Every once in a while we need some inspiration to take action. Plan, Prepare, Expect. A simple formula. Unfortunately, most people who begin using Revit expect success, while simultaneously skipping those first two steps. The outcome is invariably failure. Persistence sometimes prevails, but you end up with a headache when it’s all said and done. Planning costs time and preparation costs money. Since most architects have an inversely proportional abundance of the former, rather than the later these days, it seems appropriate to plan for your future success.

I’m a big advocate of planning. Building Information Modeling (BIM) is a complex process, consisting of many things. The right tools can help you adopt this process, and Revit at its soul has the ability to be a transformative technology in the architectural and engineering communities. Ultimately, when used to it’s potential Revit can affect the way buildings are designed and built. That scares non-technical architects, because “tried and true” methods have always worked for them. Have they really though?

The landscape out there is shifting. the design, technology and communication paradigms are shifting. So, if you haven’t bought a ticket on the BIM train yet, or you there, but feel you are simply along for the ride, you need a plan to upgrade to business class. Incorporating BIM into your firm, or from an owner’s perspective mandating BIM on projects is not simply a technology solution. More importantly, it is a cultural, and management issue. Players at all levels of your organization need to be involved in the decision-making process. Additionally, when starting a new project, you need to understand the potential of a BIM workflow by creating an execution plan. The Penn State BIM Project Execution Planning Guide version 1.05 was released last month, and there are some excellent organizational documents there to help you capture critical path information about the project. But this isn’t your only source for this type of information to allow you to develop organizational and project strategies for using BIM.

Autodesk has just this week publicly released a plan to aid in the successful delivery of BIM projects. Titled the BIM Deployment Plan, it is a great framework for starting to have the conversation with your firm project delivery and technical staff. The process is well documented, and incorporates many best practices and experience from my former colleagues in Autodesk Consulting. Read more, and download your copy here. Give it a try and maybe, just maybe, everybody wins.

The official press release can be found here, for those who are interested in the marketing spin.

Archiculture Teaser from arbuckle industries on Vimeo.

FILM SYNOPSIS
Archiculture is a feature-length documentary that explores the role that architecture and design play in our daily lives. The film follows five architecture students through their final senior design projects in order to shed light on the critical issues impacting our built environment.

The Revit Kid.com!: Archiculture – Movie.

Source: Revit Space -> Washington School and Revit.

Not one of mine, credit - Whatcom Museum

Small cities deserve well-designed civic buildings and museums. This is one, designed by the accomplished Seattle firm Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen Architects (soon to be renamed Olson  Kundig Architects), whose body of work is well known throughout the Pacific Northwest and beyond. The building is so nick-named for the 180 foot long double glazed wall which runs like a spine through the entire project and partially defines an outdoor court. The official purpose, at least currently, is the Art and Children’s Museum of the larger organization, the Whatcom Museum. The History Museum will continue to function in the old City Hall building, which is a historic landmark in itself. The new building will be the first museum in Washington State to be built to LEED Silver standards. Here’s the official announcement from the city, which also contains an interesting time lapse video of the construction.

The building shell went up very fast with mostly precast concrete insulated panels. These have a very stone like quality about them which is interesting in itself. The  storefront details are well done, but the double curtainwall Lightcatcher steals the show. I definitely recommend a visit to see the building, and of course the artwork inside. The current exhibits are actually very interesting and feature some prominent artists from around the globe.

I attended the grand opening last weekend among great fanfare. Attendance was free, thanks to a local bank as the event’s sponsor. My only complaints were that on opening day, the upstairs atrium gallery was a little too narrow for the crowds trying to weave their way to the main exhibits. Ironically, the photographs displayed on that wall were of the area’s logging history. Perhaps it was the curator’s intent to create a human log-jam, creating an interactive exhibit. Second, that upstairs level really seems like a programmatic mish-mash. It is a small building, but  seemingly unrelated rooms like an exhibit space and the children’s activity room were next to the director’s glass jewel box of an office, which couldn’t have had more Design Within Reach furnishings if it had been the company’s 1st Ave showroom in Seattle. Lastly, and this isn’t the building’s fault by any means, I was dissapointed that the roof garden over the lobby was not accessible. There are patio blocks and seating out there as well as an informational sign explaining the virtues of the living roof and rainwater collection. I guess I’ll read it another time.

I took a few photos of the atrium, and exterior. The lobby was too full of people to see much, but is a well-designed arrival space. Since it was dusk, these are a little grainy. Maybe it’s time for a new camera, or  should open the manual for once.  FYI: No photographs are allowed in the exhibit spaces, as is typical in most museums. Enjoy.

OK, so it’s not really a house, but perhaps a really good house wine. Every once in a while you find a very intriguing use of technology in architecture schools. Lately, the amount of good work has been not scarce. In this example, however there is evidence of biomimicry, parametric scripting, simple rendering using ambient occlusion, and using Ecotect to present sustainable analysis data in very compelling and rich ways. Bravo Andrea!

Click through to have a taste of Italy:

s h i f t: Digital refining: new winery for “Consorzio Vini Tipici di San Marino” _[boards].

Read on -> Will Render For Food…: Sketchbook Mobile – v1.1.

Autodesk Sketchbook Mobile does look like a cheap thrill, and a way to document ideas quickly. The demo reel has me reaching for my virtual wallet. So, rather than commenting on something I don’t yet have (an iPod touch or iPhone), I turned to someone who does. Here’s the reaction of my good friend Rui Duarte, a designer in the smallest U.S. state (Rhode Island) on his reaction to the tiniest design tool.

After trying it out for a few minutes it just felt right as a drawing tool, the ease of use factor is high and the tool set is just enough in the free version to get almost any idea down on paper. There is a mirror mode that parallels each line making symmetrical drawings a snap (yes symmetry is boring I know). I already carry my iPod touch to client meetings and may be using this app to sketch.

Bye bye cocktail napkins. I will miss how you bleed ink and tear, now get back under my beer. Perhaps we can replace the moleskin one day too… Maybe as early as February if rumors hold true.

Possibly?

After all, who wouldn’t want a mid-sized form factor that could act as sketch pad, movie viewer, traveling portfolio, and wicked game system? Keep dreaming for now, and click on the image for more rumors – caution (MNBSFW).

Sketchbook Mobile does offer an interesting price-point at $2.99, to play and get used to creating art interactively on a pressure-sensitive touch screen. I’m sure people will want to check out big brother, Sketchbook Pro. We may not all be artists, but this app may just let people loosen up a little and discover their inner finger painter.

Here’s the original press release:

It is Alive in the Lab: Announcing Autodesk SketchBook Mobile for the iPhone and iPod touch.

Perhaps a good reason to start pushing for software vendors to get animation of building components into their BIM or CAD applications, besides the cool factor, is this notion of biomimicry. Autodesk has formed a mini-web dedicated to the topic, which seems to have slipped by unnoticed. The concept is wonderful. Why not use nature as inpiration to build buildings that add to, rather than take away from their environment. Is sustainability simply just getting to a balance on the tipping point to success or failure? What has been gnawing away at the gut of BIM is the ability to design and simulate the design features in-place. It’s no fun to pull the design into Max and start adding “ik” controls just to understand the impact of an operable feature. Concurrent design and analysis becomes critical in the AEC world as designers become more sophisticated about the questions they ask their software to answer. Much like an industrial designer can test out moving parts of a machine with Inventor, architects should have the same level of sophistation in their own tools. Perhaps we are soo good at borrowing without complaint, that we are a good target for ‘upselling’. Don’t give us your laundry list of things that might do the job, let’s get the tools to do what we want internally, to avoid the asynchronous nature of exporting and importing peices and parts of a moving puzzle. Oh, yeah… so back to our little green, er red house.

So here, I present the house of the week – yes, it’s the same view as above. Then where did all that glass go? Why, it’s underneath the sliding roof form. Cool. Why? Be patient, and I’ll explain.

While not necessarily an example of biomimicry, this house certainly has the ability to react to it’s environment. When the living room is too sunny, slide some shade over the patio, change the view… it opens up some very interesting possibilities. Click through to see the whole progression.

Sliding House by dRMM – via Dezeen.

OK, this is silly, I know. But very addictive. The controls are interesting and so easy to learn to use. If you are unfamiliar, I’ve embedded a link to one of their tutorials on YouTube. Be prepared for silly-tecture. The return to serious posts will be soon, promise.

YouTube – Spore Building Editor Tutorial.

As part of the History Channel’s Future Cities Competition, here’s a sneak peak at the participants in  San Francisco.

Video: Bay Area architecture firms compete for most realistic and sustainable vision – CNET News.com

It makes one wonder how we quantify all the claims of sustainability in design.  I’ll explore a new toolkit by IES, released for Revit Architecture in a later post that may help.