Even before I was laid off I had to keep track of my expenses for work. At that time it meant extra bonus “expense” checks for mileage driven or reimbursement for my food. Now that I am working for myself and not taking a salary, it is of the utmost importance that I do this, because its one of the only ways i can get cash inflow. Since getting my iPhone I was convinced that there had to be a good tracking program. The problem was that many of the apps on the market were unitaskers, they EITHER calculated vehicular expenses (and some only mileage) or they were submittable receipts. Eventually I found XpenseTracker. This app lets me log all of this information in one place, plus i can divide things up in job specific logs. There are custom notes fields as well as fields for merchants and clients. It also allows me to keep track of my non-profit miles for the work I do with Dominion Stage. In addition to tracking and keeping my records it also allows me to use the camera to take photos of my receipts at the time of purchase. I no longer need to [...]
Mirage Studio 7 has an entry on their blog about Sketchpad, the great grand-daddy of all CAD applications. Its crazy to think that computer aided drafting has been available for over 40 years, but only came into heavy use in the last 20. Build Blog has a great entry highlighting women designers who have had a major impact on design culture. The thing about this post that strikes me most is more of who they didn’t include – Zaha Hadid and Denise Scott Brown, as opposed to those who they did. Materialicious has a post about a spiral stair fit into a 1 square meter (9 square foot) footprint. While I applaud the genius use of a tilted axis to fit more in a smaller space I regret to think that this will never make it to this side of the atlantic. Not only would current zoning codes reject it because of lack of a handrail and child safety features, but the tilted axis would most certainly make the treads not identical which also violates current building codes. Inhabitat has a post about Brad Pitt being honored by the USGBC for his Make it Right Foundation and their work in [...]
There will be no post today. I am observing Yom Kippur in my own way; fasting and contemplating my year past and the one to come. I am going to focus on what about myself I need to work on and how I can be both a better person and a better me.
I have now been waiting for my last Architecture Registration Exam result for 11 weeks (13 if you include the penultimate exam which I have also yet to receive scores for). This delay apparently has been caused by the private company that administers and grades the exam (Prometric Services); specifically they have not graded a 5 of the 7 exam sections since the start of July. I was only informed of this delay from my state board last week, at week 10(12), which was the first time they had heard of this as well. This delay, which is not the first time Prometric has failed to perform, has affected at a minimum 3,300 people in the state of Virginia alone. The thing that is the most infuriating about this whole exam process is the lack of both transparency and communication. The exam, which is written by and property of the National Council of Architecture Registration Boards (a non-profit NGO in DC), is treated with the utmost level of secrecy and security. Not only are examinees not allowed to discuss the content of the exam, they are also not allowed to know the grading scheme that is used to determine passing [...]
I love how St. Dominic’s Catholic Church in Southwest, DC combines classical masonry construction in the main church with modern design in the Priory.
I know as someone affiliated with architecture and not Interior Design I should be somewhat ashamed to say this, but I am a color nut. I think it stems form my days as working as a graphic designer, but I love color standards, whether thats ICC profiles or standardized colors like the ones in the Pantone Fandecks. This is why I love the myPantone app for the iPhone. This app was released on September 10, 2009 and has been covered by many of the big tech blogs recently (here, here and here). This app allows you to make color palettes on the go. They can be pulled by hand from the Fandecks within the app (only one can be in play at a time), or they can be extracted from an image. The program allows you to choose an image already on your phone or take one with a camera. Once you have an image selected you can have the app automatically choose colors from the image and map them to the current active Fandeck or you can choose them yourself. This is where this app is really useful for architects. Do you have a client with a work of [...]
Inhabitat has a great post about recycling plastic as a concrete aggregate. I’ve always wondered about the use of non standard aggregates. I wonder if we could do some sort of non standard aerated concrete which could be use as a carbon banking system? Just a thought. ArchDaily has a few image of the new Pakistan Pavilion for the Shanghai World Expo. Does this remind anyone else of an eastern version of Burnham and Root’s world’s columbian exposition buildings? Shigeru Ban has made another paper towel structure, this time in London. The comments on Dezeen’s post about this show that people are just not that impressed this time. Maybe, if the tower was a giant Ferris wheel or something.
One of the most expensive purchases of any architecture and design office is drafting software. Not only does it cost anywhere from $1000 to $3000 a seat but the software changes yearly and every three versions the file formats tend to change as well. Whenever that happens firms either need to buy into the new version or be left behind. Autodesk has come up with their own solution to this, yearly subscriptions. The initial charge is the same as a usual one seat license, but every year they charge the firm about $500 per seat and send you the updated software. This is supposed to save you money while giving them a guarenteed revive stream, which it does but each version still needs better hardware to operate at maximum efficiency. That’s about a $2000 investment per machine on at least a three year rolling clock. In all, that’s a lot of expense especially for a new found firm. It’s no wonder people turn to piracy, unauthorized installs, and multiple seats. Citrix has a different solution. They have developed a virtualization software which can eliminate the rolling hardware expense. This software is like most virtualization software, it lives on a host [...]
So this posting by noon thing is getting harder, especially when I have morning meetings. But, work takes priority over this blog. This morning I had a meeting in Bethesda to interview an accountant for my design firm. This was a really interesting experience for me, because for the first time in my professional career I was not the one trying to sell their services, but instead the prospective client. It has made me understand something that has been a subconscious motivator for many of my previous life decisions; I want to feel that I am being treated as a potential investment not just a future client. Interviewing an accountant is very similar to choosing a university, it is a decision that will affect your professional life for years to come. When I chose my university one of the major motivating factors was not a rational factor like class size or endowment or even the location of the school, instead I felt the need to go someplace where I felt welcomed and wanted. Now, I was in a unique situation, I could not afford to choose any school, I could only afford a school If i was getting a significant [...]
I know this is being posted later than my self imposed deadline, but I had a meeting this morning for a job that actually pays money, so that took precedence. To add to me weekly schedule (tuesday is links and wednesday iphone apps) thursdays will be image post days. I was walking around near Southwest (Federal Southwest) DC on my way to my meeting this morning and I was totally struck by the fact that as I walked around town I was walking through time. The four photos below show a progresion from the Victorian Eclectic Arts and Industries Building through early International Style FAA building, Brutalism at the DOE entrance to L’Enfant Plaza, and finally historical Post Modernism at the National Museum of African Art in a series of 2 blocks of south west DC. Of course, these buildings are not arranged chronologically on the street, but the feeling is the same. Each is not only typical of the construction and ornament of their respective time periods, but also the treatment of public plazas and spaces.