Responses to a few passages from the text "How Do Simulations Know?" by Loukissas

“Being in control of the machine can seem like low-level work.”

Yep, but being in full control yields some pretty great designs. Just like everything else, the devil (and the value) is in the details

“architects try to reconcile the dispersed knowledge of many specialized designers.”

Being able to do this well is the mark of a good designer, or team. The Day that computers can hold a holistic picture in memory, and simulate all repercussions of a building’s design (including political ramifications, and sliding scale of funding based on stylistic considerations) to arrive at a final design with an ambiguous definition of "optimal" will be a day that humans become largely obsolete.

 “…in most cases, a computer simulation is just a verification of what he already knows”

The magic happens when you don’t completely know what the simulation will tell you, and your next step could not have happened without the simulation. Being able to simulate the simulation in your head helps you be more efficient, but in the end there is no substitute for iteration when it comes to designing.

Regarding the passage about engineers spending six months building: The word Architect is derived from ancient words meaning “master builder” it is a shame that in this day and age knowledge has become so specialized that a person finds it difficult to both design and build. Most people don’t have the time to be a builder and a designer. They choose one or the other as a career.

Regarding the tailoring of simulations to the client: Simulations are sometimes sales aids. This is what renderings are for. An architect might use a rendering as a final check to see if the design looks good when represented photorealistically, but it is a final check and not really a design aid.

Regarding “total architecture”: Achieving it is kind of a siren song. If something labeled such comes into existence in the future, I suspect it will just mean that the realm of possibilities has been so constrained through building codes and industry practices that an entire building can be simulated in a virtual environment. Eventually (hopefully) someone will break out of that box, and the “total architecture” model will fail to encompass the new way of thinking.