There’s an interesting article on Slate by Witold Rybczynski which looks at how the use of computer design programs has affected the discipline of architects.
I remember, as an architecture student in the 1960s, painstakingly inking drawings, stenciling lettering, coloring prints with pastel pencils. These operations required a lot of preparation as well as time management, since you couldn’t just throw things together at the last minute. Discipline was also a hallmark of the École des Beaux-Arts, the Parisian architectural school that dominated teaching in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Given an architectural program for a building, the student was required to produce, quickly, a parti, or architectural concept. The rest of the time was spent refining—but not altering—the parti into a finished building design. In part, this was an exercise in developing the ability to quickly deduce the crux of a problem. It was also a recognition that stick-to-it-ness was essential in the lengthy process of architectural design, especially as the large, elaborate watercolor renderings required by the Beaux-Arts took weeks of meticulous work. . . .
The fierce productivity of the computer carries a price—more time at the keyboard, less time thinking.
