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...