Architect constructs innovative database

Architect constructs innovative database

New grant funds link of computer design languages

By Ben Gilmore

The use of computers in architectural design may be
revolutionized with help from a three-year grant to UCLA’s
architecture and urban design department from the National Science
Foundation.

The $235,000 stipend is going to the department’s Center for
Design and Computation, where its director, Professor Charles
Eastman, is working on a computerized database that will allow
architects working in different locations and on different design
problems to exchange design information with each other in a common
language.

Currently, integration between architects by computer is very
limited, Eastman explained.

An architect working on floorplans might have a computer program
representing the building in a certain way, while another architect
working on wind protection for the same building would use a
different program with a different model representation, he
explained. The database would allow the two to communicate directly
by computer using a standard code and see the building in exactly
the same way.

"This has real long-term implications," he said. "It’s a
database that is a glue between any combination of
applications."

Now testing prototypes of the system, Eastman has been working
in this field since the late 1960s. The new grant has allowed
additional researchers to join the project, such as Stott Parker, a
computer science professor.

Parker, who has worked extensively with Eastman, said he is
excited about the database’s applications to computer science in
general, not just architecture.

"Chuck (Eastman)’s approach is both exciting and unusual ­
he’s designing a Rosetta stone for data management," he said.

Parker is involved in translating the architectural data from
different programs into the common language, called EDM. He
compared problems in translation of computer languages to
translation of human languages, saying that it is often difficult
to achieve a common ground where two different languages can
meet.

To illustrate this problem he described a hypothetical device
that translated English into Russian and back again.

"If you put in the sentence ‘The spirit was willing but the
flesh was weak,’ you might get ‘The vodka was good but the meat was
rotten,’" he joked.

While translating and fixing "bugs" in the system is
painstaking, researchers admit the task is rewarding.

"It’s not frustrating at all, because you can see improvements
very soon," said Tay-Sheng Jeng, an assisting architecture
student.

Hisham Assal, a graduate student researching with the group,
added, "Its very exciting to see theory turn into results."

These results should include student users conducting research
by fall quarter of next year, Eastman said. If the system proves
successful in the classroom, it will likely have various and
widespread uses in industry, where buyers could order from
computerized catalogues of designs.

"Ten years from now I don’t think we’ll be using any of these,"
he said, holding a thick catalogue of architectural products.

Eastman added that the system, if marketed in the future, could
be available as a software package and used with IBM and Macintosh
computers.