The Disruptors
Technology-Driven Architect-Entrepreneurs
Architectural Design
1. Edition March 2020
144 Pages, Softcover
Wiley & Sons Ltd
Technology-driven disruption and entrepreneurial response have become profound drivers of change in modern culture. Wholly new organisations have rapidly emerged in many fields including retail, print media and transportation, often dramatically altering both the products and processes that define these industries. Architecture has until now been minimally impacted by this technologically driven upheaval. But there are many signs that this period of tranquillity is ending. Startups are proliferating, targeting diverse innovations from environmental performance to large-scale 3D printing. Traditional architecture and engineering firms are creating incubators and spin-offs to capitalise on their innovations. Large and innovative organisations from outside the professions are becoming interested in the built environment as the next platform for technological and economic disruption.
These new directions for the discipline will potentially create radically new types of practice, new building typologies, and new ways for both design professionals and societies to engage with the built environment. It is crucial that architectural discourse addresses these possibilities, and begins to embrace technology-driven entrepreneurship as a central theme for the future of architectural practice.
Contributors: Sandeep Ahuja, Ben van Berkel, Phil Bernstein, Helen Castle, James Cramer and Scott Simpson, Craig Curtis, David Fano and Daniel Davis, Greg Lynn, Jessica Rosenkrantz and Jesse Louis-Rosenberg, Brad Samuels, Marc Simmons, Jared Della Valle, and Philip F Yuan and Chao Yan.
Featured architects: Archi-Union, Ayre Chamberlain Gaunt, Bryden Wood, Gehry Partners, Front, Greg Lynn FORM, Millar Howard Workshop, Nervous System, SITU, and UNStudio.
Introduction Entrepreneurial Practice: New Possibilities for a Reconfi guring Profession
Early Pioneers
Technology and Disruption
Tech-Enabled Architect-Entrepreneurs
Disruption and the Reassertion of Architecture
Notes
Empowering Design: Gehry Partners, Gehry Technologies, and Architect- Led Industry Change
Building the Master Model
Creating a Think-Tank
Expanding the Mission
The Evolution of a Specialised Practice: Consulting and Contracting in the Integrated Envelope Deliv
Crossing Over Into Contracting
And Pulling Back
Opportunities, Capabilities and Values
New Modelsof Building: The Business of Technology
A New Model, a New Business
What Really Matters
Getting Paid
Notes
Disrupting fromthe Inside: UK Archipreneurs
A High-Tech Lineage of Entrepreneurism
Embracing Internal Change
Notes
Is Bigger Better?: The Rise of Specialisation in Professional Practice
New Competitive Shifts and Vertical Integration
Specialisation in Large Firm Practice
Small-Firm Impact
The Future of Specialisation
Design, Dataand Liveability: The Role of Technology Within the Future of an Expanded Profession
Entrepreneurialism: Organisation and Leadership
Integrating Technology: Living Laboratories
Developing New Technologies on the Product Scale
Futurism and the Futureof Architecture
Mind the Gap: Architecture and the Absurdity of Self-Imposed Limitation
One Model
Shifting Definitions
Structural Obstacles
Cautionary Tales
A Provocation
Notes
Collaborative Networks of Robotic Construction
REDEFINING THE ARCHITECT AS MASTER BUILDER
TOOLKITS: MACHINE, SOFTWARE, CRAFT
COLLABORATIVE PLATFORM
PLURAL SUBJECTS IN DESIGN/ CONSTRUCTION PRACTICE
Notes
The Distractionsof Disruptions: Technical Supply inan Era of Social Demand
Adventures in Disruption
Testing the Limits of the Design Business Model
Directions of Disruption
Turning the Direction of Practice
Notes
Better Development: AlternativeValue Creation
Team and Project Organisation
Firm Composition
Building Community
Scaling to Change
Architectureat Scale: Reimagining One-Off Projects as Building Platforms
Embracing Technology
Vertical Integration
Productised Design
Integrated Design
Notes
Automation andMachine Learningin Architecture: A New Agenda for Performance-Driven Design
PLUGGING THE GAPS
UNIFIED MACHINE LEARNING
Anti-Entrepreneurs: Using Computation to Unscale Production
Beginnings
Generative Jigsaw Puzzles: Computation + Craft
Kinematics Dress: Computation + Customisation
Bio-printing Organs: Computation + Interdisciplinarity
Computation + Unscaling
Architects =Innovators(sometimes)Innovators <>Entrepreneurs(most of the time)
Structuring the Innovation Process
New Mediums
New Materials
New Scope
Innovator or Entrepreneur?
From Another Perspective: On Refl ection:Beautifully Disrupted Architectural Art
Aesthetic Encounters in the Contemporary City
Psychic Mobility and Mirrors
Notes
Contributors
