A Vision (alcohol not included)

This past week has been a great distraction from the last year, which has been one of the few times in the past few years that I have been able to detour from the daily project grind and focus on computing process evolution. To put this in context, it's been an opportunity to explore the use of stereoscopic large scale visualization (more precisely, the use of a CAVE in a VDC process), and the mental retreat has brought with is some enlightenment:

• The future of the architectural project is all about the integrated project team, and everyone working on one model. This is not happening today, as team siloing and planning for risk and lawsuits still define the boundaries that contain the subgroups. The contractual changes of Integrated Project Delivery will overcome one side of the equation, but the software side can only be overcome by vendors, and somebody needs to bitchslap them with the realization of how much time we burn on a project translating files from one application to another.
• Our model data sets are huge, and this is a good thing. 
• Social networking tools may hold a piece of the solution in how architectural teams function. It may turn out to be a necessity of effective project team management.
• Physical, full-size mockups serve a place, but the ability to supplant them with large-scale VR may finally be here.
• We are entering an age of innovation in architectural process, leaving the age of starchitecture.  This requires an open mind towards project delivery, and, more importantly, the perception that the overall project process can be hacked, reordered, and reconstituted into something leaner, more efficient, and one that can both produce better quality and cheaper buildings. 

I am curious to see the next 5 years in architecture - if the current trends hold true, we may be entering a pace of innovation similar to web 1.0, and the revolutionary cycle may leave more than a few traditionalists in it's wake. 

I think I need a drink right about now....