I’ve been reading up on the effects of CAD– and more specifically, the abandonment of drawing in architectural education– on architectural thinking and practice. It’s a great example of how reconfiguring a professional’s extended mind by substituting one set of technologies for another– in this case, switching lead and vellum for mouse and screen– affects the skills those professionals develop and deploy.

I’ve written before about architecture and drawing, particularly Witold Rybczynski’s reflections on the subject, but I wanted to mark this excellent discussion on Glass House Conversations, which asks

Can we see the effect of CAD yet in contemporary buildings? Other than the obvious and largely well-received example of Frank Gehry, what architecture can we point to as evidence of the positives? What are the hidden costs of designing by keyboard rather than drafting? Since there’s no going back, why should we care?

This last line is actually pretty significant, because in all the stuff I’ve read, nobody is arguing for abandoning computers: they’re just too deeply woven into architectural practice to consider doing without. The question is whether there are skills that used to be developed through drawing, or working at a slower pace, that can be recovered– either through better technology, or by altering professional training and practice.

This essay by James Wines (h/t Fred Scharmen) is also good.