Caught this interesting analogy describing the relationship between the economy and stock market.
Struck me that the way building designers think and how their tools are developing could be described in the same say. I would say that BIM has been the 'big idea' for the last two decades but now we have something called 'Digital Twins'. Like BIM, designers etc are told we need to hurry up, change our ways and adopt DT or fall by the way side. Which is man and which is dog? I think that designers being human are pretty slow in changing and are subject to a larger ecosystems of drivers and goals (intended or not). Designer = Man / Economy. Technologies and ideas like BIM/DT etc are like the Dog / Stockmarket... darting around, pulling every which way, sometimes ahead, sometimes not.
Anyways, the origins of BIM, DT and CAD before that I think was really to do with automation / time saving. Of course, architects thought that BIM would be the way they would regain their leadership position as digital 'master builders'. But, a lot of it was still in service of established thinking and workflows. I want to build a beautiful building, and digitisation will help me do it. Now, we find that the 'dog' has been good at opening up and popularising certain concepts or aspects of 'beauty'. Blobby architecture can be beautiful. Bobby architecture existed before BIM / Computational Design but only blossomed when the tools became widespread. I remember sustainable / environmental design was one of the most unsexy and hated courses in uni because of all all the calcs and lack of feadback. Actually, the CAD course was also pretty awful as well.