I was in Flushing for food this morning, seeing the library across the street I thought to give it a try. Two dollar library card later I am now log on and set up to go. I does somehow feel strange to work here and for some reason I feel less secured. Probably due to the numerous warming sign posted every where. I also are missing the cushy couch. On the other hand the reading area is absolutely wonderful, banks of long working table sidle right up the the floor to ceiling glass curtain walls fronting the street. I can really get use to this perhaps.
Enough chatters.. I do have a 5:30 deadline since I'll have to head into the city for the AIA lecture so that means only 4 hours left!
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Finalize the content
The message:
The lower 9th ward.. more than three years has passed after Hurricane katrina, the extent of damages the combination of flood and wind has caused can still be seem today. As the temperature of the ocean rises, we can count on bigger hurricanes and more of them. Unless a concerted efforts can be made by every single person in this world to reduce the amount of co2 emission and put a stop to the climatic changes, the tragedies in New Orleans, will be destined to repeat it self.
Building account for 40% of the Co2 emission in this country, which in turn represent 9% of the Co2 emission of the entire world. Recognizing our implicit responsibility to reduce the environmental impact of our buildings. The building industry as a whole have accelerated the adoption of sustainable building standards such as LEED from the US green building consul.
As a firm, we recognized the need to realign our design philosophy with the new paradigm of sustainable building practices. The age of the cheap and bountiful energy has passed and we are now suffering the consequences. But at the same time we had always strive for elegant, efficient and cost effective designs for functional buildings. And in some way, it was not a dramatic shift for us to go green. Rather it was a more formal and structured process of understanding the cause and consequences of specific approaches towards individual building systems and what alternatives are available.
b. This is the USS XXXXXX on its xx day long voyage from Saudi Arabia to XXXXX, despite its enormous size it is only a small part of the 13 million barrels of oil that is needed to satisfy the demand for oil in the US every single day. In addition to oil, US also import 300 million kilowatt per day worth of electricity and 600 billion cubic feet worth of natural gas per year.
This reliance on foreign energy source, not only adds to our already enormous trade deficit but it also represents a tremendous strategic compromise and place the power to determine the cost to keep our nation running, firmly in foreign hands.
To reduce our reliance is to reduce our consumption.
And buildings, which account for 40% of the total energy consumed in the US would be a good place to start.
Building account for 40% of the Co2 emission in this country, which in turn represent 9% of the Co2 emission of the entire world. Recognizing our implicit responsibility to reduce the environmental impact of our buildings. The building industry as a whole have accelerated the adoption of sustainable building standards such as LEED from the US green building consul.
As a firm, we recognized the need to realign our design philosophy with the new paradigm of sustainable building practices. The age of the cheap and bountiful energy has passed and we are now suffering the consequences. But at the same time we had always strive for elegant, efficient and cost effective designs for functional buildings. And in some way, it was not a dramatic shift for us to go green. Rather it was a more formal and structured process of understanding the cause and consequences of specific approaches towards individual building systems and what alternatives are available.
b. This is the USS XXXXXX on its xx day long voyage from Saudi Arabia to XXXXX, despite its enormous size it is only a small part of the 13 million barrels of oil that is needed to satisfy the demand for oil in the US every single day. In addition to oil, US also import 300 million kilowatt per day worth of electricity and 600 billion cubic feet worth of natural gas per year.
This reliance on foreign energy source, not only adds to our already enormous trade deficit but it also represents a tremendous strategic compromise and place the power to determine the cost to keep our nation running, firmly in foreign hands.
To reduce our reliance is to reduce our consumption.
And buildings, which account for 40% of the total energy consumed in the US would be a good place to start.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Friday, February 20, 2009
believe
This is the hardest bit, I find it hard to continue to believe that this is something that will work. And with out this believe, I can not proceed.
I felt as if this week was wasted. partly due to the long weekend and partly due to my illness. As if this really have any bearing on my current state of mind.
When I open up my laptop I feel some what composed. Perhaps it is the caffeine, but I feel that at least I am partly there.
My current target audience is "general public" i.e. the TV viewing masses.
Main objective would be a short information dump limited to 10 minutes
a. 15% environmental soap box speech
b. 15% Architect/ Designer PR
c. 45% building features/ feel good rah rah PR
d. 20% instruction on operation procedure
e. 5% leads on additional info/ clips with additional item (a.) and (c.)
I felt as if this week was wasted. partly due to the long weekend and partly due to my illness. As if this really have any bearing on my current state of mind.
When I open up my laptop I feel some what composed. Perhaps it is the caffeine, but I feel that at least I am partly there.
My current target audience is "general public" i.e. the TV viewing masses.
Main objective would be a short information dump limited to 10 minutes
a. 15% environmental soap box speech
b. 15% Architect/ Designer PR
c. 45% building features/ feel good rah rah PR
d. 20% instruction on operation procedure
e. 5% leads on additional info/ clips with additional item (a.) and (c.)
Thursday, February 19, 2009
The sweet bit
I need to produce something much more convincing if I were to make my idea viable. The premise is still the same, either the architect or CxA will have little time to produce something clear and engaging, and this is where I step in. But in order to overcome the inevitable cynicism and reluctance to act. I'll need something truely convincing that architect won't be afraid to forward their client and be able to take credit for. it'll have to reflect their character.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
How to face the mountain
I feel some what floundering after a weekend and two days of out of commission by food poisoning. Things and schedule seems to be slipping, but enough with my self, pitys, its more important to get up and go.
After some work and plans to further flesh out my video, I am now convinced that in order for me to make this project truly convincing, I need to have an absolutely convincing end product. ie an video that looks interesting and exciting.
After spending lots of time watching videos I still don't get the exact sense and sensibility of a videographer. And I need to consult Keith and Kyla on this.
I feel ever the press of time and slowness of progress.
After some work and plans to further flesh out my video, I am now convinced that in order for me to make this project truly convincing, I need to have an absolutely convincing end product. ie an video that looks interesting and exciting.
After spending lots of time watching videos I still don't get the exact sense and sensibility of a videographer. And I need to consult Keith and Kyla on this.
I feel ever the press of time and slowness of progress.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
The wall and the revolution
We are wildly off the mark with our ability to communicate, liability and other obstcle
I love architecture, but I hated the practice. Why? my number one frustration was our inability to communicate.
I sincerely believe that we have an absolutely mind blowingly creative collective of people in the architecture community, full of amazing ideas. But there is a disconnect, this has always bother me from day one of my architectural education.
The inability of the public to understand our Brilliance!!
We spend years polishing the theoretical basis, experiment with forms and this is what we get.
*run videos of interview of people on the street on what they thought of great work of architecture*
What is the other big problem we have in our field? Contractor! I am sorry if there are any here, but they just consistently make our life a living hell! They read our drawings but have no conception of what is our INTENT. Failure of communication again.
One more, I present to you my theory of our their greatest obstacle. Our self. What is it that we produce, building you said. I argue otherwise, we produce content! What is the end product of 70-80 percent of our man hour? contract documents, which we reluctantly gave to the contractor, knowing that they are just going to screw it up, and reluctantly gave to the client, knowing that they will never take a second look at it, and call us any way to ask about every little thing that's in it any way.
We are like authors except that people can only know our work through recording on a audio tape from a 99 cents store read by some one who didn't speak the language the book was written in, in the first place!
Looking across discipline, how does the other cotent provider operate differently from us? Authors for instance, well first of all, books can be duplicated and sold to millions of people. Text can be digitized for e-book, recorded for audio book, portion posted on the web as a hook and so on and so forth. *picture of construction document set* can you imagine doing any of that with your documents?
Yet I would argu that this inflexibility and inability to share information even amongs our selves is primary source of our problem, and the cause for our inability to communicate fluently paradoxically in a primarily information based society.
Liability has traditionally been sited as the primary barrier to the flow of information.
What we lacked, is information flexibility. Fine tune control of our information, for us it is all *flash document set slide* or nothing! or in the updated version all *flash BIM model* or nothing!
Do you really care to keep your wood floor selection a secret? No, I have never met an architect who don't like to talk shop and giving out product reviews but yet there are no way to separate out the information that can be shared from the information that best be kept proprietary, which is perfectly reasonable although some people might feel some what guilty to acknowledge.
Information flexibility, the ability to control the information you share, and the information that you don't. Is what we need.
Photographer had learn this the hard way through the internet revolution. Do you post your photos on the web so ppl will likely "burrow" your work with out paying you a dime, or do you keep it safe on your hard drive but get no exposure.
Photographer learned that they can post low resolution photos, and still sell the same photo at the original resolution because ultimatly people realized that it represent value. we need to learn how to reduce the resolution of our document so that we can share it to imporove our ability to communicate with our client, with the contractor, and with one another.
And that is what I am looking to achieve.
I love architecture, but I hated the practice. Why? my number one frustration was our inability to communicate.
I sincerely believe that we have an absolutely mind blowingly creative collective of people in the architecture community, full of amazing ideas. But there is a disconnect, this has always bother me from day one of my architectural education.
The inability of the public to understand our Brilliance!!
We spend years polishing the theoretical basis, experiment with forms and this is what we get.
*run videos of interview of people on the street on what they thought of great work of architecture*
What is the other big problem we have in our field? Contractor! I am sorry if there are any here, but they just consistently make our life a living hell! They read our drawings but have no conception of what is our INTENT. Failure of communication again.
One more, I present to you my theory of our their greatest obstacle. Our self. What is it that we produce, building you said. I argue otherwise, we produce content! What is the end product of 70-80 percent of our man hour? contract documents, which we reluctantly gave to the contractor, knowing that they are just going to screw it up, and reluctantly gave to the client, knowing that they will never take a second look at it, and call us any way to ask about every little thing that's in it any way.
We are like authors except that people can only know our work through recording on a audio tape from a 99 cents store read by some one who didn't speak the language the book was written in, in the first place!
Looking across discipline, how does the other cotent provider operate differently from us? Authors for instance, well first of all, books can be duplicated and sold to millions of people. Text can be digitized for e-book, recorded for audio book, portion posted on the web as a hook and so on and so forth. *picture of construction document set* can you imagine doing any of that with your documents?
Yet I would argu that this inflexibility and inability to share information even amongs our selves is primary source of our problem, and the cause for our inability to communicate fluently paradoxically in a primarily information based society.
Liability has traditionally been sited as the primary barrier to the flow of information.
What we lacked, is information flexibility. Fine tune control of our information, for us it is all *flash document set slide* or nothing! or in the updated version all *flash BIM model* or nothing!
Do you really care to keep your wood floor selection a secret? No, I have never met an architect who don't like to talk shop and giving out product reviews but yet there are no way to separate out the information that can be shared from the information that best be kept proprietary, which is perfectly reasonable although some people might feel some what guilty to acknowledge.
Information flexibility, the ability to control the information you share, and the information that you don't. Is what we need.
Photographer had learn this the hard way through the internet revolution. Do you post your photos on the web so ppl will likely "burrow" your work with out paying you a dime, or do you keep it safe on your hard drive but get no exposure.
Photographer learned that they can post low resolution photos, and still sell the same photo at the original resolution because ultimatly people realized that it represent value. we need to learn how to reduce the resolution of our document so that we can share it to imporove our ability to communicate with our client, with the contractor, and with one another.
And that is what I am looking to achieve.
Monday, February 9, 2009
the road ahead
I am still looking for the giant obstacle that is going to stop me dead in my track. I fear it but looks forward for it at the same time. I still am humbled by the mountain that I must climb and am can only hope that I am up to the challenge.
I spoke to Peter, Amil and Evan about my idea this past weekend and the feed back are positive. The next step I need to take is to first document what I learned that I have to do and then start cartooning the whole web demo out in detail.
I spoke to Peter, Amil and Evan about my idea this past weekend and the feed back are positive. The next step I need to take is to first document what I learned that I have to do and then start cartooning the whole web demo out in detail.
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Uncharted water
it is week 9 and I don't feel like I have accomplished very much, the main step at this point is to get the demo ready for review.. So lets set a deadline and get it done, Friday it is.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)