With industrial robots, 3D scanners, 3D milling machines and all the high end technology involved manufacturing and construction, people might ask “Why can’t we just get rid of 2D documentation?”

There is a new tendency today to use numerically controlled machines to produce the elements of the spatial structure, bypassing thus traditional 2D documentation. A good example is the architectural practice of Frank Gehry, one of the most prolific and original architects working today. Gehry shifted from traditional techniques to digital ones during the construction of his Art Museum in Bilbao. The simple coordination effort necessary to generate the architect’s signature organic shapes, which by their nature, are hard to describe by typical construction documents, pushed Gehry’s computer gurus to look for solutions outside the profession. They came up with CATIA, a software used by aerospace engineers to precisely calculate, display and produce metal structures and finishes for airplanes. Working sometimes directly with milling machines and computer numerically controlled routers, Gehry bypassed shop drawings for steel fabrication and stone cutting.

It is ironic, the ancient methods and new technologies are not working together. Space design has known a variety of tools during its existence. Computers are only the latest ones. They do not justify the artificial professional division between two fields that are essentially identical in scope: production design and digital set design.