ABSTRACT
For almost 200 years, from the early 1800s to the mid 1990s, architects worked in the ‘epoch of hand drawing’, using drawing boards and drafting tables to interpret visions for the future. However, by the end of the last millennium there was a transformation of working practices as computers and computer-aided design (CAD) inextricably changed the profession. Although CAD allowed for greater efficiency, enabling small practitioners to compete with their larger counterparts, a swathe of design-based middle managers found themselves on the wrong side of technology, with a reluctance to adapt. In the 1990s and early 2000s, UK CAD operators with no built experience were more in demand than experienced practitioners. The speed of change continues to accelerate and now the ‘epoch of data’ has already begun. Within the next 10 or 20 years practitioners will emerge as designers of environments and structures formulated by systems of data translation, automatised to instruct design decisions.
