Thomas Sisson - Final Reflection

Final Reflection:

This class has been among one of my favorites in terms of how it has gone about addressing and discussing the various topics revolving around intelligent buildings. Although I am a structural concentration AE, and this class was more of a professional elective than a requirement, I still found myself really reflecting on some of the construction aspects of course. Specifically, I found the automated construction and artificial intelligence to be incredibly interesting because it has always been my assumption that robots will take over the entire building industry. Every part of the building process, excluding the actual artistic design, can easily be replaced by procedural design using what an AI program has learned from past designs and building codes. Even construction could theoretically be done by robots, although for a while it seems these robots will still need to be heavily aided by human controls.

The database portion of the class was less my speed, but this is mostly related to the fact that I have barely touched databases in my professional and academic life and don't plan on using them in any major capacity in the future. Whether this changes in the future is uncertain, but I will do everything in my power to steer away from it.

As far as what I feel will impact my profession and my future, I definitely feel that BIM will continue to have a profound impact on everything that I do. My current job description is pretty much all Revit modeling, with a specific focus on the structural elements of the building. As BIM progresses and structural analysis becomes more widely adopted in the same program I feel that will start to creep its way into my workload. Even Dynamo, which we had discussed briefly, could also find its way into my job by starting to auto-size beams, check for errors, and perhaps even lay out the structural framing grid automatically.

In summary, I greatly enjoyed this class and feel that it could be an important class for all concentrations of AE simply because it breaks away from the bare calculations and engineering of the building, and starts to progress into thinking about the future of the industry. Getting a head start on the industry could even lead to much better job prospects and a more successful future. As for me, I believe that it will do just that.

Comments:

Joshua L: 
I enjoyed how you discussed the group in class discussions. I had almost forgotten them, but they did increase the value of some of the lessons we learned in class. I really liked hearing the opinions of those in my group and really brainstorming what the future holds for some of the technologies discussed in class. One of my favorite discussions was after the video of the building going up in 3 (?) days. I believe we were discussing how all of our jobs were probably going to be taken over by robots, but we still had optimistic outlooks for what that actually means. I agree that this class was very broad in spectrum, but in a way it guided us to explore any one specific topic further if we so choose, which is something I will be doing as far as AI and automation goes.

Allison A:
I had almost forgotten about the speakers, but this was by far one of the best aspects of this class. Being able to see the viewpoint of different people within the industry, whether or not they agreed with Professor Mitchell, was eye opening. It is always great to break away from pure academia for a moment and get a more practical, professional point of view. I can see how this class would be incredibly beneficial to digital building concentrations, but I hope that the class transcends this to be a suggested, if not required, class for all architectural engineers.

Brad D:
Generally you are right, the class did not feel rushed at all. Some projects did come up fast, but all in all the material itself was always fresh and new, but never under-covered. I think this was possible for the class because rather than teach each topic, Professor Mitchell gave just enough to drive discussion and further research. I think this really allowed us to almost choose what we wanted to get out of the class and pursue further in our studies. I totally agree that this was the best way to take this class, and Professor Mitchell was the best person to teach it. The ability to have a better idea of how technology progresses by being there for its progression has given another level to the content of the course. I really hope his predictions are correct as far as BIM and AI taking over the industry, because they are topics that I would love to get more into and become more of an expert on.