Jonas Runberger

The first meeting since relocating to Architecture & the Built Environment. With Katja and Örjan.
I initiated the meeting by claiming that I need to deliver a result of international high standard in the PhD thesis, and that I therefore need to identify a focus, and work towards this. In parallel, the unique aspects of my work in this respects is the relation between design driven parametric models, and industrial processes. It´s not the gap between parametric design and BIM i am trying to close, it´s the even wider gap between parametric design and industrialized processes. There is a need for additional support in this, and instead of looking for an additional secondary advisor, at this point we decided it´s better to assemble a number of reference people. Two important fields to cover here are parametric design and Information Management, but more may be defined later.
The overall subject of my PhD was set to Architecture. The introduction will define its relation to Project Communication, as well as the time spent at Industrial Engineering and Management.
I then presented the progress of current work in the following tracks:

• Parametric design, through ParaTable, where we are now looking for potential producers, among research units as well as producers in the industry. The table is still considered to be a very good case, in its legibility and well defined area of investigation.
• Information Management and design process development, through my work as Director of Research & Development at ssark. The ADKwiki was briefly introduced, including its capacity to register the history of all transactions, which will be very helpful in order to process the information for conclusions and adaptation to the thesis. There may be a need for an external reviewer, perhaps through seminars, in order to identify reasons for the performance of the development at ssark (in order to understand if results are dependant on personal or structural reasons).
• Techniques and methods, through the Arkus publication. Several interviews have been planned, and I will commence with this work over the next weeks. The interviews and conversations will be presented in very concise form in the publication, and the material will also be useful in the thesis in order to get an updated understanding of the contemporary situation.
• Industrial Processes, through my participation in Skanska Exchange and the Vägverket project (both ssark). I will conduct discussions with our project leaders at Skanska shortly, on order to identify what aspects of the Xchange project that can be opened up and used in the thesis. Once the Vägverket material has been published, that material will also be available.
• Experimentation and teaching, through the work at AA DIP16. At this point, the most clear use are the findings the students do, but Örjan also proposed that an understanding of what techniques we (as tutors in the unit) teach our students, and how they adopt them and make them useful for their purposes is very interesting.

In general, I may identify two main design loops: the Parametric Design loop and the Industrial Desing loop (name is unfortunate but works for now).
I will need to do a new studieplan and a new application form for formal reasons. I need another 20 credits of courses to fulfil the mandatory courses. These may consist of reading on Project Communication.
We will check if we can get funding for a reprint of the licentiate thesis. There is a demand for this, and in particular it will be useful if I refer to the licentiate in the PhD (perhaps they could even be bundled for distribution). It would also be interesting to find a publisher for distribution (suggestions: AXL Books, Arkus, Actar or Arkitektur Förlag).
My final presentation of the thesis will hopefully be set to the first week of June, 2011, which demands additional funding, which Örjan will look into.