emerging socio-technical networks of innovation in architectural practice

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Emerging Socio-TechnicalNetworks of Innovationin Architectural PracticeTuba Kocaturk

issue 01, volume 11international journal of architectural computing

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Emerging Socio-Technical Networks of Innovationin Architectural PracticeTuba Kocaturk

This article reports on the initial analyses and findingsof on-going research project which investigates thesocio-technical transformation of Architectural practicedue to technology adoption.A conceptual framework isdeveloped as a tool to identify, analyse, and characterizethe different socio-technical networks in currentpractice, and the ways in which these networks arebeing developed and coordinated. Highly technology-mediated and interdisciplinary architectural/engineeringpractices have been monitored and studied in theirreal-life project contexts.Through comparative caseanalyses, a conceptual framework has been developedand used to represent and analyse emerging socio-technical networks and the ways in which thesenetworks facilitate innovation. In this context, newmodes/practices of innovations are identified throughthe diverse and dynamic relationships emergingbetween architects, digital tools/systems, the designartefact, and the various multi-disciplinaryknowledge/actors in a socio-technical setting.

23Emerging Socio-Technical Networks of Innovation in Architectural Practice

1. INTRODUCTION

Recent adoption of advanced 3D knowledge-rich parametric/generativedesign media, combined with sophisticated information systems and 3Dprototyping technologies have led to a new discussion about the role andimpact of technology on the changing practices in Architectural Design andproduction, facilitating new ways of designing and innovation.A majority ofexisting literature on technology mediated (and computational) design havea particular focus on the “technological aspects” of innovation and thechallenges, problems and opportunities imposed by the technology. Similarly,various publications on recent design theory and practice focus on theformulations of a technological discourse in digital architectural design [1],[2], [3], [4], [5], emphasizing the changing theoretical and methodologicaldirections and formulations of new design models [6], [7].Technology isindeed a critical enabler - an innovation infrastructure as rightly observedby Yehuda Kalay [8] - in highly dynamic and innovative environments such asarchitectural design and production. However, technology and digitalmedia/tools cannot be considered as the only force that shapes the valuesand structure of architectural industry.Through the use of diverse mediaand technologies, new networks, collaboration styles, and work practicesemerge and, in turn, facilitate the development of new methods to deal withthe emerging knowledge and complexity affecting the ways in which thetechnology is applied and used [9].This instrumentalization entails the waysin which humans mediate between different media, facilitating newcoordination and collaboration mechanisms across various interdisciplinaryactors and representations. Consequently, we observe the spontaneousemergence of highly complex networks of innovation where both thehuman/organizational structures and the IT capabilities are distributed,diverse and heterogeneous.

In this article, I aim to present an alternative approach and aim tocontribute to the recent studies on Architectural Innovation through anexplicit socio-technical perspective, instead of a purely technological one.Asocio-technical perspective differs from a pure “technical” or “technological”stance, in the understanding of innovation (in Architecture), on the followingpremises:

• Theories of the social construction of technology (SCOT) posit thatinnovations depend on the social contexts jointly established bytechnologies, actors and organizational forms [10], [11].

• Technology does not determine human action, but that rather, humanaction shapes technology [12]. The ways technology is used cannotbe understood without understanding how that technology isembedded in its social context.

• Understanding innovation through a socio-technical perspective willhelp explain how social contexts influence and become embedded inthe technology, and how interpretations of technology becomestabilized through innovations [13].

The motivation for this research partly has its foundations in theobservation and recognition of the growing gap between the “envisaged”(by software/technology developers),“intended” (by the industry at large),and “applied” (by practitioners) use of digital media in current architecturalcircles.Although digital design has made projects fluid across the entiredesign, development and construction process, which is usually expected tolead to a higher rate of problem solving, in reality, this might lead topotential dangers unless this fluidity is understood, managed andcoordinated properly. Many of the project partners we have interviewedduring this research have pointed out potential dangers when the highlydemocratized digital design tools are used without a careful and consciousplanning and control.A common danger, for example, is due to the falsesense of security and completeness the many CAAD and 3D prototypingtools create, which may result in settling too early and prematurely at thefuzzy-front end of the early design stage [14].This usually creates atendency to move on to the next stage in the process before teams havetaken the time develop the designs to a certain maturity. One of the projectpartners we’ve interviewed told us:

“We are almost getting to a point where the 3-D print will rise on the tableeven before there is a sketch… When you talk about creativity and all thoseother things, it throws the emphasis not on the production techniques but onhow you direct the process, how and at what stage you get the strategy intodefining the objectives, which then allow you to specify the tools andtechniques which accelerate other processes” [15].

Digital design tools and media can be invaluable in visualizing ideas,quickly developing a detailed design and conducting fast iterations.Thesetools also offer the potential to reduce cost and improve design iterationefficiency. However, integrating technology into our design practice does notautomatically guarantee a better value through improvement or innovationof design products or processes. For example, only because we can simulatethe thermal response of our building does not necessarily mean a buildingwith superior thermal efficiency, unless we set our parameters right anddevelop a model that responds to these criteria as intended and required.Similarly, only because digital media provides means to create alternativevariations of a design and to physically produce them through a 3D printerwith ease, speed and accuracy, does not guarantee better value or highperformance unless we set our requirements right and develop solutionsappropriate to the context. Similarly, the use of BIM technology by allstakeholders during a project life cycle doesn’t automatically guarantee theachievement of a fully integrated design and project delivery, if the teamsstill follow a traditional workflow in order to coordinate the emerging tasksassociated with using a BIM environment.

Innovation is usually hidden in the process of bridging the gap betweenthe possibilities and the constraints offered by the very same technology. It

24 Tuba Kocaturk

is embedded within and defined by the highly dynamic interactions ofmultiple agents that take part in a social setting.Therefore, instead offocusing on “individual innovation” which is usually attributed to a recentlygained ability of an individual designer to control and iterate designs –through technology – I tend to identify innovation as a “collective” and“distributed” activity that takes place in a socio-technical network. One ofthe main departure points of this approach is the shift of emphasis from asingle innovator to a distributed network of actors and networked featuresof innovation.A growing body of innovation research emphasizes this aspectand provide useful insights for understanding innovation in highly distributedsystems such as Architectural practice [16].A recent publication [17] pointout the fact that innovative architectural practices do not necessarilyinnovate by merely adopting technology but by finding innovativemechanisms to structure and coordinate multi-disciplinary designintelligence through various digital design media, customized workflows,organizational structures and complementary activities.

The subsequent sections of the article are organized to contribute tothe understanding of the formation and coordination of these highlydistributed networks of innovation in technology-mediated architecturalpractices. I will also introduce the development of a unique methodology toidentify, capture, analyse and represent the highly dynamic andmultidisciplinary aspects of the subject under study.

2. THE METHODOLOGICAL FRAMEWORK

The research methodology followed is that of “grounded theory” with anaim of generating a descriptive and explanatory theory.This approach wasadopted here for two primary reasons. First, grounded theory “is aninductive, theory discovery methodology that allows the researcher todevelop a theoretical account of the general features of a topic whilesimultaneously grounding the account in empirical observations or data”[18].And secondly, grounded theory facilitates the generation of theories ondesign thinking and processes, which is dynamic and does not fit to thestatic views of a design process.

Case studies have been the main sources of our data collection toinvestigate the socio-technical networks in their real life contexts. Studiesof multiple cases and their (continuous) comparative analyses have beencarried out to cover the contextual conditions which are highly pertinentin the realm of technology-mediated design practice.The study of casesaimed to discover how networks of innovation have been established notonly across a variety of different practices, but also within the samepractice in consecutive projects.Although “design innovation” is oftenattributed to Architectural design firms, this research aims to extend thedefinition of “design innovation” across a multi-disciplinary team ofindividuals who take part in the entire project life cycle from design


through to production.Therefore, the cases have been selected from arange of architectural (e.g. Zaha Hadid Architects, Foster+Partners, GehryPartners) and engineering firms (e.g.Arup, Buro Happold) as well astechnology/geometry consultants (Gehry Technologies, Design toProduction) who play an equally essential role in the formation of thesocio-technical networks under study.The firms are selected amongthose which are considered as pioneering practices in integratingadvanced technologies in their work processes and organizationalstructures, collaborative workflows and innovative buildings.Architecturaldesign projects that have been designed and produced by these practiceshave been studied, analysed and compared through their entire projectlife cycle. Data has been collected through various sources such asliterature review, interviews with the design teams and project partnersas well as personal observations through shadowing project meetings atdifferent stages of the projects that have been studied.

In this research, we have employed concepts from three existingtheories to guide the formulation of a preliminary framework and inorder to understand the complex, dynamic and multi-disciplinary natureof the subject under study: Structuration perspective,ANT (Actornetwork Theory) and Distributed Cognition all provide an informedawareness of different issues/interpretations that would be usefulin understanding the interactions between the different elements ofsocio-technical networks.

Structuration perspective, which interprets technology as sociallytransformative as well as socially transformed, has been instrumental inexplaining the emergent, diverse and situated uses of the same technologyby different social actors in different contexts [19], [20]. It is chosen to shedlight on the analysis of the dynamic interaction between various designmedia, the social structures and the processes that mutually shape oneanother.

Distributed Cognition approach aided the understanding of the emergentsocio-cognitive phenomenon which is distributed across individuals anddiverse design media [21].This approach also helped us take intoconsideration the emerging representations of information and themechanisms by which representations are coordinated across aninterdisciplinary group of individuals.

ANT (Actor Network Theory) provided an ontological foundation toformulate an analytical framework for the collection, comparison, andgrounding of data in context.ANT tries to understand socio-technicalnetworks through the dynamic interactions between both technological andnon-technological entities and their mutual influenceon the process [22].

All three theories and approaches have been instrumental in thedevelopment of the theoretical framework which will be explained in thenext section.

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3. DISTRIBUTED INTELLIGENCE FRAMEWORK ASA TOOL FOR ANALYZING SOCIO-TECHNICALNETWORKS

We introduce the concept of “Distributed Intelligence” as the cross-disciplinary network of design intelligence that is distributed across variousdesign media, people, modules of knowledge and the variousrepresentations of the design artefact (Figure 1). Distributed Intelligenceframework emphasizes both social and technical elements which play both apotent and a problematic role in the formation of socio-technical systems.


Designartefact

Digital designmedia

Architect (s)Distributedintelligence

Multi-disciplinaryknowledge

� Figure 1. Distributed intelligence.

The concept of Distributed Intelligence has been introduced as part ofour methodology in this research, to identify, capture, analyse and representthe highly dynamic and multidisciplinary character of socio-technicalnetworks of innovation.This diagram has formed the foundational basis toexplore and identify the ways in which distributed intelligence is structuredand coordinated between different stages of the creative design andproduction processes, through the identification of the dynamic interactionsof 4 nodes (design artefact, architect(s), digital design media and multidisciplinaryknowledge).Based on this diagram, we have developed a preliminary actor-network framework (Figure 2a, 2b, 3a, 3b) that has been used to guide theinitial analyses.This framework is composed of 4 independent components,distinguished according to a set of relationships between the 3 nodes(defined as independent variables) where the 4th node is represented as a(dependent) variable.The case studies particularly focus on how thesevariables differ in real contexts across different projects of the same firmand/or across different firms. Each individual component has been used toguide the case analyses further and to structure the interviews with thedesign teams and the project partners.

3.1. The Four Components of Distributed Intelligence

The first component, internal representations (Figure 2a), refers to theinteraction of the architect with the digital media to mentally construct,generate and model the design artefact. In this process, the extent to whichmultidisciplinary knowledge is embedded in the evolution or thedevelopment of the design artefact is a dependent variable.An internalrepresentation specifically refers to the modelling process (either fully digitalor physical with a degree of interaction with the digital platform).Acommon example is integrating (e.g. structural) performance criteria intothe internal representational model using various computational techniques(e.g. scripting, parametric modelling). However, this process doesn’tnecessarily have to be a computational process. For example, at GehryPartners, constructability information/criteria (of the curvilinear surfaces) isembedded into the internal representations of the early conceptual physicalmodels through the use of developable “paper surfaces” as a modellingmaterial mimicking the constructability constraints.

The second component, external representations (Figure 2b), refers to theinteraction of the architect(s) with the digital media in order tocommunicate/exchange design information with other stakeholders, for thesubsequent engineering and production processes. In this scenario, thedegree/level of abstraction used for these different external representations(e.g. sketch, simulation model, wire-frame model, solid-model) of the artefactis a variable and differs according to the stage of the design process and thestakeholder who will use this representation.

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Designartefact


(Internalrepresentations)

(Externalrepresentations)

Architect (s) Digitaldesignmedia

Designartefact


Architect (s)Digitaldesignmedia

� Figure 2a. Internal representations.

2b. External representations.

� Figure 3a. Collective creativity.

3b. Coordinated production.

Designartefact


Col

lect

ive

crea

tivity

Coo

rdin

ated

prod

uctio

n

Architect (s) Digitaldesignmedia

Designartefact



The third component, collective creativity (Figure 3a), refers to the earlyand creative stages of the design process where communication andinformation (geometrical and/or non-geometrical) exchange with differentstakeholders plays an important part. In this process, the extent to whichthe digital media/tools facilitate/support this information exchange is adependent variable (Figure 3a). Synchronous and asynchronous platformsprovide a collaborative platform. Similarly, effective data exchangestandards/formats across disciplinary platforms can facilitatecollective/constructive input during the creative process from all partiesinvolved.

Finally, the fourth component, coordinated production (Figure 3b), refers tothe exchange of various information and representations of the designartefact across stakeholders for the actual production and construction(Figure 3b). In this process, the extent to which the architects interact andengage with this process is a variable. For most part of the 20th century,designers had little involvement with this process.Although technologyfacilitates the necessary means for architects to be more involved in thisprocess today, there are still variations as to the degree and level ofinvolvement even among the highly digital architectural practices.

3.2. Innovation Through the Coordination of 4 Components

Unlike traditional hierarchies and linear project progression, thecoordination of these components has been observed to follow a networkstructure by facilitating the emergence of new actors, new processes andnew coordination mechanisms. In our case studies, innovation has beenanalysed at the project level, where novel ideas are generated andimplemented as a result of the interactions among these nodes, theirassociated processes and their coordination. Our analyses have shown that“innovations”usually emerge when the design teams try to connectpreviously unconnected nodes and/orto bridge the gaps between thecomponents and their associated processes (Figure 4).

During our case study analyses, we have identified two problematicareas, which we defined as the “gaps”, where most technical andorganizational innovation have been observed to originated from, in order


� Figure 4. Innovations “bridge the

gap” between these components and

their associated processes.


Col

lect

ive

crea

tivity

Coo

rdin

ated

prod

uctio

n



Architect (s) GapGap

Digitaldesignmedia

Designartefact

Designartefact

(Internalrepresentations)

(Externalrepresentations)

to respond to a set of challenges posed by these gaps.The first gap is dueto the loss of meaning, data and information while working across internaland external representations, especially when the geometry is transferredbetween different task/discipline specific software applications.The secondgap – between the collective creativity and coordinated production –is asmuch organizational and tactical as technical, caused partly by the verytechnologies that aim to serve these two separate design stages and partlyby the people who use these technologies.The institutional and socialstructures of the building industry, as well as the high variation in itstechnical systems and practices (e.g. construction technologies, fabricationtools, computing software, etc.) have built up multiple barriers to bridgethese gaps. One example would be the current schism between ParametricDesign and BIM (Building Information Modelling) tools.Although BIMadvocates its usefulness in bringing design intelligence across disciplinesfrom pre-design to operation; in current practice, its usefulness has beenlimited to better data transfer and documentation, which mainly serves thecoordinated production process. In today’s practice, BIM has not yet beenutilized to entirely encompass and link with processes and modellingtechniques (at different levels of abstraction) that occur in the creative andconceptual design stage. Similarly, although a majority of parametric designsoftware serve the collective creativity, there is a computational limitation inthe design aspects that cannot be addressed parametrically with the currentcomputational capabilities [23]. There are also issues that originate from thehighly debated differences between “creative modelling” versus “operationalmodelling” and the varying level of abstractions each of these modellingprocesses provide support for, and the links necessary to get them worktogether, which Hugh Whitehead describes as “change propagation” as oneof the biggest challenges in model-driven processes:

“Once you’ve got the change propagation working through your modellingprocess, that is not the end of the story, because what the teams mainly do isproduce drawings, which become a part of the contract and are used tocommunicate with consultants and contractors. …We have modelcomposition, then drawing extraction and then drawing composition, whichengages with the system and links to other distribution systems. So it really isa systems problem.And most design teams do not have time to think about itin these terms.They are just focused on the task in hand, saying: ‘How do I getthis model built or this drawing done by the end of the day?’When you look atit from the point of view of effective communication between all the otherteam members and the consultants, in-house or out-of-house, you have topropagate those changes in a controlled way.” [15].

3.3. Emerging Socio-Technical Networks of Innovation

At Foster and Partners, the Specialist Modelling Group (SMG) providesin-house consultancy to project teams at all stages from concept design to

30 Tuba Kocaturk

detailed fabrication, and have a continual dialogue with the externalconsultants. Huge Whitehead, Director of the Specialist Modelling Group,points out that many problems they face at Fosters are problems oflanguage rather than technology and the main limitation lies in finding theeffective means to communicate and coordinate such communication [24].The group develops control mechanisms (parametric models or customizedscripts) that drive building geometries.The geometry that these mechanismsare driving responds to the constraints acting on the architectural designimposed by external consultants. In Swiss Re building, for instance, thefabrication process followed a consistent dialogue between structural andcladding geometry. In such a coordination mechanism, the designer becomesin charge of the process by providing necessary external representations tobridge the gap between collective design and coordinated productionwhereas the responsibility for the performance lies with the contractor.Thedesign approach then becomes to create a parametric model whichprovides high degree of geometric control and ability to generate variationin design.At the same time, the parametric models provide the relevantinformation for digital performance tests which are carried out incollaboration with external consultants [24].This involves the incorporationof various different software applications and operating systems each ofwhich require a simplified representation of the model (externalrepresentations) as the input to their analysis. For example, while structuralanalysis requires central lines, thermal analysis requires volumes, and daylightanalysis requires meshes and so on.

Therefore, an important role the group plays is to coordinate atriangular relationship between project groups and external consultants andtranslate requirements both computationally and through the developmentof customized workflows. Since every project and every team is different,the group builds/customizes technology and workflow almost per project, inreverse order. Starting from the formulation of the problem, the first step isto propose an appropriate workflow.At this point, a very peculiarobservation in the firm’s approach to workflow design is the centrality ofthe “people” as opposed to the centrality of a “3D model”.Although thefirm uses BIM, the activities and workflows do not follow the single-modelmethodology.

Although the in-house consultancy SMG provides for Foster+Partners isquite similar to the role Gehry Technologies plays for Gehry Partners, thereare various differences in the ways the internal representations, externalrepresentations, collective creativity and coordinated production arecoordinated for a typical Gehry Partners project. Gehry Technologies hasintroduced the concept of rationalization through which requirements ofconstructability are interpreted into geometric constraints on the highlycomplex forms designed by Gehry Partners. Over many years, the firm hasdeveloped various strategies for rationalizing geometries in relationship tothe building systems on which they have been applied. In this practice,


custom tool building and computation fulfils a more utilitarian function of‘describing’ the geometry of a form which itself has been generatedelsewhere [25].Gehry Technologies provides consultancy services to otherdesign firms on a global scale and help project teams coordinate designinformation and workflow from concept stage through to construction.Theconsultancy help design firms bridge the gap between creative andoperational modelling through the use of a highly sophisticated BIMsoftware (Digital Project).

Not every firm can provide in-house expertise to integrate design ideaswith that of actual realization.At this point, a specialist knowledge fromvarious fields need to be integrated in order to bridge the gap betweeninternal and external representations, especially when the architecturalforms are challenging and an average CAD technician wouldn’t be able toscript and the contractor wouldn’t be able to generate a realistic costestimate.“Design to Production”, a specialist consultancy firm (founded byFabian Scheurer and Arnold Walz) is one of the most prominent examplesof this emergent niche of service in building industry.The firm (team)devises parametric models for the interface between rendering andrealization. Fabian Scheurer describes their role as:

“We are deliberately in the middle of everyone.We are a relay station, we helpthem coordinate….There is no software for that. Fifty-percent of our job is justsitting down and talking to the different people” [26].

The firm is to be credited for the coordination of design and productionteams for the fabrication of 18 km of unique doubly curved, timber roofbeams of the Centre Pompidou Metz gallery (by Shigeru Ban), accurately, ontime and on budget.Their role was to communicate the complicatedgeometry of the 90 m-wide, 40 m-long fluid structure and enable itsfabrication.The timber girders had to be broken down into components sothat they could be fabricated and correctly priced, and put in the rightplace.The challenge was to communicate this information with thecontractors and fabricators for correct pricing and fabrication. In the EPFLin Lausanne (by SANAA), although the curvy surface was very welldescribed (mathematically) by the engineers, the firm still needed to extractthe rules and geometries from this surface to design the temporary woodformwork. In this commission, they worked for the general contractor forthe tender process.After tender, they worked for the formwork contractorto optimize the fabrication by building a detailed parametric model anddelivered all the components as machine–ready code, ready to befabricated.

The use of 3D modelling and digital data on projects in advancedstages of development and construction at ZHA (Zaha Hadid Architects)has also been steadily growing in recent years. Cristiano Ceccato, one ofthe associate Architects at ZHA, explained that in the earliest cases, 3Dmodels were only used to develop project geometry internally within the

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company. In the last few years, projects have begun to employ BIM-capable3D tools as a central geometrical coordination platform. In the case ofZHA’s work, like many contemporary architecture practices exploringcomplex form language, such as Gehry Partners, they are fundamental tocapturing the project’s formal intentions correctly.Therefore the use ofBIM environment is explored and exploited in the pre-construction phasein order to obtain accurate geometrical description, form rationalisationand componentization. In ZHA’s case, the highly complex and carefullyscrutinized formal language the firm has developed over the years is notthe outcome of a fully parametric design process. However, parametricmodel is usually developed later in the process and becomes the‘parametric driver’ for the 3D digital coordination process using DigitalProject and defines all downstream project geometry, such as slab profiles,façade contours and cladding surfaces.This allows the preservation of thestylistic features of the geometry over the entire process. For example inthe Seoul Dongdaemun project in Korea, the London team worked inclose collaboration with a Viennese geometry consulting firm, Evolute, todevelop a parametric tessellation of the envelope surface that resulted ina family of self-similar cladding panels while retaining the visible aestheticquality and continuity of the surface.The team in Seoul concurrently usedthe same envelope surface, to generate the internal steel skeleton, theexternal envelope sub-structure and a model of the building’s MEPsystems, again strictly following the underlying formal and stylistic featuresof the geometry.At such level of formal complexity and with projectteams on a global scale, getting the driver geometry right andcommunicating this information correctly across all parties is a bigchallenge.This problem is usually solved through “Digital Contracting”required by ZHA in such big scale complex projects. In a digitalcontracting, the 3D model becomes part of the contract whereby the 3-Dgeometry that is electronically stored in the model file is officially issuedto the contractor as the main geometrical definition and dimensionalcontrol vehicle for the project.This implies an agreement on file formats,coordinate systems and applicable software that may be used, whichprovides a much higher level of accuracy and confidence for all partiesinvolved [25].

Our case analyses revealed the fact that innovative architecturalpractices do not necessarily innovate by merely using technology, or aspecific tool per se, but by finding innovative mechanisms to structure andcoordinate their design intelligence through various media, customizedworkflows, organizational structures and complementary activities.Theemergent mechanisms of such coordinations are either fully or partiallyresourced within the company (through in-house consultants), and in mostcases fully outsourced (through out-of-house consultants), and are directlylinked to the stylistic and tectonic features of the building designs producedby these firms.


4. CONCLUSION

In this article, I presented an alternative approach to contribute to therecent studies on Architectural Innovation through an explicit socio-technicalperspective. I reported on some of the initial findings of my research whichaims to uncover the ways in which digitalization and digital tools haverecently been adopted within work practices of highly technology-mediatedarchitectural practices.Through comparative case analyses of architecturalpractices, a conceptual framework has been developed and used to representand analyse emerging socio-technical networks and the ways in which thesenetworks facilitate innovation. In this context, new modes/practices ofinnovations have been identified through the diverse and dynamicrelationships emerging between architects, digital design media, the designartefact, and the various multi-disciplinary knowledge/actors in a socio-technical setting. One of the main departure points of this approach is theshift of emphasis from a single innovator to a distributed network of actorsand networked features of innovation.Therefore, instead of focusing on“individual innovation” which is usually attributed to a recently gained abilityof an individual designer to control and iterate designs – through technology– I aimed to identify innovation as a “collective” and “distributed” activitythat takes place in a socio-technical network.

Technology is indeed a critical enabler of integrated design and productionin highly dynamic and innovative environments such as architectural design andproduction. However, new human networks and work practices, in turn,facilitate the emergence of new methods to deal with the emerging knowledgeand complexity affecting the ways in which the technology is instrumentalized.This instrumentalization entails the ways in people mediate between differentmedia, facilitating new coordination mechanisms across various interdisciplinaryactors and representations. It is essential to acknowledge the merits oftechnology adoption, however, it’s equally important to realize that thisadoption does not necessarily take place as anticipated or envisaged by thevery people who have created that technology.The ways in which architecturalpractice responds, in its own unique ways, to the possibilities offered bydifferent design and modelling tools provide crucial hints for the developmentof next generation technologies which might offer a better transition by takinginto account the dynamics of the architectural practice as a social network ofpeople and knowledge modules.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to acknowledge and thank all collaborating firmsinvolved in this research, specifically Cristiano Ceccato, Martin Riese, andHugh Whitehead (as well as other consultants, designers and projectspartners at Zaha Hadid Architects, Foster+Partners and GehryTechnologies) who have provided invaluable input into this research. Someportions of this article, including some images, are based on material that

34 Tuba Kocaturk

has previously been published in the Proceedings of the eCAADeConference in 2009.

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36 Tuba Kocaturk

University of Liverpool, School of Architecture LeverhulmeBuilding,Abercromby Square L69 7ZN, United Kingdom

[email protected]

emerging socio-technical networks of innovation in architectural practice

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