3rd annual CGarchitect.com Architectural Visualization Competition (AVC)

This 'competition' run by CGArchitect.com has a requirement that people enter their best images now to qualify! Qualification round is April 16-21. Actual competition will be from April 23 to June 30.

To quote the site: If you are one of the select few chosen from the qualification round you will be eligible to compete in the 2 final challenges. Full details and rules for each of these challenges will be posted in the CHALLENGES section of the competition site.

Know anyone who might be up for the challenge? Pass on the link...

In any case cgarchitect ought to be one of those 'favourites' in your del.icio.us account. Especially the 'resources' section which contains tutorials and other information designed to assist the development of better images...

It's rather sad that there are only two images labelled Light Studio in the gallery of 10's of 1000's of images: One of them is by Klaus from Lichtplaner - the people in Austria who produce the software:











There are however, 137 Mental ray images like this from Martin Richardson of Flic Digital:

A load of rubbish - otherwise known as the eco-friendly homes of the future | Expat Living | Global | Telegraph

A load of rubbish - otherwise known as the eco-friendly homes of the future | Expat Living | Global | Telegraph

Great headline - but how long have these been around? Old news...

Still an Earthship in France could (just) be considered news.

Algorithms in Architecture

Algorithms in Architecture

Doing the Smart Geometry tutorials? Enrolled in the computer applications animation / scripting elective? This is for you. If only to learn the extreme visual pattern making end of the spectrum of R&D effort that parametric architecture offers.

omnispace: Architecture - a blog worth watching

omnispace: Architecture:

An odd collection of really interesting stuff. Mostly news items. Plenty of interesting links.

No suggestion as to the source. no apparent archives, No listing of the date when items were uploaded just an ambiguous time...

But, if this had an rss feed, worth watching. One is left wondering where all this interesting stuff is collected?

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.

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.

Grand Rapids Art Museum - a LEED Gold Building

The soon to be completed Grand Rapids Art Museum by Kulapat Yantrasast, architect will be looking to be certified under the LEED scheme as a Gold ranking building. If the data is available, this looks to be another useful building to model...

An Argument for continuing to use Flash:

A List Apart: Articles: Semantic Flash: Slippery When Wet

Reading this article, I was almost convinced that there may be a place for Flash on web sites - but it asks for an amalgam of graphic design and programming skills that we don't normally find in one person... A team of people perhaps?

An unusual occurrence - an architect returns to 'complete' his design

The Weissman Museum is to be refurbished and added to by Gehry himself. A building that was modelled in the digital craft courses some 10 years ago - now able to be re-modelled because the changes are sufficiently large..

Several more museum plans to model...

Abu Dhabi Cultural District : The architectural 'stars' are all planning major 'installations' on Saadiyat Island. Gehry, Hadid, Nouvel, and Ando are all involved in different projects...

“Ozeaneum” German Oceanographic Museum

Behnisch, Behnisch and Partners have designed a building to house an Oceanographic Museum, apparently due for completion of construction in Straslund in 2008.

Also mentioned here and here.

Is a 'World Trade Center' a museum?

Plans revealed for a 'World Trade Center' in Oslo - Aftenposten.no By the looks of the building in the ilustration, what we have here is a building with galleries hat are daylit. The fact that the galleries are for temporary exhibitions of one sort or other makes this building end use different but the actual building form not a lot different than an art museum...

Something that might form a Digital Craft model? Definitely!

Even (especially?) a Calatrava has neighbourhood issues

Calatrava unveils tower's latest twist | Chicago Tribune

This makes for a fascinating read - a spire in Chicago being 'sold' by the architect exploiting his artistic ability working with pens on an overhead projector at the meeting, but the most informative part of the newspaper story is the computer animation that was also played at the public meeting that is attached.

Animation and Story Boards - Digital Craft - 26 March 2007

First activity - watch first seven sections of Visions of Light - a DVD on Cinematography from the Film Institute in the USA.

Second - review the voice over commentary of the start of Citizen Kane - the importance of light and shade, plus the use of the lighted window to link cuts / fades in the intro.

Third - the start sequence of Blade Runner

Fourth - reviewed the videos produced by the students in 2004 and 2005

Fifth - worked through several storyboard examples to understand how to document the planned video

Sixth - explored the nature of the type of presentation to be produced at the interim hand in stage after Easter when we will be presenting our ideas to the Music School's composition students.

Seventh - examined the role sound / soundscapes / music plays in movies - diagetic / non-diagetic - cut on action - sound as the means of transition between scenes...

Rendering - Lecture 5 - Digital Craft - 2007

Global Illumination - reviewing what it is and how to do it in Viz using Light Studio and Mental Ray was the pedagogical goal...

The reality?

We addressed the issue of Simulation, Simulacra, Reality and 'Hyper-reality' - more by reference to the issue of perception and the goals of communication via the image - than by a full review of Baudrillard (Wikipedia ref) or of the hyper-reality of Virtual Reality and High Resolution images.

The basic message was that the focus of image making in the course ought to be on communication of a story NOT merely on some highly detailed, high contrast, ray-traced-within-an-inch-of-its-life image. Contrasting images from Final Fantasy with images from Shrek is highly revealing of this. In the former, the focus and the hype of the original release was about the amount of time spent modelling Dr Aki Ross and the realism of the hair, skin and eyes. The truth is that the non-realistic rendering of the characters and the scenography in Shrek is far more involving of the audience, has far more character development pathis and humour. What is important in Shrek is a focus on the story - not the technology. The same should apply to every image produced in the course.

In addition, we reviewed again the tutorial 'Comparing Rendering Techniques' particularly the portion about the use in computer Graphics of bump, opacity and displacement maps. These can be used in normal scanline rendering in Viz. To produce realistic materials in Light Studio one cannot use these techniques - rather one must use special Light Studio materials with applied 'procedural' files that allow far faster rendering than the map approach.

The bulk of the lecture content was focused on the phenomenon of Global Illumination - a means of calculating light distribution in a space. Photon mapping, Backwards and Forwards Ray tracing and Radiosity were all described briefly.

At the end, the ability of the Deep Publish plug in within Powerpoint, Word and Excel to import 3D files so they remain interactive was demonstrated briefly.

Identity 2.0 Keynote

Another vide referenced in the lecture on 20 March - Dick Hardt on Identity 2.0: this is already 2 years old...!

Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us

Movie referred to in lecture 4 - March 20 2007

The Digital Model - Lecture 4 - 2007

Information covered today:

First we checked out another cool example of a Web 2.0 mashup at twittermap and I fluffed around wondering what possible use it could be even though it was instantaneously showing the street addresses of the people who were using twitter.com to described what they were doing 'right now'

The lecture really began with with two presentations by 'guests' - videos from the web, illustrating the value of / potential of Web 2.0:

the first was a video about the importance of digital text - and its definition(s) - Prof Michael Wesch author - found here on his Digital Ethnography web site and here at youtube.

the second was a presentation in Lawrence Lessig style by Dick Hardt of Sxip on the nature of Identity - proof of identity - identity documentation / verification etc in the 'real' world (Identity 1.0) and in the digital world (Identity 2.0) - found here at youtube (NOTE: there is more on the Lessig style at Presentation Zen.

We finished the first hour on issues of quality control in web publishing - covering topics such as:

• absolute and relative links (again)
• how one writes space in a filename on the internet (%20) - to avoid confusion
• how to avoid this with underline characters
• making filenames informative but not too long
• making filenames have some symbolic easy to remember meaning
• file naming conventions
• digital rights / copyright on the web
• open source software as an inspiration for open drawing formats
• the use of the class blog to upload copies of all the material produced in the course
  
• using tags related to the group (e.g. delta, gamma, eta) to label all project related stuff
• using tags that relate to content type e.g. delta_model or delta_filename to allow sorting later
• using several tags on each item (this blog entry is listed under lecture and bbsc303)

In the second half of the lecture we went on to discuss modelling principles... A separate blog entry - yet to be written

Footnote to Green Buildings article: more new museums

I have just completed a note about an article on Green Museums in the Art Newspaper. There are some very interesting notes on new museums planned in the USA in the body of the article:

• Renzo Piano design for the Art Institute of Chicago which can be found on the web here and here and here and apparently "integrates a range of green features including a photocell lighting system that dims as ambient light gets brighter and a double window facade that provides natural ventialtion and light"
  
• Renzo Piano design for the Whitney Museum of American Art that can be found on the web here and here and here
• Frank Gehry design for the Philadelphia Museum of Art that can be found on the web here and here and here
• Herzog and de Meuron (archInform ref) design for the Miami Art Museum that can be found on the web here and here and here (possibly no details available until much later in 2007)
  

Green Museums - a possibility?

The Art Newspaper -- New A brief article in "the Art Newspaper" on the value of 'going green' even in museums. The classic argument that has been promoted by conservators for many years has been that the stringent conditions under which art 'must' be stored are the reason for the highly serviced spaces and hence high energy use of museums. That there might be alternatives to this approach has been discussed, but never proven.

The oft-quoted Gary Thomson book on 'The Museum Environment" can be blamed for a lot: drawers full of unanalysed thermo-hygrograph charts in conservators' offices; the tyranny of the 55%+/-3% RH and 21 degrees C +/- 1degC recommended Humidity and Temperature; but sadly its considerable discussion of the buffering of temperature and more particularly humidity has mostly been restricted in Museum environments to management of storage and display case environments. Unlike the trivial once-over-lightly tone of the Art Newspaper article - a standard journalistic overview of a topic that mentions the US LEED scheme but mentions nothing about the building design. However, it is now possible to find articles on use of building design to manage the internal environment, such as this self-published article: How to design Climatically Stable Museums by Tim Padfield a 'retired museum scientist'.

Back in 1981 and again in 1985 I was involved in the production of two reports on major institutions in New Zealand which were of a design that made their internal environments extremely stable. In one case, the building had no heating system and yet maintained conditions for most of its aretefacts that arguably were better than those now experienced by the artefacts with a full humidity control HVAC system installed. 600mm thick masonry walls, low ventilation rates, large volumes of air and display cases with large areas of internal surfaces of unpainted or unvarnished wood made for thermohygrograph readings that were much more stable than can ever be achieved by electronically controlled on/off running of mechanical plant responding to the changes in the internal conditions in a normal highly insulated / highly serviced box. There was a space in one of these buildings that was conditioned and one could notice the 1 to 1.5 degree drop in temperature below the set point before the heating plant turned on and then a total 3 degree rise before the temperature was 1-1.5degC above the set point and the heating turned off. During this same time the naturally conditioned spaces did not vary noticeably - the graphs were so flat as to appear at first glance to be faulty!

I have been offering this idea as a research topic for students for many years now, to no avail... Some day?

Museums Aotearoa Conference - Auckland 2007

DAY 3: Museums Aotearoa conference, Auckland Museum.











Have been here 30 hours so far. Typing this during the “Museum Architecture Function and Practice” session Friday morning.












I arrived at 9am for the start of Day 2 (Thursday) of this conference, to hear a presentation by Ian Athfield on the Christchurch Museum, Ken Gorbey on the Jewish Museum and Greg McManus director of the Rotorua Bathhouse museum and Jeremy Salmond conservation architects. Later, I heard an elegantly presented presentation by Richard Francis-Jones on his (Australian firm's) design for the refurbishment of the Auckland City Art Gallery. And later in the the day on Thursday, I had the privilege to get behind the scenes of Auckland Museum itself to see the new bits of Noel Lane's design for the refurbishment (rescue?) of the 1960s addition to the museum.

This experience and the Friday session so far has suggested the following ideas for modeling New Zealand museum buildings:
o Auckland Museum – the old and the refurbished (Noel Lane)
o Rotorua (Bathhouse) Museum – 19th C architect – design being ‘completed’ now
o Tauranga Art Museum – David Mitchell of Mitchell Stout architects
o The New Gallery in Auckland – David Mitchell of Mitchell Stout architects (too small?)
o Oamaru Athenaum (too small?)
o The Auckland City Art Gallery (Richard Francis-Jones)
o Canterbury Museum (Mountfort / Athfield?)
o Pataka in Porirua (Architecture +)
o The Dowse Art Gallery (Structon? / Athfield)

AUCKLAND MUSEUM: let’s leave aside the overheating of the top floor conference room in the Auckland Museum (who'd a thought that people would still be designing sloping glass under our sun without external shading?) The kava bowl analogy for the 'intervention' into the 1960s courtyard - now atrium in the Auckland Museum makes for an interesting modelling challenge in the Digital Craft course. Personally, I found the idea of the kava bowl better than the reality - the atrium was a true 'is that all there is?' experience.

I suggest that this building might be modelled by three people to deal with the complexity of the old / new parts. We will still have to deal with the takeover of the older parts of the museum (the 80 year old part) by the curatorial desire to shut out the outside light altogether - darkened rooms; theatrical effects in the words of this (Friday) morning's presentation 'privileging' the artefacts. The Digital Craft modelling exercise is about modelling forms in (day)light and the traditional daylighting of the old building has been closed in / over. Any model of this building for the course will have to work with the traditional daylit design options rather than how the building is used / lit now.



AUCKLAND CITY ART GALLERY: the East gallery in this building has a traditional top lighting scheme and has in a previous refurbishment been destroyed as even a gallery space. The plan is to redevelop this gallery. The plan is also to develop a new top lit gallery. The building has sufficient complexity to allow two people to model. The roof structure has an interesting sculptural elegance. The entry atrium / central focus and access organizer for the gallery visitor experience offers some fascinating potential for light / shade studies. I highly recommend this.

ROTORUA MUSEUM:This is a design that when it was presented troubled me immensely. The director was very proud to state that Resource Consent was obtained in 2 hours. When contrasted with the trials and tribulations faced by Ath with the Canterbury Museum the message seemed to be that to guarantee Resource Consent required a denial of architectural design: just copy a 100+ year old façade and paste it over the outside of a modern box – which is what happens in the Rotorua building.

The director suggested that their plan was merely to complete the original master plan for the building. However, it transpired that the internal planning of these new parts of the building are to be ‘modern’ adaptable gallery spaces – so: boxes that are clothed in 70 tonnes of totara to ‘fit’ with the existing design. Pasting / painting an historic pastiche onto modern boxes..?

That said, this looks to be a very interesting building to model…

CANTERBURY MUSEUM: Ath (Ian Athfield) described a 9 year process of what had been partly design joy and mostly Resource Consent process pain. The analysis he presented of the design was of a building that had been bastardized over an almost 100 year process. The proposed ‘interventions’ had a new modern glass box entry placed into the public face of the existing building, leaving the 80 year old portion intact and breaking into the 1950s kitsch copy of the older façade…

After 9 years the money raised has been given back. The process of restoration of function as well as simple addition has been abandoned. One was left with the distinct impression from contrasting this with the Rotorua experience that kitsch copying of the old is all that will be readily accepted by the community. The question that must be asked is: how has the architecture profession reached this nadir of trust in the general community? Why are architects so little trusted to adapt / alter buildings that the community will not tolerate work of the time, rather than pastiches of the past? People would look askance at someone copying / working in the style of another artist to add to an existing art work – a new panel to a McCahon triptych aping the existing panels anyone?

So little daylight. So little of any merit in the interior spaces to model that I am unsure that this building is suitable as a Digital Craft modeling exercise. Perhaps the atria in the proposed design could be done?

The NEW GALLERY and THE TAURANGA ART GALLERY: David Mitchell waxed lyrical about natural light. He suggested Velcro was a great solution to the problem of the ingress of unwanted light. I was reminded of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art – a stunning Mario Botta top lit gallery where black sail cloth with sailing technology fittings for the attachments are used to cover the skylights on the few occasions that darkness is really needed.

David presented two of his designs and some images as varied as John Soane’s gallery in Dulwich and Steven Holl’s Kiasma building in Helsinki. Almost all were characterized by large daylight openings between inside and outside. Unfortunately, I suspect both David’s designs are too small for modeling exercises within the Digital Craft course. They could be really elegant little exercises, but not collaborative projects between two or more people.

Pataka: Darcy Nicholas described success of the accessibility of the shopping centre nature of the thoroughfare plus stop off points ‘style’ of Pataka. Interestingly no mention was made of the architect / architecture in this discussion. I believe that this building is a little too simple and has too little daylight to be a successful Digital Craft model. Worth looking closely at the plans though.

The Dowse Art Gallery: Tim Walker’s contribution to the daylight debate at the Museums Aotearoa conference would suggest that this is not a particularly interesting building to model for the Digital Craft course. He suggested that the whole issue of natural light vs black box is ignoring the significance of the exhibition and claimed that the hip hop exhibition the Dowse ran recently could not have been done in natural light! I recall the old (Structon?) design had the daylight permanently excluded. This is one reason why the building has in the past not been modeled in the Digital Craft course. Now it may be different? Worth a look certainly.

Antoine Predock Museum for Winnipeg

Just adding to the list. The 'Eyesore of the month' entry for the month of March is an Antoine Predock design for the Museum of Human Rights... A roasting as usual. The form, if daylit, may make an interesting challenge if drawings are available.

Check the architect's web site....

We have done buildings by him in the dim (1999)and dark (2004) past. and I note that there are others of his we have not done...

The Crystal at the Royal Ontario Museum

Last year I visited Toronto to present a paper with a colleague at the Architecture Music Acoustics conference. We spent only a couple of days in town, but saw the College of Art and Design - the building on stilts. One of the most intense musical experiences of my life was at this building. A re-enactment of the performance of a Xenakis piece (La Legende D'Eer) "...a powerful 7-channel electro-acoustic composition which Xenakis created in 1977-78 to be played in "Le Diatope", a curvaceous architectural construction designed by the composer, together with a visual component including laser lights. ... composed for the opening of the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris..."




Just around the corner from the from the College was the street where Frank Gehry apparently grew up. In wandering around to this and to find brunch we came upon a building that in the first version of this blog last night I thought was the one illustrated here and here. However, it turns out this is some more Libeskind. It is no wonder that it bears little resemblance to the billboard illustration that I photographed last year for the Art Gallery of Ontario. I am interested to see on this web site (where the current pictures are from) how things develop.

And yet another blog about architecture listing museums

Check out this link
It is to a blog known as architecthophilia written by a person from Montserrat... The link is a search of museums on their blog. A couple we did last year. Some are very new and may not have (sufficient) plans ...

Steven Holl’s Knut Hamsen Museum in Norway

Steven Holl’s Knut Hamsen Museum in Norway at // world citizen

Assuming it is possible to find anything useful about this building's dimensions, this could be an interesting building to construct. I am not hopeful you will be able to find or use anything useful on Stephen Holl architect's own web site

Simulation, Simulacra and Baudrillard

"Welcome to the desert of the real."

Somehow it seems entirely appropriate that as I start to write this two men in pink dresses are chatting about the meaning of life on the TV station channel running in the corner of my computer screen. I was looking through my RSS feeds for interesting references on museums and discovered obituaries from The Telegraph and The Times on Jean Baudrillard and - perhaps the most erudite - The Guardian online.

As my research interest is in the field of environmental design decision support tools (eddst's) in architecture it is inevitable that I have come across references to M. Baudrillard. If one is a 'simulationist'
as I am, then one expects discussion of what exactly is the reality one is simulating? However, what was interesting was to ask the nature of the environments we simulationists are 'predicting' in a world where (to quote the Telegraph) "a leading post-modernist thinker and social theorist [is] best known for his concept of "hyperreality" - the theory that modern man can no longer tell what reality is because he has become lost in a world of "simulacra", images and signs created and presented as "real" by the mass media;..."

Where does the hyper-real image of the daylight in a building fit in this theoretical framework? Does it matter? Say we take Doug Mann of the University of Western Ontario at face value:

his central claim about postmodern culture (thought he claims that he himself is not a postmodernist) is quite simple - that we live in a "desert of the real," a cultural space where television, film, and computer images are more "real" to us than the non-media physical reality that surrounds us. This loss of reality isn't so hard to understand, even if it's difficult for some of us to swallow.

Then to what degree do we redefine people's expectations of buildings by showing them this building performance simulation hyper-reality?

Derrida in 2004 and now Baudrillard - who will the obscurantists turn to next?

Wikipedia reference.

Web Pages and the Exercise hand in

The lecture today trawled through the web page tutorial.

We covered the following issues:

• style sheets separate content from presentation
• one could therefore have one page with several style sheets for the computer / telephone / TV viewer to control how the content appears best in each medium
  
• one can therefore change the look and feel of multiple pages if they all refer to the same style sheet, just by editing the style sheet
  
• w3.org maintains standards that we try to make our web pages conform with
• w3.org insists on some standards that make our web pages more accessible (e.g. alt keywords or explanations for images)
• html - HyperText Markup Language uses to mark content e.g. "<"body">" and ""are two tags that appear either side of the content that is to appear in the 'body' or main part of a web page (quotes missing of course - they are there to make these tags appear on the blogger page)
  
• in html the information that appears between "<"HEAD">" and "" will not appear on the web page at all but contains 'meta' information about the page
  
• meta tags could be keywords - appearing inside a tag that reads "<"Meta keywords = "keyword1, keyword2, keyword3" ">" <
• meta tags could also label the "<"TITLE">" "" which contains the title of the web page which appears inside the title bar at the top outside edge of the web browser window
  
• If we use the site function in Dreamweaver to set ourselves up with a local copy and a web viewable copy of our web page, if we change the linking of our page by say changing a file name then Dreamweaver will update all the files that reference the renamed file in the whole site
• only content that is inside the root directory of our local copy web site will be uploaded to be viewable on the remote / web copy
• the language for uploading within the FTP protocol used by Dreamweaver to upload files to the web server is to PUT
• the language for downloading within the FTP protocol used by Dreamweaver to download files from the web server is to GET
• one should ensure that one's use of the internet bandwidth is responsible: e.g. files such as images should be downloaded in the size at which they are to be viewed, not resized by the web page when
  
• to ensure good bandwidth use in the current digital craft exercise: make the 10 images at a reasonable size: then make much smaller copies - thumbnails - Insert the thumbnails as images in your web page and link to the larger images...
• the tag for an image is "<"img src="filename.jpg" ">" this inserts a file whose source is filename.jpg - note the source could be a web reference
• it is considered stealing bandwidth to point to another person's image with a web reference - so that your page loads from your server cheaply, but then loads their image from their server; one should also acknowledge their contribution.
  
• It is considered a mis-use of copyright to save their image and to insert it as if it was yours
• A reasonable manner of using the image might be to save a copy of their image, thumbnail it locally and insert your 'edited' version into your web page with a link and alt text acknowledging source - referencing back to their page/site

Here is one of my recent pictures - from the Circus performance last Saturday at Queen's Wharf - and inserted as an image from Flickr - another way of representing a file and using an online web service (Flickr) to 'serve' the image to the reader.


We also covered the render process for the hand in next week.

Essentially it is a simple process insied Autodesk Viz 2007:

1. Follow the tutorial to each CAD file into Viz. (This will necessitate having exported an AutoCAD drawing format file from AutoCAD ADT and a 3D Studio format file from ArchiCAD)
   
2. Open the material browser in Viz (the button with the coloured balls on it)
3. Open the LS_Mat_eng material file from the P:\Light Studio directory (ticking 'incompatible') and then place some materials into the material slots in the editor
4. Save the Viz file as a filename_ls light studio compatible file.
5. Replace the Light Studio materials with their architectural equivalents in the material editor and save again this time with a filename_mr name suggesting it is Mental Ray compatible
6. Within each LS and MR file set up a sunlight 'system' - a normal sunlight system in the Mental Ray file and a Light Studio system in the Light Studio file
7. You will want to place a camera inside the building for the interior views.
8. Once a camera is placed, you can right click on the viewport name in Viz and select the camera view to be the view seen in that viewport
9. Renders in each renderer with materials attached to the walls roof floor and glazing and a quicktime panorama is what is sought in this exercise...
   

Animation Class lecture 3

Today we spent an hour watching and listening to Walt Disney talking about the Plausible Impossible (IMDB). The message for those seeking to explore the role of the architecture in a movie about buildings - 'Architecture as Actor' - is consistency. The various ideas that were discussed by WD were all made plausible because of some vague connection with the real world - momentum for example - and most importantly because they were presented in a consistent manner. The lesson for architecture as actor is to ensure consistency of viewpoint - and if there is a switch, then to ensure that the switch of viewpoint is made obvious in the manner of the switch (perhaps not a cut transition).

The second hour was spent on the first few slides of the 'storyboard' powerpoint. Ref: BBSC / ARCH

For those of you fascinated by the prospect of architecture/building practice in the virtual world

Second Life's population problems - Computerworld Blogs



This blog puts some of the hype about second life into perspective.It's clear that this community that I found gets very boring very quickly is only used by a small number of people. (57,000+ does not seem small, until one thinks about the total number of people who the hype suggest might be 'users'.



What I found most interesting about the blog was not the second life stats but the suggestion that 84 million Americans have home broadband and of these more than 5 million a day are taking tours in virtual space....

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'Hero' architect builds green - but is it different?

TOWERING EXPECTATIONS / S.F.'s new federal building challenges ideas of what a government high-rise should look like -- its humane design is green, dazzling One of the interesting architectural design questions people have tackled over the last 30 years has been the idea that green buildings might define a new aesthetic.

Back in the late 70's, the question was would a passive solar non-residential building define a new aesthetic. There was even some speculation about the inclusion of some of our other senses in the definition of aesthetics. Could a definition of the spiritual values of a welcoming warmth in winter and 'coolth' in summer; a calm quietness; become a new aesthetic?

Now, however we have a corporate architecture that is allegedly more comfortable because it is naturally lit and naturally ventilated. However, looking at the illustrations, I wonder whether the future of this brave new idea is to be similar to the critical acclaim / popular opprobrium of that wonder of mid last century the new brutalism...?

Architectural Record News | At Long Last, Museum for African Art Finds a Place to Call Its Own

Architectural Record News | At Long Last, Museum for African Art Finds a Place to Call Its Own - another museum to model? A Robert Stern design. In Manhattan. Illustration on this web site looks potentially interesting. Risks being a corporate clone dog's breakfast because it incorporates "116 housing units on top...".

Animation class Lecture 2

The lecture on Monday covered some of the basics of film making. Ignoring these principles make animations about buildings very much exercise in non-communication. I presented a pre-cursor of the whole course by introducing the classic film maker's handbook: The Five C's of Cinematography'.

My suggestion is that understanding these principles will significantly alter what people want to render/represent and hence will alter how / what they animate. In the 403 course we are examining the notion that the Scene (the building(s) can be the Actors, rather than the backdrop...the scenery.

We watched

• an extract from Lawrence of Arabia - focusing on Omar Sharif and the interminable ride out of the desert to meet Lawrence that is, as I understand it his first Western feature
  
• a 'teaser' from a Walt Disney - Disneyland - presentation of the 'Plausible Impossible" - preparing people to answer the question that will be posed next Monday: find your own example(s) of plausibly impossible acts in movies
• a 30 minute doco on the Satolas station near Lyon by Calatrava - what works and does not work; what genres are being accepted by us when we understand the content of the doco
  
• 
  

Seoul National University Museum

OMA/Rem Koolhaas - Seoul National University Museum :: arcspace.com
This is a building I visited last year - inside and out, but was unfortunately unable to take the interior shots shown in this Arcspace entry. Definitely fun though very much a visual one-liner with the large cantilever emphasising the simple rhomboid form as shown by the near end in the photo.






Having visited this and the Casa da Musica in Porto, and been impressed by both these little jewels, I find it hard to imagine that this is the OMA outfit responsible for their proposed Louisville fugly building. (See the earlier post on eyesore of the month web site).

Archinect - online journal AND people who developed blog of architecture schools

Archinect - Making Architecture More Connected (since 1997) I have checkedand found that I have apparently not pointed to these people before... Strange. Because their blog of blogs from architecture students around the world was something I found around two years when setting this blog up. Check out the Architecture School blog - it still has many blogs from many schools - but quite a number are defunct and archived: including the one from our school. A couple of years ago the blog of blogs looked like a brave new experiment in world wide communication. It begins to look more and more like a failed experiment...

I can only speculate what the issue is. It seems to me that the problem may be that there were no linking issues. In its early days it looked like a collection in one place of online diaries - with no other linking theme. Without that theme I wonder whether there is any major incentive to return to the site to participate.

That said, the news value of the site is high. The RSS feed is definitley worth subscribing to. The writing is hardly the insight yet of a Beard Goldberger or Huxtable (Ref 1, Ref 2, Ref 3) - it seems to describe rather than critique (but then I have not read it all).

Pictures of Ugly Buildings!

Eyesore of the Month by James Howard Kunstler The pictures here are just SO much fun. Don't always agree that the buildings photographed have no redeeming features, but this seldom misses the mark pointing out 'how little clothes the emperor is wearing'. Perhaps he could borrow from the fashion mavens who coined the term used here:fugly?


Interesting opinions about buildings. This is apparently someone who likes this:

Romantic at heart?












Hates buildings like this: (understandable)













And has nothing good to say about either of these buildings: (which I have to say I like - from the pictures). We've even modelled this first one in the Digital Craft course.

A Blog to promote a book

City Comforts, temporarily known as Viaduct, The Blog Despite the book promotion focus - this has some interesting comments. I really like the review of the Disney Hall in LA. The description of what works and doesn't work expresses my own conflicted feelings about this jewel of a building and its relevance / position in a street as a contributor to urban quality.

I should add that attending a concert at the icon made me feel a lot more comfortable with the building as a place / destination. The quirky circulation serves only to enhance the spatial experience.

Museums to model in the UK...

And yet another potential source of inspiration.

Museums to model in New Zealand ...

Another source of ideas...

Virtual Museums

Possible source of information on Museums to model - Virtual / unbuilt?

Makng "Algorithmic Forms" with Revit

1-2-3 Revit: BIM and Algorithmic Form Finding - Parametric change engine provides advanced modeling techniques for exploring innovative real-world building designs. - Cadalyst AEC Check this out... Something to try if you are bored with the Villa Savoye tutorial!

The Digital Craft course 2007 began today

Two hour lecture - February 27 2007:

After Catherine Nelson had presented the excellent self-help guide to healthy use of the computer, we covered the following topics:

The Course Objectives
The Tasks to be completed to meet these Objectives
Task 1 - the tutorial exercises in Archicad, AutoCAD ADT and Revit - plus Viz render
Task 2 - collaborating in the construction of a complex digital model of a daylit gallery
Task 3 - creating a blog and web page to summarise the digital modelling
The Assessment Contract - and its role in reducing stress and workload
Workload management

And an introduction to Web 2.0 - merely promising to talk about it soon.
Web sites mentioned:

• Flickr - look for the tags
• This blog
• The 1998-2005 web sites produced by students in this course
• The 2006 web site/blogs produced in this course
• Del.icio.us - more tags as a means of organising my bookmarks
• Youtube - tagging videos
• Myspace - tagging friends' web pages
  

AND a late night footnote: 'Are you blogging this?'

Frank Gehry is interviewed by the Wall Street Journal - and it's insightful!

OpinionJournal - Featured Article
Apropos of nothing in particular: I was searching for some stuff for the BBSC 303 Digital Craft Course and came across this interview. It's not often pieces like this give you an insight - no matter how processed by the inevitable interviewee desire to sound good...

Architectural Record: now an online magazine

Architectural Record: The resource for architecture and architects
Architctural Record the magazine - has a feauture called Building Types Study which means searches for museums will reveal a whole range of new project ideas to follow....
It's also a great resource for things architecural. They have a set of blogs of architecture related blogs such as news and 'great projects'.

Former Bus Terminal as New National Design Center for Hungary

Architectural Record News | Hungary’s New National Design Center Takes Shape in a Former Bus Terminal
A converted bus terminal as a 'gallery'. Another interesting building to model.... An architecture very distinctively of the 50's re-used.

A really Annoying web site - for Steven Holl

STEVEN HOLL ARCHITECTS

Another Flash powered web site that provides no information - no intelligence, but rather annoys in its rich organisation and anally controlled access to the information it allows you to see. No mashups of this info with Google Maps!

Contains some interesting links to new museums - a successful practice.

Convenient Truth Contest: How to Enter

Convenient Truth Contest: How to Enter An opportunity to make a statement - a video about what could be done to deal with the issues in 'An Inconvenient Truth'

Some thoughts on CAD in Architecture generated by reading 'Futures Exploding' [ Alexander Pincus ] [ Architecture / Research ]

Budapest Bank Tower - Futures Exploding - [ Alexander Pincus ] [ Architecture / Research ] This, it seems to me, what might begin to define a debate on the way we might use the computer not merely to replicate paper processes but to extend architecture into realms of thought or process that might define an other experience. If you link to this blog topic by Alexander Pincus who apparently works for Asymptote you will find his own work has a self-applied tag of 'Empty Formalism'. It turns out that Alexander did a presentation in March 2006 at the 'Banff Session 2006' where the Asymptote architecture was described in these terms. Check out the links - engage in the debate - decide for yourself.

My 2 cents worth? With all the hype about BIM, it seems to me that there is a lot of rhetoric about the role of the computer in architecture, but little substance or clear direction. There are the people who are exploring the various strands of blobitecture, in what I tend to see as often degenerating into "empty formalism" and 'documented' by simplistic computer graphic images that 2 weeks playing with 3DS Max could easily produce. What is exciting in amongst all this is the people who have taken the time to understand the craft of 3D digital modelling. Someone who understands what a family is in Revit and who uses it to explore how this might be expressed in built form is to me genuinely exploring the future of the role of the computer in architecture. This is what is interesting about Robert Aish's Smart Geometry work. It seems to me that in amongst the 'Empty Formalism' of the forms that often illustrate the presentations on this new software, there is the thread of a very new way of thinking about buildings. Alexander Pincus refers to a Smart Geometry model of one of his Asymptote designs produced by David Farnsworth - structural engineer of Arup London. Here he says the engineer was able to

resolve the geometry of the tower’s unique structural system and enable the structure to redistribute itself based on changes to the buildings overall geometry

Now that sounds like a re-thinking of the way we build IF the geometry - the formal design expression - is linked to and interacts with the structure.

What is also of interest with Smart Geometry is re-thinking the geometry - the architectural relationships underlying a building. My (limited) experience with SG suggests that it will take quite some time for a person to start thinking through the structuring of a model of a building so that it permits exploration of the design principles of the building. It's all very well imagining the possibilities of re-configuring a design based on some axes, proportions or other fundamental design principle. It is another thing altogether to build these dependencies in from the beginning to allow the exploration of form to happen later. If, as is apparently happening with the Pincus/Farnsworth model these dependencies are modelled in such a way that the structure and construction can also be dealt with then we truly have a new paradigm of design.

The struggle that I see holding things back, and making 'empty formalism' easier than genuine re-thinking of the architectural design paradigm, is that until people develop sufficient experience for the craft of modelling with SG to be innate and not conscious, it is far easier to construct a rich dependency SG model of an existing building or drawn idea than it is use SG as a modelling medium in its own right. Watch this space. I will have 10-15 people exploring the potential of SG over the next 12 weeks...

Footnote: Because I thought that this was an important topic I have looked a little behind the scenes. The problem with the web is that obscure web sites like Alexander's could easily be proffering a poorly based/researched personal opinion. On the 'Current events' portion of the Asymptote web site, which has one of those really really annoying Flash based non-searchable wizzy-for-no-purpose interfaces, the most recent note suggests that "Hani Rashid will be a guest lecturer for the Banff Session 2006 event entitled DESIGNfronts..." This suggests that Alexander is indeed a member of staff at Asymptote. His 'about'entry also notes he works at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. He is listed by Columbia as an assistant in Asymptote principal Hani Rashid's "advanced architecture studio".

Architectural Record News | AIA, Harris Interactive Poll: Empire State Building Tops the List of Beloved U.S. Buildings

Architectural Record News | AIA, Harris Interactive Poll: Empire State Building Tops the List of Beloved U.S. Buildings Yet another example of how surveys have all sorts of in-built biases. One might at first glance be tempted to rate this list as demonstrating that old is better in the eyes of the average punter. Top 10 includes a bridge and three sculpture / memorials. But recognition factor and exposure might be more telling here. The USA being so large that people from the East will often never have travelled all the way out west and may even take great pride in the fact... Nationally known monumental buildings become the only possibility at this point.

If one wanted to get really disappointed, one might look at the Las Vegas Bellagio appearing at number 22 as being a much more disappointing result. My reaction to that building when I walked through it last December was: fun fountain; great Christmas decorations; facarditecture was even more anonymous than expected. In this case instead of gilding the lily we seem to have the designers (one hesitates to call them architects) gilding a thorn bush.

To return to the theme: that Taliesin West and the Robie house by Frank Lloyd Wright appear after the San Francisco International Airport seems to me to highlight the recall factor and the status and experience of the people who voted, more than the genuine worth of the buildings listed in the eyes of the voters.

People talk about chart junk invading graphs and destroying our understanding of the underlying data by decorating the graphs rather than contributing to understanding. This to me is much worse: pseudo-systematic 'surveys' of a group of people whose characteristics and preferences are unknown and representing their vaguely gathered opinions as a genuine viewpoint...

| Natural Frequency | environmental design journal to encourage, inspire and assist every building designers...

| Natural Frequency | environmental design journal to encourage, inspire and assist every building designers... If this were not Andrew Marsh - the developer of Ecotect I might be tempted to see this as a vanity project. It is an obviously new digital journal with 8 articles all written by Andrew. The topics of his articles make interesting reading. More sensible writing on the theme of building performance simulation and CAD is needed in the industry. The articles on smart modelling and CAD analysis in particular make interesting reading. At present they appear more like informative Ecotect tutorials than fully independent analyses. Nevertheless they do make most interesting reading.

ArchitectureWeek - News - High Museum Reilluminated - 2004.0211

ArchitectureWeek - News - High Museum Reilluminated - 2004.0211 The continuing story of the daylight and the High Museum. Seems th curators won out over the designers for a while - protecting the art works from the UV with interior walls to block the light from outside. Now appropriate shading is being used to bring light in but keep out UV. Why this was not part of the original concept is anyone's guess. White architecture? Glass walls to the galleries? Just asking for problems....

NASHER Museum of Art at Duke University: About Us

NASHER Museum of Art at Duke University: About Us: "The Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University foster" And yet another museum to model?

North Carolina Museum of Art

North Carolina Museum of Art Another Museum to model? Also linked to here

galinsky

galinsky A very West-centric view of the world of architefcture - but then aren't most 'histories of architecture'? This is a set of blog-like entries by individuals listing an eclectic mix of buildings from Europe and the USA with photos, a general 1000 word or so essay and visitor info... Useful if you want to find out what might be of interest, but still as og date of this blog sparse in total number of buildings listed.

Jonathan Glancey on a Cornish housing development powered by the elements | Art story | Guardian Unlimited Arts

Jonathan Glancey on a Cornish housing development powered by the elements | Art story | Guardian Unlimited Arts

Yet more green architecture from the designers of the BedZED flats...

Flashy libraries? I prefer to get my adventure out of the books not the building | Art story | Guardian Unlimited Arts

Flashy libraries? I prefer to get my adventure out of the books not the building | Art story | Guardian Unlimited Arts

Person who cultivates the batty old woman image writes interesting piece - is she losing it or is there a brain behind the batty facade? An interesting user's perspective on building design and usability / spirit of place. Flashy Peckham library in south London architecture is by Will Allsop

139 vivian street - Google Maps

139 vivian street - Google MapsGoogle Maps now gives street directions for people in New Zealand. Not sure if I want to forgive them for listing us in their announcement as directions now available for Australia. Given it's 3 hours minimum on a fast 'plane to fly from here to there ... Anyway - yet another reason to get ubiquitous wifi and or 3G services and for me to upgrade the 'phone.

What is the answer to HTML, Web 2.0 and everything? | StressFree Solutions

What is the answer to HTML, Web 2.0 and everything? | StressFree Solutions

Don't know how he does it! - David Harrison has found another excellent Web2.0 resource. A 'viral video' that has explored Web 2.0 technologies visually - I am convinced it talks to the converted and those in the know better than it describes anything for the newbie. An in-joke. Nevertheless, visually clever and rich in content.
Direct link

Diff for "VirtualBuilding" - ArchicadWiki

Diff for "VirtualBuilding" - ArchicadWiki
Nine Archicad videos hosted on YouTube on the BIM model. For those who like podcasts...

TenLinks.com - Ultimate Directories for Technology Professionals

TenLinks.com - Ultimate Directories for Technology Professionals A very useful resource - at least at February 2007. Not just listing the top 3D software, but also for each package listing the top internet resources available for each...

Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional: AECbytes Product Review

Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional: AECbytes Product Review
So: version 8 of Acrobat is available. This review examines the usefulness of this new pdf creation tool. It points to the imminent release of the new version of Acrobat 3D as allowing improved 3D interactive publishing in pdf format.
What is argued here to be an improvement in the v8 vanilla Acrobat is its ability to batch process output from AutoCAD - to produce a set of 'drawings' in separate pages of the pdf document. Where this places Adobe relative to the AutoDesk dwf format I leave to others to comment on. What is interesting is to note that apparently Adobe are talking to Nemetschek - the vendors of Vectorworks and the purchasers of Graphisoft, who produce ArchiCAD. Where this may lead, in terms of the dwf vs pdf format is anyone's guess.

Clip/Stamp/Fold: The Radical Architecture of Little Magazines - Architecture - Review - New York Times

Clip/Stamp/Fold: The Radical Architecture of Little Magazines - Architecture - Review - New York Times

A to have a local newspaper which had content like the New York Times ona regular basis?! This article is about a gallery exhibition on small architectural critique magazines of the 1960's and 70's which: is " a piercing critique, intended or not, of the smoothness of our contemporary design culture. These magazine covers map out an era when architecture was simmering with new ideas. You’re bound to leave the show with a nagging sense of what was lost as well as gained during the electronic juggernaut of the last three decades." ..'nuff said...

Diller Scofidio Renfro's First U.S. building ICA Boston

Diller Scofidio Renfro's First U.S. building
The Blur pavilion in Switzerland was just too easy to model! Now hopefully we have a building design we can tackle in the modelling course... Also referred to here

SPACES; Museum Sparkles; Bayshore Looks Fake

SPACES; Museum Sparkles; Bayshore Looks Fake
In amongst this description of how a waterfront mall is 'Theme Park Retro' is a reference to the ' cool and contemporary Discovery World' building by Hammel, Green and Abrahamson. Potentially another modelling opportunity?

Peter Cook

Peter Cook
And I thought Peter Cook had switched firms and gone to work with the great architect in the sky! Certainly did not expect to find him writing 'I told you so' pieces for online magazines.
It's refreshing to hear someone who is suggesting that borrowing from the theories of other disciplines has limited use in one's own discipline (linguistics for Strauss/de Saussure ideas of a fundamental 'deep structure' to architectural language; Deleuze and company for some idea of - well what exactly - analogies about time / experience and the unfolding of space?; Derrida for an obscurely worded deconstruction of the 'text' - whatever text is in architecture, surely not just the writing about architecture? - where the understanding of the philosophy cannot be disentangled from the understanding of the philosopher;) However, it's hard to see this as other than an argument that the craft tradition of sitting at the feet of the 'prominent architect' in class, are employed by them and then eventually strike out on their own to become the next gen's 'prominent architect'.

I have always understood that the idea of a university education was to challenge, to advance, to analyse and to develop the status quo - not merely to perpetuate it. The institution provides the distance from practice to allow this to occur. Sitting at the feet of the 'prominent architect' is more likely to develop clones. Still: well worth the read.

Museum of Contemporary Art | Denver, Colorado | MCA

Museum of Contemporary Art | Denver, Colorado | MCA
According to the MCA the proposed design by British architect David Adjaye is "...at once bold and refined...". The image they are selling it on is not quite the Daniel Libeskind Denver Art Museum which "... looks as though a volcano has exploded with an immense pile of ship parts, jewel-faceted boulders, and giant titanium pterodactyl beaks." Denver is apparently advancing an image of cultural sophistication to belie the cowboy image of the past. Another building to find more out about for modelling?

Cultural District of Saadiyat Island - Abu Dhabi - Architecture - - New York Times

Cultural District of Saadiyat Island - Abu Dhabi - Architecture - - New York Times
All the usual suspects. In the words of the article: "... celebrity architects Frank Gehry, Jean Nouvel and Tadao Ando, as well as a sprawling, spaceshiplike performing arts center designed by Zaha Hadid." but a new locale: Abu Dhabi. Definitely worth exploring through 3D modelling.

The New, New Museum

The New, New Museum


Another museum building for New York. Designed by Sejima + Nishizawa/SANAA of Japan. Looks like one that could be really interesting to model. Hard to tell from this web site, and their own web site is a useless place marker. However, the new book, may be a good source of modelling info.

UCL Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis - Virtual London: Online Participation

UCL Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis - Virtual London: Online Participation
University College London's Virtual London - Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA). An interesting concept, but a not so interesting web page description of the project and where it's at. Much more interesting is the Digital Urban blog from someof the staff / students at CASA.. Their gmap software for Google Earth enhancement

The Neighbourhood

The Neighbourhood
a new architectural cinematography firm. Featured at the Vismasters Design Modelling and Visualisation Conference associated with Imagina uropean 3D visualisation forum - Monte Carlo Feb 2 2007