Theory of Scruffy Forms

By and large, the world out there is scruffy. By and large, the process of designing architecture is hazy, scruffy and full of hesitance, turn-arounds, to-and-fro confused thinking.

I would even dare correct the above. The above two observations are not seen just "by and large" But always!

As a theoretician in architectural representation and a software developer with the one of the oldest approach to BIM* (much as I disagree with the word) and as well as a practicing architect and an educator; I believe it is better to have theories that cater to the worst of the scenarios than the ideal.

The concept of the ideal originated from the Greeks. Plato was the first notable philosopher who stressed the concept of the ideal. He also was famous for developing the theory of forms.

Both these have had tremendous influence on how science and other forms of understanding of the world was shaped -- at least in the western world.

I did not come from a milieu of western philosophy. India is a smorgasbord (we would call it "bhel-puri" here) of all kinds of scruffiness. There are no clear blacks and whites. For long we have be taught to accept the haziness and confusions of the reality of the world around us

But this approach has not rippled across into architectural theory. Even in Indian architectural education tradtion; we still uses books by western authors. So the importance to deal with scruffiness has not sunk in.

The West is largely oblivious of the deeper philosophical influences of the East.

Eastern philosophy surely has not even got into computing in architecture. I think there hasn't been enough debate among architects on why the Buddha sits smiling between the the end-points of a line segment. Between A and NOT-A, the Buddha is merrily rejecting the law of the excluded middle; supposedly one of the cornerstones of Western philosophy.

India and other such countries do not believe in the purity of the integers nor the supposed irrationality of irrational numbers (a phrase that originated from the Greeks who thought such numbers were mad)

Today, architects everywhere are saddled with theories of mechanical engineering and works of software developers with mechanical engineering background.

They are ones who are telling us what building architecture is all about. I don't want to indulge in an unfair Ad-Hominem or strawman argument here but really, we all need to find why is that architectural theory and sensitivities are not consulted? And then go on deeply into this area.

I can understand that several centuries after the industrial revolution; the manufacturing industry is slick, with products that are always quite exact copies of what was designed. So when a mechanical engineer makes a car part, one can be sure that it would be the exactly the same car part that emerges even at the 50 millionth production of that part

Architectural design and "manufacturing" if I can call it that, is surely not an output of the mechanical engineering industrial complex.

Firstly, each piece of architecture is an invention. That means each architectural project is all alone, by itself. There would be never two copies of the exact same building. When constructed, there is no "ideal" building out there and nor a poorer version of an abstract ideal.

Even if some of the components of the buildings are made using an industrial manufacturing process; the architectural process can never generate the overall building in the same fashion as the way such components are manufactured.

The process for the parts cannot be the same for the process for the whole.

This is one important reason why I have always believed that BIM (Building Information Modeling) the way it is conventionally practiced today is quite flawed for the architectural process. It seems to be relevant for some kinds of the building construction process. Yes, only some of the constructions. Not all. Not even in Western countries

This is quite a harsh comment, I agree. But the harshness is unintentional. I wanted to convey bewilderment.

If you notice the harshness or the bewilderment, then kindly use the energy to debate this point rationally instead of emotionally.

I hope to draw to your attention about three facts: Computer Science is a very nascent field. Only around 70+ years of debates have happened between intellects in that field. Secondly, BIM the way it is conventionally thought to be, is just a flash in the pan. Thirdly, contrast all that with at least 100,000+ years of intellectual debate in the field of architecture. I doubt if all those debates have actually come into BIM

I strongly believe that Eastern philosophical underpinnings arches over the Grecian based Western philosophical approaches. So when I refer to Eastern philosophy, I also mean Western. But not the other way around. When Buddha sat smiling in-between the two end points of a line segment, he did not argue about the very end points. He included them too.

If you think that representation of the scruffiness of architecture is not practical, think again. Problems in many other fields which also showed scruffiness; such as weather prediction, handling turbulence and several others ... all have discovered saner solutions. They did not necessarily reject the scruffiness and haziness of those problems. On the contrary, the solutions became more realistic and useful when they embraced the chaotic in-betweens.

The connection of BIM with Plato's theory of forms can easily be established. Take Revit's concept of "family" -- when we use Revit, we all need to acknowledge that there is that "ideal" form of something out there; and what we are placing into our design is one version of that. If that is not Plato, shoot me.

Such approaches in conventional BIM has not accepted the gentle and age old traditions of an illiterate Rajasthani stone craftsman who lovingly carves out one unique column after another. None of them are shadows of some "ideal" column playing on the cave wall of the designer. And ironically, all of them are ideals too simply because each of them have no other comparison.

There have to be much more nuanced debates in this area of computing in architecture. We do need a theory of scruffy forms, rather than ideal forms.

Today BIM is behaving like those car designers who are bemoaning that for life to improve; first the roads have to be neat and clean without potholes; and that pedestrians should behave themselves and modestly step out of the way when a car zooms along. Really? Which ideal world are we in?

In fact, some of the BIM consultants and afficionados are even throwing tantrums for this to happen!

*My own approach to BIM is here: www.teamtad.com It is one of the oldest software in this area and used for real scruffy projects in India. It is free; and possibly one of these days I would stop referring to it as BIM -- as it really does not work like conventional BIM that architects today are used to