CAIRO UNIVERSITY

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The Art Institute of Chicago examines how best to archive digital design data

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NADER EBRAHEM ESMAEL

<<The Art Institute of Chicago examines how best to archive The Art Institute of Chicago examines how best to archive digital design datadigital design data> >

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<<NADER EBRAHEM ESMAELNADER EBRAHEM ESMAEL>>

By: >Alan JochBy: >Alan Joch> >

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<<Architectural Record Digital Practice Tech Briefs - May 2004 Architectural Record Digital Practice Tech Briefs - May 2004 - The Art Institute of Chicago examines how best to archive - The Art Institute of Chicago examines how best to archive

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Date: >MAY 2004Date: >MAY 2004>>

The Art Institute of Chicago examines how best to archive digital design data

By Alan Joch

Archiving project information was once merely a matter of collecting, organizing, and filing away paper drawings, each one created anew as design progressed. But what about records of the iterative steps that illustrate a

design team’s thinking and the creative prowess behind a successful work of architecture? Saving this sort of historical record takes forethought to keep intermediate digital documents files from getting overwritten in the

crush of new work. The almighty “delete” key makes it far too easy to eradicate the evolution of a design even before the project is completed .

Valerio Dewalt Train Associates has recorded its sketches, massing models, and a rendered image for

the Indian Community School in Milwaukee .

Archivists are now taking action to make sure these steps aren’t lost to the ages. Early last year, the Department of Architecture at the Art Institute of Chicago began a comprehensive study to find the best ways of collecting, archiving, and

exhibiting digital design data. Chicago architect Kristine Fallon, FAIA, president of Kristine Fallon Associates, heads the project, which involves a team of architects, academics, museum curators, and technology experts who are reviewing the

challenges of maintaining digital archives and will ultimately provide recommendations for best practices .

Backed by grants from the Schiff Foundation and the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Visual Arts, the Institute hopes the study will have a direct impact on how museums and other institutions preserve architectural work.

Commercial design firms will also benefit from the study’s guidelines, Fallon says. Architects who don’t implement digital-archiving practices are “like artists using evaporating paint,” she believes. “Most architects like to be immortal. Not having

digital archives threatens their immortality ”.

Thorough archives also play an important role in expansions and additions to existing projects, and in the restoration and renovation of historic buildings. Even more pragmatically, past design elements are often

reused in new projects, adds Scott Pratt, director of digital technology and senior vice president for the Chicago architectural firm Murphy/Jahn, one of the firms involved in the Institute’s study. “Often, a project

is an evolution of a prior work. It just makes sense to keep archives,” he says

Digital archivists face two hurdles in this effort. One is procedural: convincing firms to implement policies for documenting important project milestones. The other problem is technical: how to ensure digital files don’t fall out of

commission. “I can’t bring back a word-processing file from 10 years ago—how are people going to read an architect’s digital design data after 100 years?” Fallon wonders .

The Art Institute is one of many organizations addressing these challenges. The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in College Park, Maryland,

the agency responsible for managing and preserving federal records and priceless historical documents like the Declaration of Independence and the

Constitution, is spending $36 million annually in its Electronic Records Archives (ERA) program to find better ways of preserving digital documents. After working for years with other government agencies, as well as universities, other archives, and research facilities throughout the world, NARA selected a systems integrator

earlier this year to design its electronic archives, the first phase of which could come online by 2007—but ERA officials don’t expect their solution to be fully

functional until seven years after that .

Ross Barney + Jankowski worked with client teams to

develop a total of four massing models for the

James I. Swenson Science Building for the University

of Minnesota at Duluth. The firm saves each digital

alternative as part of the project record .

The Art Institute’s study will set forth recommendations long before that. The first phase of its study, completed earlier this year, surveyed archiving best practices at 63 design firms throughout the world, ranging in size from a sole practitioner to

those with thousands of employees. This survey will become the basis for guidelines to be included in the final study report this summer .

In March, the Institute sponsored a daylong exhibition—essentially a design charrette with three teams of museum staff, designers, and technology gurus. Each team

examined a number of in-progress and completed projects with various types of digital information available. “The exercises raised a number of questions about the role of museums, curators, and architects regarding who collects or saves information and

how conservation of digital files is best carried out,” Fallon says. “We also examined some wild ideas about using digital data as a source of exhibition material.” The results

of the study will be available this summer on the Institute’s Web site and will be presented in September at the International Confederation of Architectural Museums in

Venice .

The Art Institute of Chicago examines how best to archive digital design data

By Alan Joch Some of the study’s preliminary results and recommendations are already surfacing. For instance, to combat obsolescence of archival documents, a proposed global registry could alert architects to digital file types that

are in danger of disappearing and provide a way for architects to reformat their files.

Software vendors are also working to tailor existing file formats to improve them for archiving. Adobe Systems is now developing offshoots of its original and ubiquitous PDF format, including PDF-A (for archiving), envisioned to be a slimmed-down version of a standard PDF file that can handle text, raster images, and vector graphics. A second variant, PDF-E (for

engineering) will accommodate large-format graphics and 3D models. And Autodesk is considering making its existing DWF format capable of capturing graphics elements of a file as well as creating a snapshot of associated design information,

according to Jon Pittman, AIA, Autodesk’s senior director of strategic research .

Architectural firms shouldn’t wait for new technologies before starting to preserve their digital work, Murphy/Jahn’s Pratt say

His firm keeps a small number of electronic photos, presentation drawings, elevations, and renderings of finished projects on its network. But most iterative design drawings and related documents are saved on DVDs about six months after a

project’s completion, Pratt says. The firm doesn’t record every design change, but instead concentrates on important milestones, such as the completion of schematic designs or bid sets. CAD drawings remain in native AutoCAD format,

whereas renderings and photos are stored as TIF or JPEG files. “For a project that’s five years old or younger, we have between two to five or more DVDs, which have all of the CAD files, all the versions of renderings and presentations, as well as the PowerPoint shows created in the course of development,” Pratt says. “Prior to the digital era, we may not have every

presentation that was created along the way,” he says. Once the technical challenges of digital archives are ironed out, they may make historical records even more comprehensive than when paper ruled the design process—a big step toward

architectural immortality. Alan Joch

In the lab, paint makes NOx gases harmless—but can field trials make the same claim?

By Deborah Snoonian, P.E.

SGasoline-powered vehicles are “machinas non gratas” as far as environmental protectionists are concerned, but one coatings company says they can now paint away tailpipe emissions. The makers of a new product called Ecopaint, Millenium Chemicals, claim that it can convert nitrogen oxides (NOx) gases into harmless substances. The NOx gases are a well-known trigger for smog production and respiratory

difficulties. In March, the company began selling Ecopaint to the AEC community in Europe, with plans to extend to other markets soon .

Here’s how it works: The paint’s polymer base is embedded with nano-size spherical particles of titanium dioxide and calcium carbonate. In theory, NOx gases would seep into a coating of the paint on a building or street bench or other surface and adhere to the titanium dioxide particles, which would use the sun’s energy to break down the gases into

nitric acid. The acid would then be either washed away by rain or neutralized by the calcium-carbonate particles to create carbon dioxide, water, and calcium nitrate, another soluble acid. In theory, the company says, a 0.3-millimeter

layer of paint could neutralize NOx gases for up to five years in a heavily polluted city, but no field tests have been conducted yet .

Paul Miller, an air-pollution expert and program coordinator for the Commission for Environmental Cooperation in Quebec, says field and comparison studies are key for determining the paint’s efficacy as a cleanup method. The claims are

plausible based on the paint’s chemistry, he says, but “there’s not much information on what happens with NOx in the air in the absence of these painted surfaces.” The proximity of vehicle emissions to painted surfaces can also make a difference

in how effective the paint is, he adds. The gases may never come close enough to painted surfaces to react in the way that’s been demonstrated in lab tests. He recalls a catalytic coating once used on car radiators that was supposed to

remove ozone as people drove: “The ozone never came into contact with the radiator’s surface at the right time for the reaction to be very efficient or effective in removal ”.

Above all, Miller questions whether painting buildings and park benches with an NOx-removing paint is the correct approach toward environmental protection, since preventing pollution from being created at all should take precedence over cleaning

it up after the fact. “We don’t need excuses to make people feel good about driving more miles in their vehicles,” he says .