Open Architecture Network

About the Open Architecture Network | Open Architecture Network

Check out this web site. An attempt to re-write the rules on architecture / community / professionalism. Cannot yet see the shape of what might / might not be from this web site. Like many such efforts - it looks good - the idea has an underlying strength (facilitating sharing of resources to overcome adversity - improving the quality / sustainability of housing). But - you can hear the but in my writing? - but, I cannot see how a web site of this type can yet do anything useful? An idea - an app - in search of a use?

Now the organisation behind OAN - Architecture for Humanity - that's a different thing altogether. Check them out and the good ideas and intentions seem to be getting somewhere.

Tate Modern extension by Herzog and de Meuron

Despite opposition, Tate Modern extension wins the go-ahead: "



Another interesting / controversial building to visualise in the Digital-Craft course?

Revit Name Change Announced!

Eat Your CAD
I see on this Bentley/Microstation web site that there is a rumour floating around that Autodesk will change the name of Revit.

The announcement says: "Following the recent news that ADT has been renamed ACA (AutoCAD Architecture), and after careful consideration Revit is to be renamed from 1st April 2007 to ADT to avoid any “potential customer confusion”.

The explanation for this change is probably best found here.

Columbia Memorial Space Learning Center

A 'Space Learning Centre' is probably not a 'museum' in the conventional sense. But it is part of the whole museums as cathedral
notional paradigm shift in urban design.

Well worth a look to see if it is worth modelling.

Parrish Art Museum

A design that has already been scaled down to fit the budget and about which the Museum Director is quoted in this article as saying: “this is a very energetic, adventurous design and it needs somebody who’s far more energetic and adventurous than I am to see it through to the end.”

Another building with very large North Lights.

A Lego version of an Escher Picture

lego_ascending.jpg (JPEG Image, 640x705 pixels) Just for fun!

Mecanoo architects: NKPAC Foyer FLythrough

National Kaohsiung Performing Arts Center, Taiwan. Mecanoo architects.

46 Museums to model?

Museum Expansion, Coast to Coast - New York Times Under a heading of Museum Expansion, Coast to Coast - New York Times the New York Tmes has this fantastic interactive picture showing forty six (count them - 46!) museum projects in the USA alone...

Want ideas about what to model - this is it! Many of them are also illustrated.

museum plaza proposal

OMA Ny design proposal in a fascinating video exposition placing the building proposal in context. A very different 'view' than the one I quoted a few weeks back: http://digital-craft.blogspot.com/2007/02/eyesore-of-month-by-james-howard.html#links

Architecture on the Double - Second Life underwhelms

So there I was in Youtube looking at a couple of architectural links and this was listed as 'related'. A view of using second life for 'architectural design...

I am left hugely underwhelmed, as I was when I took the SL tour ... As I have noted in a previous post http://digital-craft.blogspot.com/2007/03/for-those-of-you-fascinated-by-prospect.html#links the hype about the number of users of SL seems to be just that - hype. This looks like the 'reality' is based on a seriously flawed view of what architecture is / might be. The environment is so diagrammatic, so lacking in atmosphere - charm - subtlety etc that I wonder whether it could ever be anything more than a toy... Simulationists could spend a lifetime exploring how to add light, sound air flow in manner that assisted understanding of the architectural environment, and still not succeed. Whether the work on hdr image viewing devices or auditory enhancement of visual images will be enough only time can tell. At present I prefer to focus on more directly useful and interesting material.

Architecture in Second Life Machinima

More Second Life toy architecture...

National Law Enforcement Museum Virtual Tour

A cheesy animation - 'state of the art' in 2006. An example of the walk thru as advertisement... This is what the Digital Craft animation course is specifically reacting against.

Another Gehry Building to Model?

The Building

Came across this building today. The images online at the Museum site are insufficient to construct a model from - but they come close. At the date of writing - the building is under construction. Oddly, the trace was not a search engine looking for architecture, but a news item on a general site noting Brad Pitt visiting the museum consruction site.