I had a great conversation with the Director of Design Technology at one of the largest national architecture firms in the nation, and they brought up this great analogy about sandwiches.
We were talking about where they were looking to develop and apply technology as it related to architecture. They said, if you think about the design process as a sandwich, everyone typically likes to focus on the insides, or the meat, so to speak. But the meat is what architecture already does really well.
Really, where the focus needs to be is on the ends of the sandwich, or the bread, in this analogy. This is the phase at the beginning and at the end of the design process.
At the beginning, this is where the research is done, where the contextual and situational needs are determined, and really, where the parameters of the design are discovered.
At the end, this is where the design interfaces with the other systems and teams necessary to make a design happen. This is the communication of the design with all the other stakeholders.
The development of technology in AEC should really be focused on the ends of the sandwich, not the middle.
You can't overlook the bread in a sandwich.
I thought this was a great analogy, and so I brought it up with an urban planner friend, and they mentioned this scene in the movie Lightyear where there was a sandwich with the meat on the ends and the bread in the middle.
It reminded me of another movie, Everything Everywhere All at Once, in which an Everything Bagel played a key role.
Another great food analogy ;)
