A few weeks ago I had a nice chat with John Wittman of Geier Brown Renfrow Architects in Old Town Alexandria; they are one of the firms I highlighted in my October 2008 post Top 24 Architecture Design Firms in the Washington DC area. John had emailed me recently and invited me to come to their office so I could learn more about them and better understand the work they do. While I was meeting with him I decided that this might be a great way for me to jumpstart back into blogging. Instead of just writing about Architecture, it would be great for me to write about Architecture Offices in the DC area and their specific cultures! Geier Brown Renfrow Architects have been around for the last 30 years but, like most small firms have gone through a few periods of reinvention. Currently they are coming off of one of those periods. About a year ago they moved into a new office on Royal Street in Old Town Alexandria. Their new space is a physical manifestation of their corporate reinvention. When I arrived at their office on Royal Street, I was not sure of what to expect. From the [...]
The AIA website has an interesting article on the future of the architectural process. This is something that greatly concerns me. As the office I work for, and many others, contemplate moving to BIM there are great changes that will need to be made in house. Not only will the time required for tasks change, but the general break up of time will shift more heavily towards the beginning. The most interesting thing about this article is that it discusses a the change in nomenclature: Predesign becomes conceptualization Schematic design becomes criteria design Design development becomes detailed design Construction documents become implementation documents Agency review begins at conceptualization Bidding becomes buyout Construction is still construction By changing the language of phases, it makes it easier to break away from old contracts dictating time ratios, and forge a new understanding about how Integrated Project Delivery and BIM will affect billing and management. [W O R D S B Y...Integrated Project Delivery and the Fully Engaged Emerging Professional]
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 [...]