglas.
“No. Unfortunately the messenger, who sits near my door, had
gone into the room across the corridor. The man made a quick
getaway, and luck broke with him, for no one noticed him leaving
the building.”
“How do you know he isn’t hiding somewhere?” inquired
Douglas.
“If he is, he will be captured, for Chief Connor and a number of
Secret Service men are searching the building.”
“When did you discover the plans of the battleships were
missing?”
Wyndham swore softly. “That’s the devilish part of it,” he said
bitterly. “As soon as I realized the man had really run away I glanced
over my papers. Everything seemed to be all right. I pulled open this
drawer,” opening it as he spoke, “and saw these blue prints lying
exactly as I had placed them under this folded newspaper. I
slammed the drawer shut, thinking my strange visitor was simply a
harmless lunatic, who had probably read about Carew’s death until
he became obsessed with the subject, and dismissed the matter
from my mind.”
“Was this drawer locked when your strange visitor was
admitted?”
“No.”
“Then anyone might have stolen the papers,” exclaimed the
Secretary of State in surprise.
Wyndham reddened. “No, they could not. The only time I’ve
been out of this room was when I ran out looking for aid for that
miserable scoundrel. That is the only chance there has been to steal
the papers.”
“You think, then,” began Douglas, checking his remarks off on his
fingers, “first, that the whole thing was a plot; that the man used
Senator Carew’s name to arouse your interest or curiosity; that he
faked a fit, and in your absence removed the plans and substituted
false blueprints, taking a chance that you would simply look to see
that everything was safe in your drawer and not examine further,
and then made his escape.”
“You’ve hit it exactly,” acknowledged Wyndham. “Those were the
conclusions reached by Chief Connor also.”
“It was no irresponsible person who committed that theft,”
declared the Secretary of State thoughtfully. “It was a well-laid plot,
neatly carried out. How long have the papers been in your
possession, Wyndham?”
“They were sent here yesterday for my inspection. There has
been a leak here somewhere, damn it!” Wyndham set his bulldog
jaw. “I’ll trace it to the bottom, and when I find out——” he clenched
his fists menacingly.
“What callers did you see besides the Spaniard?” asked Douglas.
“Let me see—the usual run, several office seekers, a number of
naval officers—oh, yes, my wife came in with Colonel Thornton and
his niece, Miss Eleanor Thornton.”
“Before or after the Spaniard had been here?” questioned
Douglas swiftly.
“Shortly afterward. They came in about a quarter of one and did
not stay long.”
“After you had discovered the loss of the plans?”
“No, before. I only discovered their loss three-quarters of an hour
ago.”
“How long were your wife and her friends in this office?” inquired
Douglas persistently.
“About fifteen minutes.”
“Then how does it happen that I saw Miss Eleanor Thornton
descending in one of the elevators when the Secretary and I were
on our way to this office to see you?”
“Oh, Miss Eleanor told me that she was going to the library to
look up the records of some of her ancestors, as she wishes to join
the Colonial Dames. I think she has been up there ever since. My
wife and Colonel Thornton left together without waiting for her.”
“You are absolutely certain, Wyndham, that you haven’t been out
of this office except on that one occasion?” asked the Secretary of
State for the second time.
“I will take my Bible oath on it,” exclaimed Wyndham solemnly.
The three men gazed at each other in silence, each busy with his
own thoughts. The Secretary of State was the first to recover
himself.
“Have you had your lunch, Wyndham?” he inquired.
The latter shook his head. “I’ve lost my appetite,” he growled.
The Secretary of State rose and placed his hand on the broad
shoulder of the younger man. “Don’t take it so much to heart,
Wyndham,” he said kindly. “We’ll get at the bottom of this tangle
before long. We’ll all stand by and help you, and, remember, Chief
Connor is a host in himself.”
“Thanks,” Wyndham straightened his bent shoulders; his face
was set and his eyes snapped as the spirit of the born fighter
returned. “I’ll move Heaven and earth until I catch that Spaniard.
Must you both be going?”
“Yes.” The Secretary of State answered for Douglas as well as for
himself. “We have detained you quite long enough. Let me know
immediately of any new developments.”
“I will. Mr. Hunter, it’s been a pleasure to meet you, although I
am afraid the information you have given me, considered with the
loss of the plans of the new battleships, complicates the situation.
Good-bye, come and see me again,” and the big door swung shut.
Halfway down the corridor the Secretary of State paused and
regarded Douglas seriously. “Talk of complicated situations——” he
passed his hand wearily over his forehead, then started with sudden
resolution. “Come on, Hunter, I’m going over to the White House; a
talk with the President may clear my brain. Wyndham may have lost
his appetite, but he’s given us food for thought.”
CHAPTER XI
OVER THE TEA CUPS
CYNTHIA turned a flushed and tear-stained face toward Eleanor, as
the latter entered the boudoir and approached her couch.
“Is it all over?” she asked, choking back a sob.
“Yes.” Eleanor lifted her black crêpe veil, and, pulling out the
hatpins, removed her hat and handed it to Annette, who had
followed her into the room. “Take my coat, too, Annette,” she
directed, “then you need not wait.” As the servant left the room she
pulled a low rocking-chair up to the couch on which Cynthia was
lying, and placed her hand gently on the weeping girl’s shoulder.
“Are you feeling better, dear?”
“A little better.” Cynthia wiped her eyes with a dry handkerchief
which Annette had placed on her couch some moments before. “Oh,
Eleanor, I am so bitterly ashamed of the scene I made downstairs.”
“You need not be.” Eleanor stroked the curly, fair hair back from
Cynthia’s hot forehead with loving fingers. “It was a very painful
scene, and Dr. Wallace’s tribute to Senator Carew, while beautiful,
was harrowing. I am not surprised you fainted, dear.”
“Aunt Charlotte didn’t, and she was so devoted to Uncle James.”
“Mrs. Winthrop had not been through your terrible experiences of
Monday night. Consequently, she had the strength to bear to-day’s
ordeal with outward composure.”
“Was it very dreadful at the cemetery?”
“No, dear. The services at the grave were very simple, and, as
the funeral was private, it attracted no morbid spectators.”
“Did anyone accompany you?”
“Just the handful of people who were here for the house
services.”
“Where is Aunt Charlotte?”
“She went to her room to lie down.”
Cynthia raised herself on her elbow and glanced searchingly
about the pretty sitting-room filled with its bird’s-eye maple
furniture. The yellow wallpaper, with its wide border of pink roses,
chintz curtains and hangings, cast a soft yellow glow, which was
exceedingly becoming, as well as restful to the eye. The afternoon
sunshine came through the long French windows which overlooked a
broad alley.
“Eleanor, would you mind closing the door of my bedroom,” she
asked, “and please first see that—that Blanche isn’t sitting there
sewing.”
Eleanor glanced curiously at Cynthia as she rose, crossed to the
adjoining bedroom, and softly closed the door. “There is no one in
your room,” she reported, on her return to her rocking-chair.
Cynthia settled back among her pillows with an air of satisfaction.
“At last I have you to myself. First the trained nurse, whom I didn’t
need, and then Aunt Charlotte, have always been hanging around,
and I haven’t had a chance to ask you any questions.”
“What is it you wish to know?”
“Was there—was there—an autopsy?” Noting Eleanor’s
expression, she exclaimed hastily: “Now, Eleanor dear, don’t say I
must not talk of Uncle James’ death. The nurse wouldn’t answer me
when I spoke on the subject; said I must not think of the tragedy,
that it was bad for me. Such nonsense! I would have asked Aunt
Charlotte, but she’s been so queer lately, not in the least like her
own dear self.”
“Mrs. Winthrop is living under such great strain these days,
Cynthia, it’s not surprising. Her brother dead—Philip very ill——”
“They told me he was better,” hastily jerked out Cynthia, with a
startled look in her big, brown eyes.
“He is, now,” Eleanor hesitated. “The doctor at first thought he
might develop brain fever, but I am told all danger of that is past.”
“What is the matter with him?” persisted Cynthia. “I asked the
nurse what the trouble was, but she never told me. Was his attack
also caused by the shock of Uncle James’ death?”
“Yes, from shock,” answered Eleanor, mechanically. “You must
not blame your aunt if her manner is distrait; she is a very reserved
woman and dreads, above all things, letting herself go and breaking
down.”
“Oh, I hope she will keep well, she has been so unhappy. I can’t
bear to think of her suffering more, but,” she laid her hand
pleadingly on Eleanor’s arm, “you haven’t answered my question
about the autopsy.”
“Yes, they held one.”
“And what was discovered?” eagerly.
“That Senator Carew was perfectly well physically, and that his
death was caused by a stab from the sharp-pointed letter file.”
Cynthia suddenly covered her eyes with her hand, and lay for
some minutes without speaking. “Is Hamilton still in jail?” she
questioned finally.
“Yes, he is being held for the inquest.”
“Inquest?” Cynthia glanced up, startled. “I thought the inquest
was over.”
“No, it hasn’t been held yet.”
“But Uncle James was buried to-day.”
“The funeral could not be postponed, Cynthia. The doctors who
performed the autopsy will testify at the inquest.”
“But I thought it was always necessary to hold the inquest after a
violent death.”
“It is usually, but in this case the inquest was postponed because
you and Philip, two of the most important witnesses, were too ill to
attend it.”
Cynthia closed and unclosed her tapering fingers over her
handkerchief spasmodically. “Are the detectives still hanging around
the house?” she inquired.
“Yes.”
“It’s shameful!” announced Cynthia, sitting upright, “to allow
those men to intrude on our grief and privacy. They have arrested
Hamilton for the crime, and should leave us alone.”
“They do not think Hamilton guilty.”
“Whom—whom—do they suspect?” The question seemed forced
from her.
“Mr. Brett hasn’t confided in me.”
“Mr. Brett?”
“He’s the detective in charge of the case.”
“Oh, is he the tall, fine-looking man I saw talking to Joshua in the
hall yesterday morning?”
“No, that was probably Douglas Hunter.”
“Douglas Hunter? Not the Douglas Hunter of the Diplomatic
Corps, whom Uncle James was forever talking about?”
“The same. Do you know him?”
“No, he has always been absent from Washington when I’ve
been in the city. What is he doing here now?”
“Trying to help Mr. Brett solve the mystery of Senator Carew’s
death.”
“Good Heavens! What earthly business is it of his?”
“Don’t ask me,” Eleanor’s usually tranquil voice was a trifle sharp.
“I suppose he is hoping to win the reward offered by Mrs. Winthrop.”
“Reward?” Cynthia’s voice rose, and drowned the sound of a faint
knock at the hall door.
“Yes. Your aunt announced that she would give five thousand
dollars to anyone who could solve the mystery.” Cynthia was
listening with absorbed attention to Eleanor, and neither noticed that
the hall door was pushed open a few inches, then softly closed.
“Uncle Dana told her that was too much to offer, and she reduced
the sum to one thousand dollars, with the proviso that it should be
increased if the first offer brought no result.”
Cynthia sighed deeply. “Why, why did she do it?” she cried
passionately. “She must be mad!”
Eleanor glanced at her companion in astonishment. “Cynthia, you
must not excite yourself,” she remonstrated firmly. “Otherwise, I
shall leave you.”
Cynthia reached out and clutched her arm. “Don’t go,” she
entreated. “I must——” her words were interrupted by a sharp rap
on the hall door. “Come in.”
In response Annette opened the door. “Pardon, Mademoiselle,
but it is five o’clock, and I thought you might like your tea up here
instead of downstairs.”
“Capital, Annette,” exclaimed Eleanor, as the maid entered
carrying a tray. “Wait a moment, and I will get that small table.”
Deftly she removed the books and magazines, and then carried the
table over to the couch. Annette put a tray laden with tempting
sandwiches, small cakes, the teapot and its accessories, on the
table, then bent over and arranged Cynthia’s pillows at her back with
practiced hand.
“Mademoiselle is more comfortable, n’est-ce pas?” she asked
briskly.
“Yes, indeed, Annette,” Cynthia nodded gratefully at the
Frenchwoman.
“Have you everything you wish, Mademoiselle Eleanor?”
“Yes, Annette, thank you. If I want anything more I will ring.”
“Be sure and close the door, Annette,” directed Cynthia, “I am
afraid of a draft”; and she looked around until she saw her order
obeyed.
“Have a sandwich?” asked Eleanor, handing the dish and a plate
to Cynthia.
“I’d rather eat good sandwiches than solid food,” announced
Cynthia, after a pause, helping herself to another portion.
“Solid?” echoed Eleanor. “I call pâté de foie gras and deviled ham
pretty solid eating, Cynthia; especially when taken in bulk,” glancing
quizzically at the rapidly diminishing pile.
“Don’t begrudge me these crumbs.” Cynthia’s smile was followed
by a sigh. “I’ve lived on slops for three days. Why are you giving me
such weak tea, Eleanor? I loathe it made that way.”
“I am afraid to make it stronger, Cynthia, it will keep you awake.”
“I don’t want to sleep; I’d give anything not to sleep!”
“Why, Cynthia!”
“If I could really sleep—drop into oblivion—I would like it, but
instead I dream, and, oh, God! I fear my dream.”
Eleanor laid a restraining hand on her shoulder. “Lie down,” she
commanded, “and compose yourself.”
Cynthia lay back on her pillows, panting a little from her exertion,
the color coming and going in her winsome face.
“I would give anything, Eleanor, if I had your tranquil disposition,”
she said, more quietly. “I cannot help my temperament. My mother
was Scotch to the fingertips, and, I have been told, had the gift of
second-sight—although I sometimes doubt if such a thing is a gift.”
“Perhaps I can understand better than you think,” said Eleanor
gently. “My mother was Irish, and the Irish, you know, are just as
great believers in the supernatural as the Scotch.”
“You always understand,” Cynthia bent forward and kissed her
friend warmly. “That’s why you are such a comfort. Let me tell you
why I am so nervous and unstrung. Since a little child I have been
obsessed by one dream, it is always the same, and always precedes
disaster.” She sighed, drearily. “I had it just before my grandmother’s
death; then before my uncle, Mr. Winthrop, killed himself; and on
Sunday night I had it again.” She shuddered as she spoke.
“What is your dream?”
“It is this way: I may be sleeping soundly, when suddenly I see a
door—a door which stands out vividly in a shadowy space, which
might be a room, or hallway—the door is white and the panels are in
the shape of a cross, so”—illustrating her meaning with her arms—“I
hear a cry—the cry of a soul in torment—I rush to the rescue,
always to find the door locked, and wake myself beating on the
empty air”—she shuddered as she spoke, and drew her kimono
closer about her. “I awake cold and trembling from head to foot.”
“You poor darling,” Eleanor took the limp form in her arms with a
gesture of infinite understanding and compassion.
“I had the dream Sunday night,” sobbed Cynthia, “then Monday,
when I thought we could announce our engagement——”
“Whose engagement?” asked a quiet voice behind the pair.
Startled, Eleanor wheeled around to find Mrs. Winthrop standing
behind her, as Cynthia slipped from her arms and buried her head in
the friendly cushions, her slender form shaking with convulsive sobs.
CHAPTER XII
A COUNCIL OF WAR
PHILIP WINTHROP moved restlessly in bed, then lay still, for a
feeling of deadly nausea almost overcame him. Half an hour
passed, and, feeling better, he raised his hand and felt his throbbing
temples. Wearily he tried to collect his ideas, but all appeared
confused.
What was it that he had promised? Slowly his torpid conscience
awoke. “For value received”—the phrase held a double meaning
which penetrated even his dulled senses. He could not afford to lie
there like a bump on a log any longer. He opened his eyes;
apparently it was late, for the room was in total darkness, save for a
streak of light which came from the half-open hall door.
With an effort Philip raised himself on his elbow and glanced
about him, but even that slight exertion was too much in his
weakened state, and, with a groan, he slid back on the pillows. For
some seconds he lay without moving, but the yellow patch of light
troubled him, and he rolled over on his side facing the wall. He
struggled apathetically to piece together the occurrences of the past
few days. Suddenly he caught the sound of a light step and the
swish of skirts approaching his bed.
The next instant a glass was thrust under his nose and placed
gently against his mouth. He raised his hand and pushed the glass
away from him. “G’way,” he stammered faintly; “leave me ’lone.”
Apparently no attention was paid to his request, for the glass was
again placed at his lips. Again he tried to thrust it from him, but his
feeble efforts made no impression against the strong wrist. His
resistance only lasted a few minutes, then his weaker will
surrendered to the stronger, and he sipped the medicine obediently,
after which the glass was withdrawn.
Downstairs in the library three men sat smoking around the large
desk table.
“I am glad you could join us to-night, Colonel Thornton,” said
Brett, as he placed one of the ashtrays conveniently near the lawyer.
“Three heads are better than one, and it is time we got together and
discussed certain features of this case.”
“Quite right, it will help us to a clearer understanding,” agreed
the Colonel.
“Then suppose, Mr. Hunter, that you first tell us any theories
which you may have formed.”
Douglas dropped the paper-cutter he was balancing in his hand,
and, leaning on the table, looked seriously at his companions. “I
think,” he said deliberately, “that Philip Winthrop has a guilty
knowledge of Senator Carew’s death, if he is not the actual
murderer.”
“Your reasons,” demanded Colonel Thornton.
“There was bad blood between them, that has been proved,”
Douglas picked his words with care. “Possibly the quarrel was
brought about because Senator Carew had found out something
discreditable in Philip Winthrop’s past. He had a responsible position
as the Senator’s private secretary, and there is a chance he betrayed
his trust.”
“In what way?” asked Brett eagerly.
“It may be that he is in the pay of some lobby anxious to
influence important legislation.” Douglas, mindful of the Secretary of
State’s caution, was feeling his way with care.
“Senator Carew was the last man to be influenced by such a
character as Philip Winthrop,” said Thornton contemptuously.
“He may not have tried to do so, but simply have betrayed
valuable information of committee plans and caucus.”
“That may be,” acknowledged Thornton, “particularly as I am told
that Philip has been spending a great deal of money lately; far more
than his salary would warrant.”
“‘Value received.’” Douglas shrugged his shoulders expressively.
“I have also found out that Hamilton, the coachman, is a Jamaican
negro, his real name being Samuel Hamilton Quesada, and that he
was brought here nearly two years ago by young Winthrop when he
returned from a visit to Jamaica. The Senator took him into his
employ at the former’s request and recommendation.”
“And your theory is?” questioned Brett sharply, laying down his
cigar.
“That Winthrop either bribed Hamilton to kill Senator Carew, or
to help him after he, Winthrop, had committed the murder. You must
remember,” he added hastily, as Brett started to speak, “the
Jamaican negro has a revengeful disposition when roused, and I
have no doubt Senator Carew gave him merry hell when he
discharged him Monday afternoon, and Hamilton was ready to risk
everything to get even.”
Brett shook his head. “How did Senator Carew get into that
carriage?” he asked doubtfully.
“Hamilton probably lied when he said he did not first stop at this
house on his way to the ball to bring Miss Carew home. Or perhaps
Winthrop came into this room, found Senator Carew busy writing,
stole up behind him, seized the letter file and stabbed him with it.”
Again Brett shook his head. “If that had been the case, the
Senator would have been stabbed in the back; whereas he was
stabbed directly over the heart, and whoever committed the crime
was facing him.”
“Well, that is not impossible,” argued Douglas. “Winthrop may
have stood near the Senator’s chair and talked to him for a few
minutes without the latter suspecting danger, may have even picked
up the letter file, a harmless thing to do under ordinary
circumstances, and, without warning, thrust it into the Senator’s
chest.”
“And afterward?” questioned Brett.
“Afterward—Winthrop may have stepped into the hall, found no
one there, tiptoed into the room again, telephoned”—pointing to the
desk instrument—“out to the stable and told Hamilton to drive at
once to the front door. The sound of the horses’ hoofs was probably
drowned by the heavy rain, so no one in the house would have
heard the carriage enter the porte-cochère, but”—impressively
—“Winthrop, from this window, could see its arrival. He probably
stepped into the hall again, found the coast clear, opened the front
door, dashed back, picked up Senator Carew, who was much smaller
than he, carried him out and placed him inside the carriage.
Hamilton had been drinking, and was perhaps too befogged to
notice anything unusual, and, when Winthrop slammed the carriage
door, he probably drove off none the wiser.”
“As much as I dislike Philip Winthrop I do not think him capable
of committing murder,” said Colonel Thornton, slowly. “Secondly, I
believe, no matter how secretly you think the murder was planned,
that, if Philip were guilty, Mrs. Winthrop would have some inkling of
it, and if their quarrel was so serious she would have known it, and
would naturally try to hush matters up. Instead of which, she is the
first to offer a reward, a large reward, mind you. It is not within
reason that she would have done such a thing had she the faintest
idea that Philip was the murderer.”
“I beg your pardon, Philip is not her son. There may be no love
lost between them.”
“Good God! what a suggestion. You don’t mean to insinuate that
she offered that reward knowing her stepson might be guilty.”
Thornton looked at Douglas with sudden horror.
For reply Douglas nodded quietly.
“No, no, Douglas, you are shinning up the wrong tree. I have
known Mrs. Winthrop for over fifteen years; she wouldn’t injure a fly,
let alone try to trap one whom she loves as her own flesh and blood.
She was devoted to her husband, and for his sake legally adopted
Philip and brought him up as her own son; in fact, she was entirely
too indulgent and generous, which has proved his downfall. He
hates work like a nigger.”
“Mr. Hunter has drawn a strong case against Philip Winthrop,
except for one serious flaw,” broke in Brett, who had been a silent
listener to their argument. “And that is that Philip Winthrop was at
the Alibi Club on Monday evening. A number of reputable men are
willing to swear to that. It is certain that he could not have been in
two places at once. Secondly, Mrs. Winthrop swears that her brother
spent Monday evening away from this house.” Brett leaned forward
and spoke impressively, “Senator Carew was killed by another hand
than Philip Winthrop’s.”
“By whose hand?” asked Thornton and Douglas simultaneously.
“Captain Frederick Lane.”
“Fred Lane, of the Engineer Corps?” ejaculated Thornton, much
astonished, while Douglas looked as blank as he felt.
“Yes, sir.”
“Bah! you’re mad.”
“Just a moment,” Brett held up a protesting hand. “Don’t
condemn my theory unheard. I seemed up against a blank wall in
this house, so to-day I started an investigation at the other end; that
is, at the residence of Mr. and Mrs. James Owen, where Miss Cynthia
Carew attended a dance on Monday night.”
“Go on,” urged Douglas, as Brett stopped and glanced behind
him to see that the hall door was closed.
“I called on Mrs. Owen. She was not inclined to be
communicative, but her daughter, Miss Alice Owen, who came in
during our interview, let the cat out of the bag, and Mrs. Owen had
to tell then what she knew, which was this: that Captain Lane and
Miss Carew were engaged——” a muttered word escaped Colonel
Thornton, and Brett turned to him instantly, “I beg pardon, did you
speak?”
“No,” growled the Colonel.
“Apparently they had planned to announce the engagement at
the dance,” resumed Brett. “Anyway, Miss Owen, who already knew
of it, was told by Miss Carew that her uncle, the Senator, refused to
give his consent, and had threatened to turn her out of doors if she
did not instantly break the engagement.”
“Poor Cynthia, poor little girl,” murmured Thornton, “I am very
fond of her, and her father was my most intimate friend. It was
beastly of Carew to issue such an ultimatum. She is entirely
dependent upon him.”
“So Miss Owen thought. Miss Carew confided her troubles to her
on her arrival. Miss Owen said that while they were sitting in the
library Captain Lane came in looking very dejected, and she
immediately got up to leave the lovers together. Before leaving the
room, however, she overheard Lane tell Miss Carew that he had just
seen her uncle, hoping to persuade him to reconsider his refusal, but
that he flatly refused to do so in the most insulting terms.”
“Upon my word, for a mild-tempered man, Carew managed to
have plenty of quarrels on his hands on Monday,” exclaimed
Thornton.
“And the last one undoubtedly brought about his death”; Brett
spoke so positively that Douglas hitched his chair nearer in his
excitement. “After I had finished my interview with Mrs. Owen I
asked permission to question her servants. The footman told me
that Miss Carew left the dance earlier than the other guests, and
that she had to wait a long time for her carriage. He said he called
her carriage check number repeatedly, and with no result. That
Captain Lane, becoming impatient, put on his overcoat and hat and
walked down the street searching for Miss Carew’s carriage.”
“And you think?” broke in Douglas.
“That Captain Lane not only found the carriage but the Senator
sitting in it, and seized the opportunity to punish him for his deviltry
to the girl he loved.”
A long pause followed as Colonel Thornton and Douglas sat
thinking over Brett’s startling news.
“Where did he get the weapon?” inquired Douglas finally.
“Out of Mrs. Owen’s library, of course. He may have picked it up
in a fit of absent-mindedness and carried it with him.”
“Did the footman or butler notice anything in his hand when he
left the house?” questioned Thornton.
“I asked them, and they declared that he carried an umbrella in
his left hand, and that they had not noticed whether he was holding
anything in his right hand or not. The footman declared that it was
raining so hard that it was impossible to see anything clearly. They
both said Captain Lane was some fifteen minutes returning to the
house.”
“Did he find the carriage?”
“He told the footman that he hadn’t, and ordered him to keep
calling the number, which he did, and soon after the carriage drove
up.”
“Of all the cold-blooded propositions!” ejaculated Douglas. “Do
you honestly mean that you think Lane deliberately put the girl he
loved into the carriage to sit beside the man he had just murdered?”
“I do,” firmly, “and I stake my reputation as a detective that
Captain Lane is guilty. You were with me, Mr. Hunter, when I
overheard Miss Carew exclaim, as Miss Thornton entered her
bedroom on Tuesday—‘They quarreled, Eleanor, they quarreled.’”
“She may not have been alluding to Captain Lane,” declared
Douglas stoutly; “she may have referred to Philip Winthrop. He also
quarreled with Senator Carew.”
“Philip is very much in love with Cynthia and wishes to marry
her,” volunteered Thornton quietly.
“Is that why Senator Carew objected to her engagement to
Captain Lane?” asked Brett. “Did he wish her to marry Philip
Winthrop?”
“I never heard that he did”; Thornton paused and reflected a
moment. “I might as well tell you, for you will probably hear it from
some one else eventually, that there has been a feud of long
standing between the Lanes and Carews.”
Douglas whistled. “A Montague and Capulet affair?” he inquired.
“Exactly. Carew and old Governor Lane were political rivals. Lord!
how they hated each other! They almost tore Maryland asunder
when running for the governorship, which Lane won by a few votes.
Carew charged fraud, which, however, was never proved. They
cherished their animosity to the day of Governor Lane’s death, and I
can imagine it was a terrible shock to Carew to find that his dearly
loved niece wanted to marry the Governor’s son.”
“What sort of a fellow is Lane?” asked Douglas.
“A fine specimen of the American gentleman,” exclaimed
Thornton enthusiastically, “a soldier, every inch of him, brave to a
fault; he has twice been mentioned in orders for gallant conduct—
just the sort of a fellow a romantic young girl like Cynthia would fall
head over heels in love with.”
“In naming his virtues you have overlooked his greatest fault,”
said Brett calmly. “He has a fiendish temper, and, when provoked,
falls into the most insane rages, so his brother officers tell me.”
“You are making out a black case against him,” agreed Douglas,
“but there is one point you seem to have overlooked, and that is, did
the letter file used to kill Senator Carew belong to Mrs. Owen?”
“That is the one flaw in my case,” acknowledged Brett regretfully.
“She declines to answer the question.”
CHAPTER XIII
AT THE WHITE HOUSE
“THERE’S a note done cum fo’ yo’, suh,” announced the elevator
boy lounging in the doorway of the Albany as Douglas stepped
inside the entrance of the apartment hotel. “I’ll get it,” and visions of
a tip caused the mulatto to hasten his leisurely footsteps to the small
office to the left of the entrance. In a few seconds he was back at
the elevator shaft, where Douglas stood waiting, and handed him a
square envelope stamped with the words “State Department” in the
left-hand corner. “Wanter go to yer room, suh,” slipping the expected
coin in his trousers’ pocket.
“Yes.” The door slammed shut, and the elevator shot upward.
“Anyone been to see me or telephoned, Jonas?”
“No, suh.” The mulatto brought the cage to a standstill at the
third floor, and Douglas stepped out and hastened to his tiny
apartment. Throwing his hat and cane on the bed, he drew a chair
to the open window, having first made sure, with a caution which
had grown upon him, that the hall door was securely locked, and
that the chambermaid was not loitering in the vicinity. As he opened
the note an enclosure fell into his lap, and, without looking at it, he
perused the few written lines. It was from the Secretary of State.
Dear Mr. Hunter: [he read] So far, no further developments.
When people are at play they are usually “off guard.” I enclose an
invitation to the garden party at the White House this afternoon, for
which I asked. The Diplomatic Corps will attend in a body. I hope to
see you there.
Very truly yours——
Douglas picked up the enclosed envelope with the words “The
White House” stamped in small gold letters in the upper left-hand
corner, and pulled out the engraved card. The gold eagle crest at the
top of the invitation was almost stared out of countenance, so long
and so steadily did he regard it, as he slowly weighed in his mind
the events of the past three days.
If the desk file used to kill the Senator did belong to Mrs. Owen,
then Brett had woven strong circumstantial evidence around Captain
Lane. Was it possible that the young officer, incensed at Senator
Carew’s threat to turn his niece, Cynthia, out of doors, and goaded
past endurance by a possible tongue lashing at their last interview,
had seized the opportunity offered by chance and killed Carew, an
hereditary enemy? From time immemorial family feuds had, alas,
often led to murder.
If so, what, then, became of his own theory of an international
intrigue? Were Senator Carew’s interest in things Japanese, his
desire to see Douglas, the information gleaned by the latter in
Japan, the untimely death of the Senator, and last—the theft of the
plans of the new battleships—were these simply coincidences?
Douglas roused himself and glanced at the hour mentioned in the
invitation—five o’clock. Jerking out his watch he found he had but
half an hour in which to change his clothes before he was due at the
White House.
Shortly afterward Douglas walked through Lafayette Square on

his way to the eastern entrance of the White House. A long queue of
smart turnouts and motors stretched along Pennsylvania Avenue
from Seventeenth Street to Executive Avenue, as the short street
between the Treasury Department and the White House is called.
The policeman on special duty scrutinized his card of admission
carefully before allowing him to pass down the corridor and out into
the garden.
The President and his wife were receiving on the lawn under a
huge blossoming chestnut tree near the south portico. As Douglas
waited in line to approach the President, he glanced about him with
great interest. He had been to many brilliant functions in other
countries, but he decided in his own mind that he had seldom seen
a more beautiful setting for an entertainment than that afforded by
the stately mansion and its surrounding gardens. The lovely rolling
grounds, with their natural beauty, and the towering white shaft of
the Washington Monument in the background, made a picture not
easily forgotten.
The full dress uniforms of the military and naval aides on duty
added to the brilliancy of the scene. The Marine Band, their scarlet
coats making a vivid touch of color against the huge fountain with its
myriad sprays of water, were stationed on a raised platform far down
the lawn. The southern breeze carried the stirring airs they were
playing to Douglas’ ears and sent the hot blood dancing in his veins.
Or was it the sight of Eleanor Thornton, looking radiantly beautiful,
which set his heart throbbing in a most unusual manner? Some
telepathy seemed to tell her of his presence, for she looked around,
caught his eye, and bowed.
He had kept moving as the guests ahead of him advanced, and
the next moment he was being presented to the President by the
military aide stationed in attendance at the latter’s elbow. He had
but time to receive a hearty handshake and a cordial word of
welcome from the President and the “first lady of the land,” for the
other guests were waiting impatiently to greet them, and he could
not loiter.
“Douglas Hunter! as I’m a sinner!” A hearty slap on the shoulder
emphasized the words, and Douglas wheeled around and found
Captain Chisholm, of the British Royal Artillery, addressing him. “The
idea of your being here and not letting me know, old chap,” he
added reproachfully, as they shook hands.
“I didn’t know you were in town,” declared Douglas. “Thought
you were still in Paris.”
“I was transferred to the embassy in Washington three months
ago. Upon my word, Douglas, I took you for a ghost when I first saw
you. I was under the impression that you were stationed at Tokio.”
“So I am; I am only here on leave of absence.” The Englishman’s
eyebrows went up. “I had to attend to some Washington property,
which has been recently left me. This is my native heath, you know.”
“I wasn’t aware of it,” dryly; “but then, Douglas, you are
perpetually springing surprises, like your nation, on us benighted
foreigners.”
“Anything to drink around here?” inquired Douglas. “I am as
thirsty as a herring.”
“There is some excellent champagne punch, come along,” and
the tall Englishman led the way to a long table placed under the
trees near the tennis courts, where refreshments were being served.
They corraled a colored waiter, and soon were sipping iced punch as
they stood at some distance from the crowd about the table and
watched the animated scene.
“I didn’t want to come to Washington,” acknowledged Chisholm,
after a moment’s silence, “but now, I’d hate to leave it. The people
are delightful, and I have never met with such genuine hospitality.”
“You are right; Washington people never forget you. Go away for
ten years, and on your return you will be greeted just as warmly as
to-day.”
“Don’t talk of going away, I’ve only just come,” laughed
Chisholm. “’Pon my word, Douglas, this seems like old times. I can
almost imagine myself back in Paris, the chestnut trees in blossom,
which remind me of the Parc Monceau, help the illusion. And there’s
another illusion”—nodding his head toward Eleanor Thornton, who
stood at some distance talking to two staff officers—“or, I should
say, a delusion.” He smiled gayly, but there was no answering smile
on Douglas’ face. Not noticing his companion’s silence, the
Englishman added, “Is she still hunting around looking up old files
and records?”
Douglas started as if stung. “I don’t know,” shortly.
“A dangerous habit,” commented Chisholm calmly. “If Miss
Thornton had not left Paris and gone to Berlin when she did, her
interest in government affairs might have led to serious trouble—for
her.”
“Now, what the devil do you mean?” demanded Douglas hotly.
Chisholm turned and regarded him steadily for a second, then his
monocle slipped down and dangled from its silken cord. “There,
there,” he exclaimed soothingly. “Don’t get your rag up, I was only
spoofing.”
“You have very rudimentary ideas of humor,” growled Douglas,
still incensed. In his heart he knew the Englishman was right;
Eleanor Thornton was an enigma. Dare he penetrate the mystery, or
was he afraid to face the issue?
Chisholm laughed good-naturedly. “Miss Thornton is looking at
you, Douglas; don’t let me detain you. I’ll see you again before I
leave here.”
Douglas hesitated. “I’ll be back soon, Chisholm,” he said and
walked across the lawn to join Eleanor.
The Englishman looked after him with speculative eyes. “Still
touched in that quarter,” he muttered, twirling his blond mustache in
his fingers. “Too bad, Douglas is such a bully good chap, and she
——” he was not allowed to indulge in more reflections, as he was
seized upon by a bevy of pretty girls and forced to dance attendance
upon them for the remainder of the afternoon.
Recollections of his last interview with Eleanor troubled Douglas.
How would she greet him? His doubts were soon put at rest, for at
his approach Eleanor put out her hand and greeted him warmly. The
two staff officers, who were introduced to Douglas, saw they were
de trop, and, after a few minutes, made their excuses and departed.
“Will you have an ice or sandwich?” inquired Douglas.
“Neither, thanks; I have already been helped.”
“Then suppose we stroll down to the fountain. We can’t hear the
Marine Band with all this chatter,” and he glanced disgustedly at the
joyous crowd about them.
Eleanor laughed. “Don’t be hard on your fellow creatures, if you
are out of sorts.”
“What makes you think that?”
“You looked so cross when talking to Captain Chisholm. I am
sorry you found your topic of conversation so boring.”
“What do you mean?”
“You both glanced so frequently at me that I naturally concluded
I was under discussion.”
“On the contrary, we were discussing—masked batteries.” She
scanned him covertly, but could get no inkling of his thoughts from
his blank expression. “Captain Chisholm has a fatal habit of talking
shop whenever he gets a chance. Isn’t that Colonel Thornton
beckoning to us over there?”
“Why, so it is. Shall we walk over and join him?” She paused to
exchange a few words of greeting with several friends, then turned
back to Douglas smilingly: “Come,” and he suited his steps to hers as
they started across the lawn. “How long will you remain in
Washington, Mr. Hunter?”
“Until the sale of some property of mine is completed,” briefly. “I
asked for you this morning, Miss Thornton, thinking you might care
to go for a motor ride, but they told me that you were lying down
and could not be disturbed.”
“They? Who?” swiftly. “This is the first I have heard of your call.”
“Indeed? Why, I spoke to Annette when I reached the Carew
residence this morning.”

Instant Access To Architecture Design Data Practice Competency in The Era of Computation 1st Edition Phillip Bernstein Ebook Full Chapters

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Instant Access To Architecture Design Data Practice Competency in The Era of Computation 1st Edition Phillip Bernstein Ebook Full Chapters

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Instant Access To Architecture Design Data Practice Competency in The Era of Computation 1st Edition Phillip Bernstein Ebook Full Chapters

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Full download ebooks at ebookmeta.

Architecture Design Data Practice Competency in

Download more ebook from https://ebookmeta.com

Sublinear Computation Paradigm: Algorithmic Revolution

Dada Data: Contemporary Art Practice in the Era of

The Changing Shape of Architecture Further Cases of

Contemporary Museum Architecture and Design Theory and

Modern Data Architecture on Azure: Design Data-centric

Computation in Science Second Edition From concepts to

Theory and Practice of Computation Proceedings of the

Claude Nicolas Ledoux Architecture and Utopia in the

1 — introduction 1.1 A Systemic Transformation ���������������������������������������������������������������������� 12

2 — agency 2.1 The Digital Transformation of Design ������������������������������������������������������ 18

3 — methodology 3.1 Procedures, Process and Outcomes �������������������������������������������������������� 78

4 — value 4.1 Creating New Value through Design ������������������������������������������������������ 138

Making is a matter of feeling, not thinking: just do it. Does it break?

In their seminal exploration of the importance of technology, The Second

How does technology change architectural process by refac-

In the Renaissance, as now, new information technologies, instead of

At its core, architectural design is speculation. The architect, charged by a

1 Mario Carpo, The Second Digital Turn: Design Beyond Intelligence.

2.1.1 Robert Smythson, “A Rounde Window in a Rounde Wall” of 1599

Architectural design problems can also be referred to as being ”wick-

Before geometry-based computational simulations replaced human calcula-

Problem to be solved Example formula Note

Compute moment in a wl2

Flow resistance of air p

new digital platforms based on principles of computation are transforming

(Models, metadata, Simulation, analysis, Construction planning,

Reference data Project record External knowledge

Technology Category In the pre-digital age In the early era of CAD

Representation Hand drawing, typed text CAD drafting, word processing,

Realization Physical translation of construction Transfer of numerical control information

See also 2.1.6, p. 28

That same utility, the systematic organization and structure of the

70s 80s 90s 00s 10s 20s

Project Design Fast Track Design Build Integrated Design + Construction /

Evolution Building Information Modeling Connected Systems

O Owner A Architect C Constructor CM Construction D Designer B Builder

Representation Parametric models of geometry and Artificial intelligence-informed design

Realization Model-based simulation of construction Information originating from the design

Collaboration Web-based, social-media-enabled real-time Real-time interaction enhanced by virtual

See also 2.1.4, p. 24

such commoditized environments not unexpectedly create razor-thin profit

Design Services of the Architect and Engineer

‘Tame’ design challenges ‘Wicked’ design challenges

Computing areas Choosing a design strategy for the overall organization

Determining toilet capacities Making tradeoffs between ambiguous priorities

Coordination of structure and mechanical systems Managing client expectations

15 “IBM‘s Watson Supercomputer Destroys Humans in Jeopardy,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFR3lOm_xhE.

Defining Design ­Intent:

How does technology change reposition design information

The act of design itself forms a project, according to Alberti, “conceived in

imagination.”20 Further, once those repeated revisions and refinements were

23 Carpo, The Alphabet and the Algorithm.

century through a discipline called ‘computational’ or ‘generative’ design,

— Building information modeling as the primary representational platform

All technical submissions, which are (a) required by public authorities

The National Council of Architectural Registration Boards (NCARB), a con-

1 — introduction 1.1 A Systemic Transformation �� 12

2 — agency 2.1 The Digital Transformation of Design �� 18

3 — methodology 3.1 Procedures, Process and Outcomes �� 78

4 — value 4.1 Creating New Value through Design �� 138

O Owner A Architect C Constructor CM Construction D Designer B Builder

Defining Design Intent:

—  Building information modeling as the primary representational platform