On Wednesday, 24th of May 2023, LSBU proudly presented an inaugural lecture by Professor Chris Harty, as part of the university’s inaugural lectures programme for 2022-23.
Professor Harty was appointed as LSBU's new Dean of the School of Built Environment & Architecture in June 2022.
The inaugural lecture was a huge success and was widely attended and during the lecture Professor Harty focused on the impact of technology on design & construction.
Please see below for further details on Professor Harty’s inaugural lecture.
Digital Technologies in Design and Construction
Past, Present and Futures
By Professor Chris Harty, Dean, School of the Built Environment and Architecture, LSBU
Description: There is no doubt that the last two decades have seen an explosion of possibilities and practices around integrating and collaborative digital technologies within design and construction. This has been accompanied by a similarly extensive political and industry commentary on technology’s promise to fundamentally improve the sectors’ working practices, efficiency and societal contribution. This lecture examines where this journey has taken us so far, and where it may be going. I will present a (certainly personal and probably contestable) narrative of the development digital innovation in the digital built environment, told through a series of research projects spanning over ten years. It is a narrative which is partly about progress and partly about proliferation and fragmentation.
It raises questions about the scale of reconfiguration needed by the sector to exploit the advantages and efficiencies promised by digital technologies, or at least by the rhetoric accompanying them. It argues that new technologies often serve to reveal existing and entrenched challenges in the organisation of the sector, rather than being the solution. And whilst there is no doubt that digital technologies are changing practices and have demonstrated significant positive impacts, the question remains where this is leading the sector against the imagined future of efficiency, productivity and value. From early digital coordination of design, through emerging forms of stakeholder engagement to integration of robotics into construction processes, the lecture will try to speculate on what futures may be coming.
