in three easy steps:

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Any Questions?

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.

Looking for ways to save money on training? Why not attend a short focused event that will provide high value at an affordable cost? The following topics are announced:

• Nov 13 @ 10AM PST – Integrating: Revit with Ecotect – 2 hours
• Nov 23 @ 10AM PST – Secrets of Revit Conceptual Massing – 2 hours

Integrating: Revit with Ecotect

Looking for ways to integrate sustainable design into your current workflow, or simply a way to work smarter? Perform analysis of building designs when it has the most potential rewards, during conceptual design. Seating is limited, so sign up today.

Topics Covered:

• Using Revit conceptual models
• Preparing a Revit project model
• Export options for gbXML
• Compelling reasons for exporting to DXF
• Optimum Ecotect import settings
• Considering site and weather conditions
• Applying parametric rules to Ecotect objects
• Performing early daylight and thermal analysis
• Iterative design and optioning

View the full course information, and sign up today at EventBrite.com

Secrets of: Revit Conceptual Massing

Revit Architecture 2010 has some very powerful conceptual design tools, but for those migrating from earlier versions of the software using these new tools can be daunting at first. If you want to understand how to create flexible, parametric building forms this class is for you. We will cover the essentials of the conceptual mass editing environment, as well as how to create sophisticated organic forms. Seating is limited, so sign up today.

Topics Covered:

• The Conceptual Design environment
• The Importance of building jigs
• Pros and Cons of choosing a modeling method
• Working with legacy massing objects
• From box to organic form
• Subtleties of the environment
• Surface rationalization
• Creating and extending panel families
• Extracting data for design analysis

View the full course information, and sign up today at EventBrite.com

Other News:

Additionally, full course sample agendas are now released for Revit Architecture 2010 and Ecotect Analysis 2010. For more information visit the Training page.

The Revit Architecture production training is part of the Productivity. Fast!™ implementation system. This allows you to get up to speed quickly by combining training with a live project and applied concepts. Mentoring and project assistance is provided ‘just-in-time’ so you can get your work done and capture lessons learned. Below is this four-part system of implementation which allows an entire office, or just a single pilot project to be completed with confidence. Each of these activities is a four-day period, which may be delivered all at once, or as project and team needs require.

• Essentials Course
• Advanced Course
• Project Mentoring and Best Practices (Checkpoint)
• Project Quality Assessment (Post Evaluation)

For more information, visit the Services section of the main website.

http://augiaecedge.com/Current/

Given that Windows 7 Release Candidate is still available legally for public testing, and Microsoft has wisely switched to Akamai as their provider, I thought “hey, let’s download this thing during lunch”. Well, was I surprised that in 25 minuted I had the whole 3Gb ISO of the 64bit version in hand. Plenty of time to spare, so being that I had recently read that VMWare Fusion will install it, I fired it up and created a new virtual machine in only 20 minutes, after only 3 reboots. I love that my Macbook Pro can mount an ISO with no additional software. What more could be done in the time remaining? The only answer to that would be install Revit 2010. So I grabbed the DVD and bing, 14 minutes later, with one minute to spare I had a newly configured, ready to test system.

The verdict? Very fast boot times, runs better than Vista-64, however, Revit 2010 is very sluggish under virtualization in both OSes. Curses, foiled by the Ribbon yet again. I will next be recreating a Boot Camp partition and report back my findings and some hard numbers. Stay tuned…

YouTube – The Revit 2010 Ribbon – Designing the User Experience.

Wow… Excitingly cool stuff! That preview should help prepare those of you that have expressed anxiety of the inclusion of a Ribbon UI in your favorite design tools. I really think it’s going to be OK. Once you get used to the changes (which might take less than a week of use), you will be productive. When the software is officially released, I give the lowdown on how you can best take advantage of the Ribbon in Revit, AutoCAD, and AutoCAD Architecture.

And by the way, if you want more: Autodesk now has a You-Tube channel with HD content here: www.youtube.com/Autodesk

2009 may well just become the year of the video blog. Cheers.

Occasionally I’m near home, and this is one of those rare weeks. If you are in the Seattle area, the SEARUG (Seattle Revit User Group) is having a lunch meeting this thursday. Perhaps I’ll see you there. The topic this month is “Autodesk Design Review” presented by Rob Bendix, Corporate CAD Manager at MulvannyG2 Architecture. Perhaps I’ll see you there.

www.searug.org or visit this direct link to the meeting.

In my next post, I’ll reveal the secrets to driving with the new steering wheel tools in Design Review 2008.