Columbia Building Intelligence Project has been generously underwritten by Oldcastle BuildingEnvelope™

The first year of C-BIP concluded with a lively International Think Tank titled Engineering Change at the Architecture and Design Museum in London. The three discussion panels revolved around the new definitions of engineering and the expanding role that engineers are playing in developing new workflow models to evolve industry. The themes of the panels suggested that the act of engineering solutions is not just analytical but rather an active synthetic process that affects people, places and things by applying technical and scientific knowledge to design problems. With the increasing emphasis on building performance as a core design driver, and by extension, the need to more effectively integrate building systems, engineers are at the forefront of many of the changes occurring in industry. The ability to so convincingly simulate, among other things, material behavior, structural forces and environmental conditions has caused a renewed interest in verifiable metrics for all aspects of design. Related to this is the rapid expansion of engineering specialty consultants that are redefining traditional design teams into large networks of experts where the intelligence of the team increases and disciplinary boundaries become ambiguous. While people are expected to become more of an expert in their field of specialization, the overlaps with other closely related fields create the necessity to both distinguish what they bring to the team and be able to intelligently communicate with people from all other areas of specialization.

During one of the discussions, Hanif Kara of Adams Kara Taylor (AKT) proposed design engineering—the integration of engineering ideas at the outset of concept design—as one step toward a more collaborative relationship between engineers and architects with principles that could expand to an entire design and construction team. He insisted, though, that this not be seen a casual blurring of disciplinary boundaries where architects become engineers and vice versa. On the contrary, he suggested that each discipline become more skilled at what they do and, most importantly, respect and value the contribution of each other as a first step towards new working processes.