Portrait of Design Professor Richard Garber at Meyerson Hall. Proto by University of Pennsylvania

AIA New Jersey Technology In Architecture Co-Chair Shares His Book

AIA New Jersey Technology In Architecture (TAP) Co-Chair, Richard Garber, AIA, has authored a new book, Building Futures.

All of Richard’s publications have been with Wiley, though Building Futures is the first in which he worked with a local team out of Hoboken, which is Wiley’s US headquarters. Prior, he worked with a group out of the UK on BIM Design: Realizing the Potential of Building Information Modeling book, as well as two issues of Architectural Design (AD) he guest-edited, which include Closing the Gap: Information Models in Contemporary Design Practice, and Workflows: Expanding Architecture’s Territory in the Design and Delivery of Buildings. 

About Building Futures:

Building Futures: Technology, Ecology, and Architectural Practice explores how architects, and the buildings and environments we create, can engage future realities, both abstract and readily understood. These range from climate change and public health to advanced ideas about manufacturing and construction. The text demonstrates multiple and hybrid paths in which building information modeling (BIM) and outgrowth technological processes, including environmental simulation and human-robot interaction, can be utilized in today’s contemporary context, expanding the architect’s agency by focusing on a more conceptual and ecological basis for our work. Moving beyond a basic understanding of the role of computation in architecture and design, the work shows how to think critically and speculatively about technology’s deeper and more lasting impacts on both architecture and society. Topics covered in Building Futures include:

• Technology: information modeling and the relationship between computational and real objects, new approaches to coding in architectural design, and direct-to-manufacture workflows
• Environment: understanding part-to-whole relationships at a variety of scales and the interconnectedness of things, post-subjective architectural approaches to ecology, and new ideas about sustainability
• Practice: revisiting architecture by remote control in the time of new global challenges, and novel ideas about creativity, authorship, and professionalism

Design professionals and practice leaders grappling with the relationship of technology to design pedagogy will use Building Futures to
better theorize and execute their architectural vision. Students in upper-level courses studying technique and theory will also find value
in the work, which prepares incoming professionals for the major changes that the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC)
industry may undergo in the coming years and decades.

“The book prompts us to consider simulating events where architecture and architects could mitigate, redirect or develop
contingencies, in relation to the environment, flows of material and capital, and other “things” that operate from the immediate, through
to almost geological timescales.”

From the Foreword by Robert Stuart-Smith, Director of the Autonomous Manufacturing Lab, University of Pennsylvania

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Richard Garber, AIA, is a founding partner at GRO Architects, whose recent projects include buildings, plans, and communities in
a number of US cities. Richard teaches graduate Architecture at the Weitzman School of Design, University of Pennsylvania, and
has written numerous books and essays, including BIM Design: Realizing the Creative Potential of Building Information Modelling
(John Wiley & Sons, 2014), and was guest editor of AD Closing the Gap: Information Models in Contemporary Design Practice
(Wiley, 2009).

Wiley_Building Futures_ Technology, Ecology, and Architectural Practice_978-1-119-82921-8

Here are links to each book from the publisher:

Building Futures (2023): Building Futures: Technology, Ecology, and Architectural Practice | Wiley

Workflows (2017): Workflows: Expanding Architecture’s Territory in the Design and Delivery of Buildings | Wiley

BIM Design (2014): BIM Design: Realising the Creative Potential of Building Information Modelling | Wiley

Closing the Gap (2009): Closing the Gap: Information Models in Contemporary Design Practice: Architectural Design | Wiley