[Image via Life Without Buildings via io9.] In his blog Life Without Buildings, my fellow Tulane Alum, Jimmy Stamp, discusses the latest proposed moon habitat from NASA. Like most of the other articles I’ve seen he discusses the igloo-like shape and inflatable (gas-itechture) structure, yet this discourse is really lacking. What we are seeing here is not just another exploratory vehicle that will double as a place for astronauts to sleep. Consider Voyager for a second Ann Druyan recorded all sorts of sounds emblematic of the human race, to act as a time capsule, a display of who we are; this is the first piece of human architecture to be built on another celestial body, and I have to ask, where’s the outrage? Of all the structures in all of human history, this is what we build, an inflatable breast? It looks like something Greg Lynn would create, but instead it was designed by engineers? In addition, since when do we allow engineers to create the first lunar human dwelling? Where is the discussion of the space it makes, the space within and the views out? Are there views out? How does it interact with its environment? All of these [...]
ASLA.org has an interesting postulation about fountain features called “The Dirt: Fountain-Dread?” This article made me think of the episode of AB FAB where Saffy wants to put a water feature in their backyard, and the landscape architect spends the whole time poo-pooing it. Though its just a sit come there is a real kernel of truth there, fountains structured gardens and other hallmarks of the 19th century landed gentry estates have become a fixture in suburban tract house development. One has to wonder, in 50 years will mini zoo’s and amusement parks find their way into the American backyard?
This image really speaks to me. I think it illustrates the greatest problem in architecture practice. The hierarchy of offices are set up mostly as managers and “managees”. There really is no place for collaboration or any challenging of the status quo. Sure offices say they value the opinions of the interns and non-managers, but the whole hierarchy leads itself so that their ideas have to be greatly filtered before they reach anyone who can make any decisions. Now this is partly good, many interns don’t know their proverbial ass from their elbow when they first join an office, but I fear that a lot of stale architecture is made because the firms designing the buildings are top-down. The principals work with a lead designer who has a vision and then everyone else works to craft that vision. Studio Managers take direction from the designer, and in turn direct project architects, who craft red lines and cartoon sets so that the interns can generate drawings. All those layers are like the children’s game of telephone, in every step the designer’s ideas get diluted by management, and in the end even if the design was steller the final product is usually mediocre at best.
So, this post is a bit off topic. It was brought to my attention that my single post pages were 404ing. This was an odd issue because my posts all showed up in the main page, but clicking any link would return an error. So I changed my permalinks from being Month/Day/post based to being the standard straight numeric method. After clearing the cache the page loaded fine; I tried the other possible permalinks and none worked correctly. I’m thinking that this has happened since my last wordpress upgrade. Anyone have any experience dealing with this?
In the modern architect’s office there are no more drafting boards; if they exist, they serve as extensions of the desktop and become semi-permanent homes for check sets, red lines, specs and trace paper sketches. Instead, we work in CADD – Computer Aided Design and Drafting – usually short for Autodesk’s AutoCAD or Architectural Desktop/AutoCAD Architecture software. This software (in practice) is little more than hand-drafting+; it is rare to find a firm using the full three dimensional capabilities of the software. In addition, Autodesk’s CAD is PC only. There exist a handful of other pieces of drafting software for the PC – specifically Bently’s Microstation comes to mind, but truly Autodesk is the most popular girl at the dance. Mac users on the other hand have a rough and varied landscape of numerous semi and fully professional software solutions. Since purchasing my first Mac when Leopard was released (a Mac Mini – my last apple before this was a IIc), I have been trying as many of these programs as i can find. All in all i can not seem to find one that balances the speed of use of AutoCAD and its keyboard commands and a good integration [...]
So Inhabitat has an article which starts off like a bad joke; an architect, a developer and a builder decide to build a LEED certified home for$100,000. And that is it, there is no punchline, because its not a joke. They are building two 1000 square foot homes for $100 a square foot; they have been working at it for over a year now and just sold their first of two homes. You can read their blog and web page at 100khouse.