Interesting content!

thanks for sharing.

You can quickly tell the author of the NYT article has a conservative bias with things like:

"...to declare the death of drawing. What has happened ... The computer, of course."

and

"... I notice that something is lost when they draw only on the computer."

I guess he means 2d freehand sketching vs popular 3d modeling software, but he doesn't say that. It's always "drawing" vs "the computer".

Wouldn't someone be "drawing" if he uses a digital sylus to freehand sketch if Photoshop. You are moving a cylinder shaped pointing device on a flat surface, if you are using good hardware it has many more advantages that pencil and paper.

I like one of his last arguments:

"To pass the time, I pulled out my pad to start drawing a plan, probably of some building I was designing. An equally bored colleague was watching me, amused. I came to a point of indecision and passed the pad to him. He added a few lines and passed it back.       

The game was on. Back and forth we went, drawing five lines each, then four and so on."

Now, thanks to computers, someone can pull out his electronic pad, start drawing, and share it as a digital drawing board with another friend hundreds of kilometers away, and both be able to sketch on it at the same time.

Really nice post. I'm one of that guys that thinks that tools are always useful, no matter the nature or the purpose which they were created for. In the mix is the perfect balance for me.

I've always thought that architect's love for drawing comes from the necessity of translate abstract ideas into built 3D reality, and the technology behind that 2D representation has not evolve so much until some decades ago. Our teachers come from that times: times when computers try to find their place in the reality representation world. If you try to imagine that people that have always drawn with pencils adapting to this new tools...some become fan of new methods, other just keep the old fashion workflow (like Andrew said in the article, Schumacher VS Graves)

We've bear (at least Andrew and me :P) in 80's with first video games, computers (I still remember my old x286 with 1Mb RAM and 20Mb of HD and that MS-DOS interface)...New technology was natural for us...But there is a big difference between traditional drawing and new computer aided tools: the learning curve. To draw you only need to take a pen and put over a paper (that interface is understood by children easily) , but traditional computational tools (new touch interfaces are out of this group) are based in a complex logic and environment that is not easy to understand for some people.

In the workshops I'm teaching in, I try to put all that tools (new and old one) in my students hands and motivate them to mix and use them together (Andrew knows a little bit about that :P). Why not to make a lines sketch with GH and then print it and render with some markers?; the last step could be scan the result and enhance it in Photoshop adding textures, vegetation, some background...There are no rules, only a bunch of tools to explore and use to develop your ideas, evolve and finally represent them. 

I bet to the touch interfaces (with some augmented reality sauce) like that one that will be able to blend both worlds, analog and digital, offering that fluidity and natural interaction that Grave miss in digital tools. And our generation attached to this "not natural" interfaces will need to change its mind and adapt to that new and amazing interface that our children will love. 

Only to complete:

<iframe width="200" height="112" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/aXV-yaFmQNk" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

The video (I can't edit the post) ---> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXV-yaFmQNk

some thoughts!

i don’t know about michael graves works, but since most of postmodern architects, like michael graves, whose impact is founded, that they questioning the dictates of modernity and thus the compulsion to constantly new, and instead their focus directed on the important achieved historical values. by the inflationary or use empty content, unfortunately this movement has lost its significance.

but not the original idea of the postmodern movement. she is still more relevant than ever. for example, the Spanish people should be able to understand that (:-)), where her society has also great difficulties, while the market always bring new strategies to driven the society before.

if we talk here about compeuter, then it should also be mentioned, how the banks conduct their business with sophisticated algorithms, in which the focus is not aimed at the growth of folk economies, but rather the dividend of shareholders.

therefore, should be much more radical asked: what value should have the computer technology for a society (see Lars Spuybroek: The Sympathy of Things), and mental effort to be accomplished, to free us from the dictates of avantgarde-postwar era.

patrik schumacher is a good example. his book the autopoiesis of architecture, he sees it as a manifesto of the younger avantgarde architectural movement, what patrik schumacher called parametrizismus. in the tradition of the modern avantgarde architecture, he see in the parametrizismus a new international style of contemporary architecture. consequently, patrik schumacher sees into the work of zaha hadid architects the principle of formal innovation as a key feature of their efforts, without the notion of the avantgarde recharge with any ideological conceptions or value, apply here only the “new” as the most important, and ultimately most consume charming and thus profitable value.

not to mention, that patrik schumacher appropriates the system theory of niklas luhmann, which is known precisely, that it is anti-humanist and anti-regionalist.

again, spain's problems can only be solved, even though that Spain is attributed a political space. This will only happen, if it is awarded a european political space, so that the individual states can not be pitted against each other. to come back to the computer technology and architecture, i find, that right there set the book by lars spuybroek: we should be raising us, what values ​​would be created in “old europe”, and this bring with the computer again into a live.

p.s. dear àngel, i need your wet thread definition. (-:

rassul_wassa@gmx.de

OT:

RWNB, I find it interesting you felt the need to drift off topic into Spain's economic woes, you being from Germany, who is taking the bill for Spain's trouble, and the other two of us commenting here being from Spain.

I really feel ashamed that I will probably end up using some of your hard earned money without giving anything in return.

About computer algorithms on only profiting shareholders. Anything a business does is for the purpose of increasing profits for its shareholders, be it digital or analogic. The default expectation for every individual is to look after their own self-interest.

About the "European political space". I don't think concentrating more political power in Brussels is going to solve anything. For what I can tell, the smaller the country or the more decentralized the political power, the higher the standard of living is. This way there is competition between states since people can more easily vote with their feet, and competition makes things better. Governments work as diseconomies of scale, the smaller they are the more efficient they get.

The "global financial world" allows countries to borrow money from people around the world and spend more than they are able to collect in revenues. So, if you hate reforms that try to close the gap between spending and revenues  you should like globalized finance and its ability to fool people around the world into lending money to banana republics like my country.

Germany is in much better shape, but they are still trying to lower spending because revenues have fallen and if they just borrow the difference interest rates will go up. So most germans will benefit in the long run.

Obviously reforms are hard for people affected by it, but if government spending becomes too high compared to revenues, no one around the world would want to lend us money and our government would have to live within its means, that means much much deeper cuts.

he vicente,

Spain is not a banana republic!
...

you've got the best football. (-:
and pay a lot of money for your football players...................................
or pay soon the German taxpayer? (-:

if european countries are in a negative competition with each others,
(e.g when they fight with tax benefits, and cheap labor costs)
then it is difficult to defeat Germany!

Germany created around himself banana republic. (-: (sorry)

let us not operate against each other,
but rather with each other.

by the way, i don't hate the term of reform,
if this can be interpreted as design and agreement of the majority.

Angel, this thread started about conservative vs progressive ideology, so we haven't really gone off topic. We can even talk about religion now and still be on topic.