This address will be presented by Phil Bernstein, Associate Dean and Professor Adjunct at the Yale School of Architecture.
The fraught relationship between designers and builders can trace its origins to the Enlightenment, and many of the challenges and pathologies are apparent in the modern-day dynamics between architects and contractors.
While digital technologies create tantalising possibilities for innovation in industrialised construction, prefabrication, and modularity, those same tools will either enhance or even further erode the relationships, obligations, and profit margins of the players in the delivery systems of building, where data is the numerator and business models the denominator of the mathematics of modernised construction.
This talk will examine this equation and set out strategies for new value propositions of design and construction practice in our era of digital automation.
Phil Bernstein is an Associate Dean and Professor Adjunct at the Yale School of Architecture, where he has taught courses in professional practice since 1988. He is a former vice president at Autodesk, where he was responsible for the company’s Building Information Modeling strategy that included the development of the Revit platform. Prior to Autodesk Phil was an associate principal at Pelli Clarke and Partners (formerly Cesar Pelli and Associates) where he managed many of the firm’s most complex commissions including projects for the Mayo Clinic, Washington National Airport, and Goldman Sachs. He is the author of several books, most recently Architecture Design Data: Practice Competency in the Era of Computation, and Machine Learning: Architecture in the Age of Artificial Intelligence and writes and speaks extensively on topics of practice and technology. He is a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, a Senior Fellow of the Design Futures Council, and former Chair of the AIA Contracts Documents Committee. Phil has been honored twice by DesignIntelligence as one of the “30 Most Admired Educators in Architecture”. He received his B.A. and M.Arch from Yale and is licensed to practice in California.
