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COMPREHENSIVE BUILDING MODELING
"What happens to the cost of the building if we add 40 square meters to the lobby?" "What happens to the total height of the building if we use a steel frame instead of a cast-in-place system?" "How will changing the structural system affect the construction schedule?" — Published 2003.0625
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DERIVING LIGHTS FROM PIXELS
Integrating computer-generated building images with real photographs can be an effective addition to the architectural design process. Such composited images can show how a proposed structure will change the existing landscape. — Published 2003.0528
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UPGRADE OR SWITCH?
When the top managers of architecture, engineering, and construction firms make decisions about computer technology initiatives, they have the potential to select affordable systems that will support business goals. But if they lack technical expertise, they need to engage in a creative discussion with their staff, staying focused on business requirements rather than implementation details. These are some of the issues to consider. — Editor — Published 2003.0430
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STREAMLINING PROJECT COLLABORATION
Like many firms that work on a wide variety of architectural projects, San Francisco-based McCall Design Group puts a substantial amount of effort into communicating with clients, consultants, and builders. Maintaining control of this dialog and shared information can be challenging, particularly when a project is undergoing rapid change. — Published 2003.0402
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TOWERING WITH ARCHICAD
When completed, the 90-story Eureka Tower in Melbourne, Australia will be the tallest residential building in the world, rising 985 feet (300 meters) above street level. The builder, Grocon Pty. Ltd., takes pride that this large-scale venture is right on schedule. The construction firm attributes their efficient communications to the decision by Fender Katsalidis Architects (FKAU) to use object-oriented architectural design software. — Published 2003.0226
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LIGHTING LAB ONLINE
To help architects, engineers, lighting designers, and consultants meet or exceed the increasingly stringent requirements of the California building energy efficiency standard known as Title 24, Southern California Edison and other utility companies have been developing tools for the Savings by Design program. These tools aim to help building designers, owners, and managers who often lack an easy way to assess daylighting and electric lighting performance. — Published 2003.0129
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DESIGNS ON INDUSTRIAL TECHNOLOGY
Various architects today are investigating the digital tools of industrial design, engineering, and manufacturing in search of ways to improve processes in the fragmented construction industry. For many reasons — the structure of the industry, the physical size and complexity of buildings, the typically low design repetition factor, and a general cultural conservatism — the design process and products of architecture lag behind those of the manufacturing industries in several ways. — Published 2003.0101
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RENDERING à LA SECHMAN
A high-end digital rendering of an architectural project may look like it was drawn loosely by hand but may nonetheless be the result of a careful process of manipulating precise geometric elements. — Published 2002.1120
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DIVING DEEPER INTO DESIGNS
When architecture students begin learning how to design, they often have difficulty visualizing forms in space and developing a sense of scale. Traditional efforts to overcome these difficulties have centered on the construction of physical models and the drawing of 2D orthographic projections and 3D perspectives. — Published 2002.1023
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PDF WORKOUT
Anyone who uses a computer these days should probably be familiar with the Portable Document Format (PDF). Developed by the software company Adobe, Inc., PDF is used for viewing digital documents such as tax forms or brochures that look just like their paper equivalents. PDF files can be viewed and printed with the free Adobe Acrobat Reader. — Published 2002.0925
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