ABSTRACT
Early adopters of the first computer systems proselytised aggressively in the 1970s and 1980s. They disturbed the worlds of architecture and design by suggesting that their machines would replace humans in the design process, and that human intervention would amount to typing details of the brief and site information into the programme. More experienced practitioners remained outwardly calm and inwardly complacent, arguing that a pre-programmed device, no matter how lofty its artificial IQ, could not simulate those quirks of the human imagination that deliver originality. When drawing by hand, designers, and particularly trainee designers, tended to become infatuated with the graphic quality of their drawing rather than with the idea it encapsulated. By the end of the 1990s the computer was embedded as the essential studio tool. It made better and faster drawings than humans crouched over drawing boards. Digital workstations took up less floor area than A0 drawing boards.
