Keeping Up

Design is a fast moving and fast changing activity in contemporary culture. So much so that designers who want to survive let alone staying at the top of their profession must reinvent themselves again and again and again. And to stay ahead of the curve, designers need not only keep up with fashion but make fashion which means to continually devise creative strategies and tactics to vary design production. For example, it's been said that Gehry, the architect, is regularly questioning himself: 'Am I repeating myself' (talk of the "Bilbao Guggenheim effect" is said to make the architect uncomfortable). In such competitive environments ideation is key, that is, it is not enough for designers to produce fabulous ideas but also to communicate them as realisable. To make ideas happen, then, it is increasingly important for designers to be able to translate their initial ideas, from traditional 2D drawings and sketch models to data (digital files) which can be fed into the Building Information Model, BIM (a 3-D, object-oriented, CAD approach for architects and engineers, which can store complete information about a building in a digital format). Indeed today's design process is a "supply chain" of data, from first thoughts to final product/building, including costs, scheduling and maintenance.