Digital Design: 21th eCAADe Conference Proceedings

Digital Design is not only the title of the 21st eCAADe conference 2003 in Graz but also one of the main keywords in Architectural Education nowadays. Information Technology has managed to influence all fields of the “architectural process” and has developed straight from the calculation tools of the engineers over the CAD drafting boards of big architectural firms to every architectural professional and student. This process was incredibly quick in terms of the architectural chronology but very slow in terms of architectural education at universities (at least in Austria). Not very long ago it was sometimes forbidden to deliver CAD drawings for design projects at our faculty. In fact, the early experiments in using the computer in the design process quite often failed because of the restrictions of the available (and affordable) hard-and software. Today, even our first year students start some of their earliest design experiences quite naturally with the computer. However, there are still many questions to be answered and maybe some new questions to be asked in the relationship between architectural design and the computer. Architectural design is mainly a “game of imagination” and today computer tools start to enhance and support the architects visions after a longer period where they were often reduced by the limitations of the tools. Still, there are many different ways to design because every designer has a different approach towards architectural design and there is no such thing as “the perfect digital design tool” for everyone. We hope that this conference with all the different approaches documented in this book plays a major role in the discussion and development of all these aspects and brings us “one step further”