Some Rambling Thoughts on the future:
1. Less Expensive computer chips, eventually the cost of computer chips will be so low that the ability to skin a building in computer chips will become a reality. This will have implications and opportunities to affect the skin of buildings and will also impact who controls the skin. Architectural facades/ skins will become even more responsive to their environment. However the skin could also become a battle over control and design, is the skin now owned by the developer, the PR department, the advertising agency, branding? The Architect may develop the skin, but control of that skin may land in the hands of others and change how and what a building may look like, day to day, season by season, , tenant by tenant, owner by owner.
2. Robotics- will affect the cost of labor and push some people out of work, fortunately the need for robotic and AI designers and maintenance staff will increase. This could include impact those involved in the construction industry and the movement of materials and resources. Robots will have the ability to construct buildings utilizing direct digital model information and have already been utilized for building a freeway wall. Robots do not take lunch breaks and currently do not have a union.
3. 3D printing- the ability to design, construct and install components in real time by printing 3D objects at the job site will affect construction and other industries. The ability to build custom prosthetics or other medical components will impact the way we provide and deliver care. THe ability to order a 3D file from Amazon or it's replacement and then instead of delivery, the printer builds it at your home, office or school.
4. Self driving cars- will impact the need for and the use of parking structures as well as the need for uber, taxi and truck drivers. Maybe now is the time to design parking structures that can be easily converted to other uses in the future, when the need for storing cars will be reduced significantly. It will also impact the design of housing as we reduce the need for parking under high density structures and the need for attached and detached garages for single family homes. Time to turn the garage into a VR/AR environment.
5. AI- self learning computers will impact many industries including healthcare diagnosis and other industries requiring real time data. In architecture perhaps the cost of designs can be calculated in real time, providing designers and owners with a building that performs to their metrics (energy savings, labor savings, operational efficiency, philanthropy/ brand).
6. VR and Augmented reality- will affect how we design buildings, travel (will we ), education and gaming. The question is will we become Wall-E, and become even less social by crawling into a VR / simulated world.
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Lee Brennan AIA
Cuningham Group Architecture, Inc.
Culver City CA
Original Message:
Sent: 03-16-2016 22:00
From: Nikolaus Philipsen
Subject: Future Industries -What Drives the next 20 Years of Change?
To think about the future requires optimism. Depression can't see a future at all, fear doesn't want to see one, anger laments that it won't be like the past.
But as the German novelist and writer Martin Walser recently observed, "there is no presence that isn't crying out for a future". There are at least three strong reasons for planning a future: ethics (things may not remain the way they are), philosophy (the presence is nothing but the confluence of past and future) and physics (the "arrow of time" or entropy is irreversible).
So we turn to Baltimore resident, Johns Hopkins Fellow and former Special Advisor for Innovation at the State Department Alec Ross to learn about the future and "how the next wave of innovation and globalization will affect our countries, our societies and ourselves" (book cover), Ross has written a whole book about the future. But he isn't just a blue-eyed optimist writing "the typical techno-utopian fantasy" nor is he the whiny pessimist issuing a "the luddite jeremiad" (quotes from the Forbes review of his book). In his recently published book
The Industries of the Future he "strikes a calm tone, never ceasing to consider the human cost of technological progress" (Forbes). Ross responds to his own question of "what is next after digitalization"? and shows both the possibilities and risks of what he thinks will come.
The field of those who think and write about the future is...(For full article click on the link below)
Community Architect: Future Industries -What Drives the next 20 Years of Change?
Archplanbaltimore | remove preview |
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Nikolaus Philipsen FAIA
Archplan Inc. Philipsen Architects
Baltimore MD
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