Had lunch today with Richard Schwartz, founder of SoloMio and Diffusion and one of the original inventors of the Paradox database. He mentioned an old friend of his who had started in architecture and then ended up in software (at Xerox PARC), Steve Harrison (http://people.cs.vt.edu/~srh/).
Looking at his list of publications, it seems like Steve has crossed back and forth between design and computer science – with stopovers in HCI, technology-enabled collaboration, and spatialized multimedia. Prior to PARC he had an architectural career with Skidmore Owings & Merrill in San Francisco. I’m actually surprised we didnt run into his work when we were putting together the International Conferences on Cyberspace.
It will be interesting to contact Steve and discuss how he sees the connection between design education, architectural practice and his later career in software technologies.
