The Planungsnetzwerk geo-Innovation of the University of Karlsruhe is organizing its second symposium on the 23rd of april in Karlsruhe. Its all about gis, web 2.0, experiments within urban context with gps and geodata.
Contributors are amongst others the openstreetmap (see also Thomas article openstreetmap) and the unortkataster.

I have always been a sucker for consistent and smart graphical user interfaces, and work as such mostly on OS X. But I am even more of an efficiency, as in shortcuts, advocate. There are very few applications which balance the rather mouse oriented OS X interface with a smart shortcut system – Aperture being a positive example. Diametrically opposed to the Mac approach is Autodesk’s Autocad application, a technocratic and absurd mess of an application full of inconsistencies due to heritage, which still has a nerdy 1984 feel to it. Nonetheless, I love it. All comments are accessible via a command line, which enables you to just draw on a icon-free black canvas with the mouse hand, while the other hand rests on the keyboard typing out commands (we have discussed the notorious maxwan autocad shortcut system before). Purity. Zen.

This week Autodesk put up a survey on their site asking Acad/Mac users what features they would like to see most (and first) in a AutoCAD on OS X version. The survey is detailed enough to suggest that Autodesk really means it: Acad on OS X would eliminate one of the last reasons to ever boot into Windows again, and make me happy enough to jump around. It seems to be a chance to throw all that legacy ballast over board and give us a lean Autocad. But this will most probably stay a dream, and we’ll probably get another layer of weirdness added to Autocad. But we’re enthusiastic about Acad on a Mac nonetheless, and thus urge you all to participate in the survey to give it some momentum.

I’d like to point the german-speaking among you to the ChaosRadio Podcast Issue on Open Street Map. The Open Street Map (wikipedia entry) project is a collaborative effort to create maps without many of the licensing restrictions of other, proprietary, sources (OSM uses the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 license). Even though the map is the most visible feature of the project, it is mainly a data-collection effort. Additional information, as in the case of a road data like the amount of lanes, driving direction or speed limits can also be stored in the OSM database. This data can than be rendered in a multitude of ways and styles, like in other GIS systems. In contrast to these systems which cover the professional market, open street map has a more comprehensible interface. At this time about 70.000 people have registered at the project site.

The community is most active in central and northern Europe, and that is reflected in the amount of data and layers you have in the maps. Whereas in areas with an active community the data set is quite detailed, as for example in Berlin, other areas are blank – depending where the focus of the participating community lies. So in some spots you have information down to public phone booths, post boxes and bus stops, whereas in other regions even names of main streets are missing. In that respect the project is comparable to the early wikipedia, and might well grow to similar importance.

Google also realised this and thus created a similar project inside the Googleverse, called Google Map Maker. Google hopes to ‘crowdsource’ the costly drawing of maps. All rights of the content created by the community go to google, though, in contrast to the OSM model.

As far as special layers are concerned – historical, or data for specific projects – google still has the edge, as there is no way yet do to that in OSM. I hope this will be possible soon. A basic way to do collaborative mapping projects with google maps is by creating a kml layers via “My Maps” at maps.google.com, if you have a google maps account. I recently implemented that for a TU Delft workshop, see the example here.

Wonderland, a young architects network initiated by a group of former Berlagers, is now offering their Wonderland Magazine as a free PDF download. ‘Getting Started’, ‘Making Mistakes’, and now ‘Going Public’ – the titles of the first issues speak for themselves. The magazine is a refreshing hands on manual for young practices and gives some insight into the situation of architecture startups in Europe.

Monday 9 March (Room 5 auditorium) Membranes
12:00 – 13:00 Reception

13:00 – 13:15 Welcome (Jan Westra, Dean of the faculty of Architecture)

13:15 – 13:45 Opening, explanation of the workshop (Arno Pronk, TU/e)

13:45 – 14:30 Tensile structures in architectural design (Marijke Mollaert, VUB)

14:30 – 15:15 The detailing of Membrane structures (Rogier Houtman, TenTech)

15:15 – 15:45 Coffee

15:45 – 16:15 Instruction Rapid Prototyping (Bart van de Vorst, TNO)

16:15 – 17:15 Material behavior of membranes (Francoise Fourancier, Ferrari)

17:15 – 17:45 Climatic behavior of textile structures (Mark Cox, TU/e)

19:30 – 20:15 Research in membrane structures (Niels de Temmerman, VUB)

20:15 – 21:00 Research in membrane structures (Gerald Lindner, TU/e )

21:00 – 21:45 Textile projects by (Rogier Houtman, Tentech)

Tuesday 10 March (Room 2 auditorium) Design software
09:00 – 10:00 Tess3D Premier Introduction and overview (Erik Moncrieff, Kurvenbau)

10:00 – 10:30 Coffee

10:30 – 11:30 Rhino/Grasshopper Introduction and overview (Rinus Roelofs, Rhino)

11:30 – 12:30 “Processing”, introduction and overview (Axel Kilian, TUD)

12:00 – 13:30 Lunch

Parallel Workshop sessions: Matrix building

1) 13:30 – 17:00 Rhino/Grasshopper (Rinus Roelofs, Rhino)

2) 13:30 – 17:00 Tess 3D (Erik Moncrieff, Kurvenbau)

3) 13:30 – 17:00 “Processing” (Axel Kilian, TUD)

17:00 – 18:00 Drinks

Room 5 auditorium

19:30 – 20:15 Geometric art (Rinus Roelofs, Rhino)

20:15 – 21:00 scripting at NOX Architects (Thomas Wortmann)

21:00 – 21:45 Design exploration (Axel Kilian, TUD)

Wednesday 11 March (Room 5 auditorium) Tools
09:00 – 9:45 Shaping technology (Nedcam Erwin van Maaren)

9:45 – 10:30 Folding structures (Vinicius Raducanu)

10:30 – 11:00 Coffee

11:00 –11:45 Rapid prototyping and scanning (Bart van de Vorst, TNO)

11:45 –12:15 CNC laser cutter and workshop facilities (Ralf Brodruck, TU/e)

12:15 – 13:00 Mechanical behaviour of lightweight structures (Andrew Borgart, TUD)

13:00 – 14:00 Lunch

Parallel Workshop sessions: Matrix building

1) 14:00 – 17:00 Rhino/Grasshopper (Rinus Roelofs, Rhino)

2) 14:00 – 17:00 Tess 3D (Erik Moncrieff, Kurvenbau)

3) 14:00 – 17:00 Rhino drawing lessons (M.Dominicus / A.Mulderij, TU/e)

4) 14:00 – 15:30 Rapid Prototyping Instructions (Bart van de Vorst, TNO)

15:30 – 17:00 Excursion TNO, (Bart van de Vorst, TNO)

13:30 – 17:00 Workshop Lasercutter, Vertigo, (Ralf Brodruck, TU/e)

17:00 – 18:00 Drinks

Projects in practice Room 5 auditorium

19:30 – 20:15 Projects by Grohmann & Bollinger (Manfred Grohmann,)

20:15 – 21:00 The Works of Heinz Isler (John Chilton, Nottingham Trent)

Thursday 12 March (Room 5 auditorium) production technique and shell structures

9.00 Handing in your STL-file for Rapid prototyping. Only correct files handed in before 9.00 hr will be accepted

09:00 – 9:45 Exploform (H. Groeneveld)

09:45 – 10:30 Holland Composites – (Olivier Lauteslager)

10:30 – 11:00 Coffee

11:00 – 11:20 Adjustable mould (Sebastiaan Boers, TU/e)

11:20 – 11:45 Shell structures by BB-con (M. van der Ham)

11:45 – 12.30 Membrane Mould (Arno Pronk, TU/e)

12:30 – 13:30 Lunch

Parallel Workshop sessions: Matrix building

1) 13:30 – 17:00 Rhino/Grasshopper (Rinus Roelofs, Rhino)

2) 13:30 – 17:00 Tess 3D (Erik Moncrieff, Kurvenbau)

3) 13:30 – 15:30 Excursion to dome, (M van der Ham BB-con)

15:30 – 17:00 Excursion Bicycle cellar Eindhoven by Fuksas (Arno Pronk TU/e)

13:30 – 17:00 Workshop Lasercutter, Vertigo, (Ralf Brodruck, TU/e)

17:00 – 18:00 Drinks

Chamber of commerce

19:30 Banquet

Friday 13 March (Room 5 auditorium) workshop results and architectural experiments

09:00 – 9.30 Presentation of workshop results (Arno Pronk TU/e)

09:30 – 10:00 Formfinding of grid shell (Olivier Baverel)

10:00 – 10:30 Integration of software in architectural practice. (Erik Moncrieff Kurvenbau)

10:30 – 11:00 Coffee

11:00 – 11:45 Textile techniques/tectonics in architecture (Ivo Vrouwe, TU/e)

11:45 – 12:30 Slim building (Jos Lichtenberg, TU/e)

12:30 Closing and Collecting of the 3D printed parts

A new exhibition at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Actions: What You Can Do With The City, explores the thousands of examples around the globe of people reclaiming urban space through Do-It-Yourself (DIY) actions in order to humanize the failed urban realities around them. While urban action has become a hot subject over the recent years, the CCA has approached the subject from a broad critique that mixes 99 Actions done by artists, architects, designers, politicians, activists, athletes and most importantly average citizens. In many cases the actual museum artifact didn’t exist, thus giving the museum the chance to create the work.

The show has been curated by Mirko Zardini, CCA Director and Chief Curator (curatorial essay); and Giovanna Borasi, CCA Curator for Contemporary Architecture (curatorial essay). The show runs until the 19th April, 2009 in Montréal.

For many designers and artists, they will already be familiar with some of the work. And for many of us, we’ve already been involved with our own DIY actions for many years. In this regard, the exhibition is especially important in its presentation of these largely hidden actions to the greater public. In compiling the 99 works together under themes such as: Excess, Choice, Frictions, Guerrilla, Planning Smarter and Sharing; the public finds their own worlds recontextualized through an optic of change and imagination. This is hugely important to society, that an attitude of DIY permeates throughout or collective conscious so that our daily lives become more creative. In essence, this is a contemporary stimulation of the inner tendencies that many avant-garde urban utopias, such as Constant’s New Babylon (images) project, and the Situationist‘s Dérive championed. His work, based on theories of Homo Ludens, now finds itself in nearly all urban exhibits around the world, most recently in Amsterdam (related article).

But many of the actions are political and economic, with actions started by local civic groups, city councilors and mayors, as well as urban transport engineers. Many of these are the most interesting, because it signifies non-designers encroaching into design territory. Speaking with Mirko Zardini at the press opening, he signals a loss of faith in current city planning and urbanism practice. Citizens and users/stakeholders (ie. the public) are rarely the centre of design and planning decisions. It is therefore an intention of the show to stimulate the debate as to what we need as a society within our societies, and how can we get there. Perhaps it isn’t through the design practices that we actually arrive at a user-oriented, accessible and mutable urban environment.

But could there be such a thing as a pluralist approach to urban design where a sort of long-tail of urban activities can be integrated into the built shared built environment? Or is everyday life left to the citizenry and the urban design is merely the placeholder and facilitator of action. This question was exactly the goal behind a project by Maxwan a+u in Rotterdam. For the Port of Rotterdam, they proposed a “harbour park” throughout the unused strips woven between the enormous network of port activities. [Full disclosure: I worked on the project.]

From the Press Release:

The exhibition and its accompanying publication present specific projects by a diverse group of activists whose personal involvement has initiated vital transformation in today’s cities. These human motors of change include architects, engineers, university professors, students, children, pastors, artists, skateboarders, cyclists, pedestrians, municipal employees, and many others who address the question of how to improve the urban experience. Their actions push against accepted norms of behaviour in cities, at times even challenging legal limitations. The individuals and groups presented in the exhibition employ a range of approaches, from skating and parkour to dumpster diving and urban foraging. Some engage architecture directly by finding new uses for abandoned buildings, while others create tools for guerilla gardening. In their individual critiques of urban modes of production and consumption, these actors share a conviction that the traditional processes of top-down civic planning are insufficient, and new approaches and tools must be developed from the ground level upwards.

Actions: What You Can Do With the City features international contemporary architectural projects, design concepts, and research conveyed through a range of materials including architectural drawings, photographs, videos, publications, artefacts, and websites. The 97 distinct actions presented in the exhibition are drawn from a larger number identified by the curators. They include projects related to the production of food and urban agriculture; the planning and creation of public spaces to strengthen community interactions; the recycling of abandoned buildings for new purposes; the appropriation of urban sites into terrain for play, such as soccer, climbing, skateboarding, or parkour; the alternate use of roads for walking or rail lines as park space; the design of clothing to circumvent urban barriers against loitering or resting on benches; and many others. The exhibition places particular emphasis on the activists’ tools, which comprise unusual materials ranging from large-scale inflatables and fruit-collecting dresses to seed-bomb rocket launchers and wheelbarrow-bicycle hybrids. Included are masks disguising children as horses, or sneakers customised for sliding along railings.

Over the past couple years, the CCA (Youtube Channel) has made a greater effort to extend itself publicly through digital media and it is working, with the quality of work and method improving with each new exhibition. An interesting website has been created, CCA-ACTIONS, and they’ve produced a promo-video (below).

Another fascinating example of Actions in the city is the recent snowboard video (below), Forum or Against’em, from Forum. The just released video especially documents urban riding in Montréal and Québec City last year when we had a near record snowfall which left the city under meters of snow, turning the concrete and steel environments into an endless snowpark.

MovingCities.org has published the fith and last part of a wonderful documentary on China. Each part is about 6 minutes and covers different themes.
The documentary is a mix of very quiet, long shots of remarkable sites and thoughts of five local architects to the respective theme.

‘China According to China’ is initiated, developed and shot by Diego Grass Puga from 0300TV, a web channel for architectural broadcasting. It was completely filmed before 2008’s Beijing Olympics and edited right after its ending.

It isn’t an effort to portrait a certain scene [the profiles of each character are quite diverse] but to establish four issues that every Chinese architect has to deal with in today’s practice [opening-up, speed, agriculture & education] all of which may set the parameters of future development for Chinese architecture –and this is no prophecy: power has always proven to be Architecture’s most diligent ally.

Instead of branding/promoting individual genius, this is a story of how an [almost] obsolete discipline struggles to follow the pace of China –just like everyone else, everywhere.

“CHINA ACCORDING TO CHINA” presents a set of thoughts by five local architects on China’s current situation and history. Foreword by MovingCities.
Ai Wei Wei [FAKE design], Jiang Jun [Urban China], Yu Kongjian [Turenscape], Wang Shu [Amateur Architecture Studio] and Ma Qingyun [MADA s.p.a.m.] are in charge of defining the issues that every Chinese architect has to deal with in today’s practice, all of which may set the parameters of future development for Chinese architecture.

China According to China / Part 1: opening-up from 0300TV on Vimeo.

“What is exactly happening here?” [Bert de Muynck, movingcities.org]
We might never know. We neither speak nor read mandarin; and above all: it seems that we’ve forgotten the existence of any kind of Chinese Architecture before the [overexposed] Bird’s Nest. So, we choose five local architects who were willing to share their experience from the inside.

China According to China / Part 2: speed from 0300TV on Vimeo.

Speed [in design and construction]: It isn’t only matter of opportunities and good reflexes: it’s also an issue of control and power. How does Chinese Architecture deals with this form of speed?

China According to China / Part 3: agriculture from 0300TV on Vimeo.

Agriculture: 30 years of fast-placed industrialization and urbanization cannot erase more than 9000 years of agri-culture. Is this destruction/construction cycle about erasing everything? Or is it just another manifestation of China’s agricultural intelligence?

China According to China / Part 4: education from 0300TV on Vimeo.

Education: This five architects we’ve chosen are all part of an extremely wide international network of influences, deeply rooted to the most relevant academic centres [Harvard, MIT] and close to the most renowned architects [Koolhaas, Herzog & De Meuron].
But what’s in it for the average Chinese architect? What about the thousands of students who’re not part of the 12 top Chinese architecture schools [Tsinghua, Tongji and South East to name a few] linked to the West? Are they pursuing individual genius or a mass of skilled workers?

China According to China / Part 5: architecture from 0300TV on Vimeo.

Architecture: 2008, China the discipline has started to shift from a quest for a certain local identity [mid 1990’s – early 2000’s] into acknowledging the social power of Architecture.
In the context of an over-accelerated market, 10.000.000 years of History and an outdated educational system, is there any formula of how to do things right? What can we expect from Chinese Architecture? Ai Weiwei [FAKE Design] has something to say about it. Featuring images of Three Shadows Photography Art Centre and Red Brick Art Galleries [Chaochangdi Village, Beijing].
The End.

Check out more of MovingCities.org here. It is a Beijing-based think-thank investigating the role that architecture and urbanism play in shaping the contemporary city. Established in 2007 by Bert de Muynck (BE) and Mónica Carriço (PT), living and working in Beijing since 2006, MovingCities publishes, collaborates, research, interacts, talks and walks, and operate as embedded architects.

Let’s jump right into this: Japan has the absolute best census in the history of my known world. Not only does it include normal things like age, sex, and the height of each of your pets, but it also legitimizes the gossipy question of What Are You Doing Right Now? Japan slapped a bunch of people with notebooks and a sacred Numbers Mission: keep a log of what you do during the day, in fifteen minute intervals. And those people did!

Fascinating. What people really do with their time – in Japan. Go to xoxosoma.com.

I’ve watched a highly interesting documentary on the prospects of solar power today. Now an english version is available on youtube:

Also highly interesting: The Car of the Future. Featuring Opel P-1 experimental, a car that ran 375miles on one Gallon. That’s about 160 km per liter or less than 1 liter per 100 km….

Here is an article (again in dutch) that describes the way it worked (back in 1959).
Apparently, just as some other inventions, they were patented by shell and never got into further development. How come?

Digital Materiality by Fabio Gramazio and Matthias Kohler
You may have seen their work at the Biennale this year. They did the installation at the Swiss Pavilion, using ETH’s famous brick laying robot. They also just published Digital Materiality in Architecture

Robots build! At their program in architecture and digital production at the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH) Zürich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich), the architects Gramazio and Kohler have installed a research facility that is unique in the world. It is based on a computer-controlled industrial robot that produces construction elements directly from design data. The robot works flexibly with a tremendous range of tools and materials. In this way Gramaio and Kohler probe the exciting potential of digital design, construction, and manufacturing techniques for architecture. In their projects they incorporate insights and discoveries from the field of computer-aided production into the architectonic design process, using computers to develop innovative construction techniques and architecture. First structures using robots have already been built, for exampe the much noted Gantenbein vineyard in Fläsch (CH) or the installation at the Swiss Pavilion at the 11th International Architecture Exhibition in Venice.

We’ve added the further lectures to our calendar, to which you can subscribe here

28 October 2008
The Model and Its Architecture
Patrick Healy

04 November 2008
Proposals for Decolonizing Architecture
Sandi Hilal, Alessandro Petti

18 November 2008
Architecture Model Shop
Vincent de Rijk
(also check out our previous post on Vincent de Rijk here)

25 November 2008
Towards a General Theory of the Building Envelope
Alejandro Zaera-Polo (you can see a previous lecture of AZP with a draft of the ‘envelope theory’ here)

02 December 2008
Visual Experience in Painting and Cinema
Hubert Damisch, Teri Wehn-Damisch

09 December 2008
This stands as a sketch for the future: Muriel Cooper and the Visual Language Workshop
David Reinfurt

16 December 2008
Heroes and Losers: Resolution and Definition in Architecture
Hans Werlemann

20 January 2009
Open-Source Urbanism and the Language of the Global Polis
Nader Vossoughian

27 January 2009
The Dictionary of Received Ideas
Enrique Walker

03 February 2009
Contemporary Architecture and the Question of (Architectural) History
Alan Colquhoun, Mary McLeod

I was also in Venice for the inauguration of the 11th Venice Architecture Biennale. Unlike the other members of Dysturb, this was the fourth time I have attended the opening of the biennale (in 2002, 2004, 2006 and 2008). So, for me, it was difficult not to compare Aaron Betsky’s work at the Arsenale to the work that had been done by the previous international curators (Burdett, Foster, or Sudjic) of the other biennales. On top of this, the Venice Biennale is the main case study for my PhD thesis: the 1st Venice Architecture Biennale.

I have to say that when I left the Arsenale after seeing the exhibition, my enthusiasm was lukewarm: on the one hand I thought, as Darrel did, that the theme chosen by Betsky was loaded with intellectual potential and openness of interpretation and that overall, the show was well curated due to the compactness of the manifesto format. (In the past years the Arsenale’s bombarded the visitors with an overload of images, information, texts, and so forth.) But at the same time, many of the installations and accompanying manifestos remained obscure and slightly too artistic for my own tastes, and likely for the taste of many architects.

But now I see the light…

It was partly because I was curious and all together critical about the idea, and partly because I thought that maybe I could found out something that I did not already know about the Architecture Biennale, that I decided to buy “The Making of the Biennale” with Aaron Betsky. It is a DVD on sale for 15 Euros at the Biennale wherein Betsky explains his ideas for the exhibition while walking through each of the 20 installations of the Arsenale’s exhibition.

I finally understand what the Coop Himmelb(l)au machine is for, or what the Zaha Hadid sculpture represents. I also realised that the Peneznic and Rogina installation is made of moving parts, or that the Philippe Rahm piece simulat a miniaturized gulf stream made of hot and cold poles. I even realised that I missed the last installation by the Gustafson Porter group, the Towards Paradise garden, a piece referring to Voltaire’s last phrase in Candide: Il faut cultiver notre jardin.

If there is still time, I recommend you have a look at this video before visiting the Biennale; because even if we don’t like to admit it, there are times when we need a bit of didactics.

also check Jeff Han‘s presentation @ TED two years ago:

well be standing at drawingboards again!
Thanks for the link Alex!

I have been hearing more and more about VVVV. If you are a fan of Processing, then you’ll surely be a fan of VVVV. The results are amazing, both the screenshots and videos, it is worth a look for its inspiration alone. And if you’re interested in a visual programming interface for real-time video creation, this is a fascinating software:

vvvv is a toolkit for real time video synthesis. It is designed to facilitate the handling of large media environments with physical interfaces, real-time motion graphics, audio and video that can interact with many users simultaneously. vvvv uses a visual programming interface. Therefore it provides a graphical programming language for easy prototyping and development. vvvv is real time. where many other languages have distinct modes for building and running programs, vvvv only has one mode – runtime. vvvv is free for non-commercial use. Commercial use requires a license. Get the latest version from the Download section.

Download VVVV here. And you can scope out the interface screenshots here. And check out the software features through their propaganda here.

If you want to see the best of the VVVV work online, check out these links:
VVVV Blog
VVVV Group on Vimeo
VVVV Group on Youtube
VVVV Pool on FlickR

A couple of my favourite visual artists / designers using multiple softwares, including Processing and VVVV is:
LennyJPG on FlickR and Desaxismundi on Blogspot.

If you’re the type to follow the latest developments in architectural software (read: CAD Geek), then you’ll be excited about this announcement. Bentley Systems has released it’s industry-leading software, Generative Components, as a free trial until May 2008. The software has been making waves, especially in London, over the past few years. I was especially taken by the Generative Components plug-in when I heard Robert Aish speak (director of researcher at Bentley Systems) at the Game, Set and Match conference at the NAi in Rotterdam, 2006.

The software is featured through the Smart Geometry conference series. Presentations from the winter 2007 Smart Geometry conference in New York City is available online, and the list of presenters is impressive. The 2008 Smart Geometry conference is happening as I write in Munich, DE. We will be quite fortunate if the presentations are made available after the conference.

What Bentley Systems has to say about their Generative Components:

GenerativeComponents™ (GC) enables architects and engineers to pursue designs and achieve results that were virtually unthinkable before. Empowered by computational methods, the designers can direct their creativity to deliver inspired sustainable buildings that are freer in form and use innovative materials and assemblies. GC facilitates this by allowing the quick exploration of a broad range of “what-if” alternatives for even the most complex buildings.

This unique generative design software captures and exploits the critical relationships between design intent and geometry. Designs can be refined by either dynamically modeling and directly manipulating geometry, by applying rules and capturing relationships among building elements, or by defining complex building forms and systems through concisely expressed algorithms.

To inform decisions, GC is integrated with building information modeling, analysis, and simulation software, providing feedback on building materials, assemblies, systems performance, and environmental conditions. This integration also ensures that intent becomes reality by enabling designs to accurately and efficiently flow through to detailed production and fabrication.

GenerativeComponents is already enabling leading architects and engineers around the world to deliver inspired sustainable buildings. Among them are Arup, Buro Happold, Foster + Partners, Grimshaw Architects, HOK, Kohn Pedersen Fox, Morphosis, and SHoP Architects.

The soulburn scripts by Neil Blevins have been updated. They are a useful and free collection of commands to be used with 3ds max or maya.

New in the update:

Added 5 new scripts:

bitmapCollector: Collects all the scene bitmaps and places them into a single directory, updating your scene to point to their new home.
objectPainter: This script lets you paint objects (geometry, splines, lights, helpers, etc) onto a piece of geometry. Like for example, you can make 10 different rocks, and then paint them in a random fashion onto a terrain. This script is still IP, and there will be lots of additions in coming months.
softSelectionControl: Toggles, or turns on or off the soft selection tool for objects.
faceNormalDisplayer: Toggles, or turns on or off the face normal display for objects.
surfaceSnapper: This script allows you to move one object along the surface of a second object. Great for placing objects on a terrain.

Updated a bunch of scripts, here’s the major updates:

materialInfoDisplayer: Added “Number Of Maps In Active Material” function.
nameManager: Renames way faster in some situations
texmapPreview: Script turns off “Select Buckets Mode” in Brazil 1 (if it’s on), and then turns it back on after the render.
objectDropper: Now you can align dropped objects with ground. Also, you can now select an axis, to drop the objects in different directions.
splineKnotToObject: Added ability to instance the objects, and have it use the spline thickness as the object size.

If you busy creating 3D digital models and don’t know about the Netherlands-based CG Textures database, it is worth the look. Run by a friend, Marcel Vijfwinkel, he generously has an open source attitude to the content. You can read the license here. A lot of the material comes from Marcel himself from his work in the gaming industry, and the site now has many content contributors. If you or your office are able to pay for a year-long membership, it will support the site and give you multiple perks.

I had to laugh when I found this video linked from the OMA website. After OMA won the BNA Cube award in the Netherlands, this video was produced by Blue Eye Productions to portray the working atmosphere within the office. I really hope you guys (that work there) respond to this. I can tell that some things are true, but others are misleading, like the fact that the teams in the office “are not competitive.” Also linked from the Blue Eye Productions website are other videos and topics concerning architecture.

And if you get the urge to work for OMA, and haven’t applied all ready, they’re (always) looking for people.

As we always try to make the world a better place, we bring you the ultimate Autocad shortcuts. Maxwan a+u (the office where Thomas and I work at) are notorious in the Dutch architecture scene for efficiency. The shortcut scripts have been developed since 1992 and have spread around dutch offices using Autocad. Started for Autocad 10 (when you still had to type ‘LINE’ to start drawing one) by Paul Hogendijk and Rients Dijkstra at OMA the shortcuts are at the moment developed by Harm te Velde over the past years.

Shortcut file link: ftp://ftp.maxwan.nl/pub
PDF of the shortcut list link: Acad 2008 maxwan shortcuts
An Excel file is included which gives a clear overview of the customized shortcuts. This is a helpful cheat sheet for memorizing the new command-line functions.

Setup:

- Install the “Express Tools” when installing Autocad!
- (quick ‘n dirty): Select all files and drag them to the “_local user AutoCAD profile” Windows Shortcut, overwriting any existing files.

OR

- Extract the archive, add the path to the folder containing the shortcuts in the “Options > Files > Support File Search Path” and move it to the top of the list.

Postcardware:
This is Postcardware! Send us a postcard with your email address and we will tell you how to remove this message. Feel free to pass on these shortcuts, as long as this message is included.

Be aware, that the speed of using these shortcuts is also dependent on disciplined layer naming system. Using short, numerical layer names means that you can bullet through turning on and off layers, fill layers, block layers and so forth. For example, you can name all layers with solid fills as ” -s ” layers so that you can quickly turn off and on the solid fills in a drawing.

Highlights:
3 – 3D Orbit
Cc – Copy to layer
G – Get layer/color/linetype
Pb – Polyline build
Spl2Pl – convert spline to polyline
bo – boundary
h – hatch
sf – solidfill (select objects to fill with solid – without the menu)
bf – boundary fill (pick point version of previous)

Layer Operations:
OE – Off layer except selected
LNA – Layer On All
LOS – Layer Off All (with “s” as the last letter – for “solid fill” layers)
LP – Layer previous
LM – make layer

It will take some time to learn at the start, but then you can never look back.

My dear friend Alex Thomass of 5elf recently sent me images of his latest project, the smallest permanent pneumatic roof of the world.

‘5elf Berlin found an economic solution to roof a penthouse terrace with a pneumatical construction.The highly light-transmisive ETFE foil enables a weather protection without darkening the area which is closed on three sides.Thus the view to the sky is free and the roof with its easiness goes completely in the background.

All required technical cables are completely integrated into the statically optimized steel construction and are not visible.To save energy costs and to minimize noise of the air supply a medical membrane pump has been applied.’

I find it a pretty amazing project. The frame is almost non-existent, which makes it basically a valve floating in the air.

Check the 5elf website for a little animation of the inflation and additional text and images. You can find the project under ‘housing’ and the cushion-logo. (Always so impossible to link to these fancy flash-sites ;-)

Mark Simonson was invited to talk about typography legend Adrian Frutiger last summer at TypeCon in Boston. He made his inspiring slides available as a PDF. Something you should miss in no circumstance, if you are ever so slightly interested in design! Read more on Simonson’s blog.

Or download here:

The Delft School of Design PhD series ‘Architectural Engineering – Performance, Geometry and Materials’ has been launched. Themes are Complex Geometry Architecture and Performance Based Architecture. See our Calendar for allthe dates.

Last week I attended the presentations of the associative design 2nd year at the Berlage research studio synthetic vernacular. Led by Peter Trummer and assisted by our fellow dysturb evangelist Martin Sobota, the class investigated traditional chinese building typologies. The principles found in the analysis were used to create a set of rules to create a framework to parametrically derive urban structure and architecture of an exemplary plot in Shanghai: Deus ex Machina.

The research group divided up into for teams, each focussing on different base parameters as FAR, degrees of privacy, climate, internal room organisation, sun trajectories. The formal decisions of the teams also led to varying urban fabrics, from low-rise high-density urban mass not unsimilar to south-american favelas to a styled courtyard & slab network. The results are cutting edge and and visualisations of the process are breath-takingly beautiful. But watch the movie first, then proceed to the review.

The excellent critique acknowledged that the intricacy of the parametric modeling approach has vastly improved of the course of the last years at the Berlage classes. However, the models are still linear in structure, not spanning different scales or relating to larger scale configurations of the environment. From that perspective it was an interesting move to apply the method to an actual, real urban plot – the next task is to push things further, mix scales, create variety. The parameters now well emulate known existing realities and re-create desired qualities. The challenges lies in breaking these limitations, extending the ranges of the parameters to a point where the un-expected can happen, and surprising new qualities are generated. The outside influences, landscape, building limitations, real world effects, could also constitute the troubling element, which would introduce the tension, the catastrophies which the homogeneous plans miss.

Lars Spuybroek remarked that ‘when I studied, my fellow students presented quite similar projects, it was at the end of dutch structuralism. But interestingly, they presented it in a completely different way: the discourse wasn’t about shifting and re-configuring floor plans, but about grass root democracy, human interaction, all the 60′s idealism.’ This is visible when it comes to the eye-level renderings of the displayed projects: spaces of little programmatic definition, where the usual skaters and and happy couples photoshopped in look rather desolate. This is where a 2nd class could pick up the thread and evaluate the generated spaces, find the advantages and shortcomings and tweak the parameters accordingly, thus create a generate-test-feedback loop.

It is remarkable that even after looking at these points which need more investigation in this young methology, the results are convincing – even more so because ‘the market would solve the problem with four high rise towers’ as Zaera Polo noted.

Among the Critics were:

• Theodore Spyropoulos (Theodore is the co-director of the Architectural
  Association Design Research Lab in London)
• Ali Rahim (Ali is Assistant Professor in Pennsylvania, and is design director at C-A-P)
• Lars Spuybroek (of NOX Architects)
• Lawrence Barth (Consultant Urbanist for Zaha Hadid and Senior Lecturer at the AA)
• Alejandro Zaera Polo (Alejandro is head of FOA and former Dean of the Berlage)
• Bing Bu (principal of One Desing Inc.)
• Felix Claus (co-founder of Claus en Kaan)
• Kersten Geers (partner at Kersten Geers David van Severen)
• Jianfei Zhu (teaches at the University of Melbourne)
• Thal Kamener (co-director of 66east)
• Christopher Lee (unit master at the AA)
• Gabriele Mastrigli (architect and critic)
• Bert de Muynck (architect, writer and researcher)

Participants of the studio are: Nana Chen, Weijie Liu, Jiri Pavlicek, Shiyun Qian, Ming-Ying Tsai, Luming Wang, Zhenfei Wang and Sheng-Ming Wu.

Download the movie here: associative-design.mp4 (156MB, right-click to save)

a friend of mine just pointed me to one of the latest events in the AccessAllAreas program: skating Zaha’s Phaeno in Wolfsburg. Unfortunately the video of a

50-50 down a 15 stair rail with a mean kink at the end which reminds of that Pat Duffy kinkrail in SF by Mack McKelton from Berlin.

is pretty unspectacular from an architects point of view. …. apart from the six-pack closeup for the girls maybe… There will be more coverage soon under accessallareas

via DRMTM and skateboard.de and nillomatic

We can play movies in our terminal windows now. Pure beauty.

Imagine to see a movie playing in another Terminal: displayed on an old-school mechanic departure table; the rhythmic clicking of the letters transcoding the movie into yet another cipher.

I’ve been experimenting with file-linking between word and indesign. This is what a XML file created by word looks like in the indesign story editor. Or is it a traffic control screen? A facade study?

cben.net is great, but this definitely beats it.

via gravestmor.

Adobe just announced that the upcoming Photoshop CS3 release will be split into a basic and an extended edition. The extended edition will have two additional features:

• 3D and motion support with the ability to edit 3D content and incorporate it into 2D compositions, paint and clone over multiple video frames
• Comprehensive image analysis with new image measurement and counting tools

Could be an useful addition to the architect’s visualisation workflow. Could be a useless marketing stunt. We’ll know more in “spring 2007″.