garethace
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Why don’t you join the AAI, they have many worldly kinds of guests. I was at a Daniel Libeskind lecture years ago, the guy designing the new ground zero.
How is that for worldly? New lighting job too eh?
Santa’s workshop in the St. Stephen’s Green shopping centre. Best thing I have seen in all of Dublin so far. 🙂
Well I just think the architects tend to underestimate, rather than overestimate the contribution made by all the boffins and geeks. I have learned a lot from them personally – perhaps not the wordly kind of things I have from architects, but nonetheless well worth knowing.
A description of the Property Economist given here was the ‘nail-counters’, which is quite amusing. But then you have to go, heh, it is economics that makes the bigger wheels turn too.
Just listen to Miss Palthrow (6m per flic) talking about the price she has now to pay for petrol because she decided to join Madonna and live in London. She also gave out about the weather a lot.
As someone once said, the problem with the weather, is everyone complains about it, but noone ever does anything about it.
No bother, whenever you get on a good system will do of course. The message board here, can refuse to work sometimes on even the fastest connections and hardware.
Cyburbia forums lost two whole weeks worth of posting not too long back. Ouch! But at least that never happens here,… holding my breath! 🙂
Links would be even better, when/if you have time. No particular rush, I just thought, I could link this particular thread to a few newbies I know to using the internet for architecture, and they might ‘kinda’ get the hang of this discussion routine.
I have clocked up far too much experience with forums long, long before this one. A lot of them, right-brain engineering type of talk, not so much suggestive discourse like this one. I will admit, that i am entirely comfortable with techniques of discussion about architecture yet. Could learn more here at Archiseek.
Coincidence, the best I ever get along with architects, is when they throw their hands up and admit they haven’t got a clue about computers – therefore I can become parential in that equation, and make a meaningful positive relationship with them. Getting them to the point, where they can admit this to me, is practically impossible though. They are afraid that someone might think they are weak, if they admit it.
You could not, for instance, just decide ‘to start using a computer tomorrow’ without any prior experience and training by the experts – and expect that way of using a computer to be effective.
In spite of the current trend to sell technology to a mass market, as friendly, easy-to-use, intuitive, and ‘SMART’ ‘tools’ for everyone. It still remains the underlying truth, that computerisation, is a very right-brain activity.
It is all about systems and routines, from the largest grain of how it integrates into your daily life – down to the very tiniest grain, of how the programming language talks in 1s and 0s, to some dump piece of silicon engineering known commonly as the chip.
This computerisation as a ‘left-brain’ activity is a bit of a marketing tool really, to make you feel more attached to a certain brand name or product.
I think that as soon as an architect claims to know very much, or become very expert about anything, (s)he is in danger of going down a wrong direction.
I mean to design using computers and build a virtual model of how the building will work demands the designer to know the proceedure very well. To have a detailed, well worked out and expert knowledge about all kinds of systems, dimensions etc.
Now the place where an architect starts from, isn’t ‘knowing alot of stuff’ and applying that stuff. But the architect tends to know very little and from that point work towards an answer.
You could not, for instance, just decide ‘to start using a computer tomorrow’ without any prior experience and training by the experts – and expect that way of using a computer to be effective. Yet that is how an architect approaches a difficult problem. They do not reach for any text books, guides, rules or LAWs. They do not set out with any pre-conceived notion of how ‘it gets done’.
I mean, that could arguably lead to a very right-brain way to design architecture. I don’t believe that using computerisation to help design of architecture – is a good fit to how the architects brain tries to work.
IT based techniques of designing, which demand a high level of skill by the user of the system. That is just not how the architects work, think or operate.
It may seem very naive to some people, to start from this kind of ‘child-like’ starting point toward design – working from a place where you have no clue at all, to a place where suddenly everything, and every last detail seems to fit snugly. But is there any other description for how the masters in architecture work?
In reference to Plug’s comments in the ‘Large Scale’ thread, I hope this post might throw at least some light on my point of view.
I don’t think, Plug, that architects would be able to design any architecture based upon a very rigid, A,B,C organised ‘right-brain’ sort of approach. And the idea, of knowing about calculating the LUX, and so forth doesn’t exactly fit into the very ‘left-brain’ kind of activity which architects do to design their stuff.
Sure, there have been experiments into integrating both the right and left brain approaches to design. I think that Bolton Street college of architecture, down through the years has been very courageous in exploring this avenue. In that respect it is very unique in its classification as a way to educate.
It is a true mongrel-Hybrid so to speak. A bit like the biologically altered species of crops, whose location is a matter of national security! 🙂
Brian O’ Hanlon.
Right then, switch quickly onto this thread to discuss it further:
https://archiseek.com/content/showthread.php?threadid=2579
The problem is, that as soon as your ‘announce’ yourself as an architect as knowing very much too detailed about anything, you leave yourself entirely open to assault – that you are not really behaving as an architect anymore, but as some other kind of technician or expert in a small field.
You see what I mean?
You will see what I have written on that other thread.
don’t go there Plug, just don’t go there please.
I mean Bolton Street college prides itself on ‘Technology’ at the expense of visual aesthetics. Learning about technology while ‘becoming’ an architect.
And how technology and design are related. As you begin to learn anything about architecture you will understand how much of a problem this is with architecture.
where to start/end talking technology and aesthetics.
I feel you have to make a really good stab at both individually, and basically worry about how they integrate ‘on-the-fly’ or in the application of what you know.
This approach of integrating things like technology, eg. lighting technology, with design, serves only one not-so-useful purpose. Basically to dilute and confuse design even more.
Beyond the hall door was a nice programme on TV, because you were talking about design, but happened to deal with the lighting as part of the design at the same time.
Zaha Hadid in her renderings has dealt with the issue of ‘the building in the nightime’. It is very easy to pick out new buildings were lighting at night works externally. They are very few.
So in terms of lighting, think about space. Does the lighting come from the floor, the upper or lower wall, a ceiling unit, a sunken ceiling unit or some kind of standing unit. Understand how spatially this choice and/or combination of lighting treatments works.
In short, I feel that computer visualisation rendering and free-hand studies for your lightscape or MAX rendering is a useful area of study.
is one web site you should have in your favs.
The trendy technie gizmo features I am referring to here, are also the trendy new-age IT infrastructure that many architectural practices are trying to cope with today. Often employing the young people who are still just undergraduates to show them ‘how to use things’.
I mean, work experience was always meant to be about the undergraduate learning from the well versed and well practiced. Yet this is increasingly not the case. As many older architects are finding young people they ‘take on’ excellent tutors in all things, IT, techie and trendy.
I call it the 3DSMAX factor. But it can have a devastating impact upon young peoples abilty to grow and learn productively about design and architecture. I am writing this sitting beside a 10 year old who knows more about his computer than I did only 5 years ago!
You see my point? I am trying to argue that Sean’s assumption that reading about architecture is a waste of time, is out of context today. Because reading about architecture is I feel, a useful kind of left brain activity to that of showing a forty-year-old sucessful principal architect employer how to find the power button on his new laptop!
Which is part of my point, ching is a nice book to learn what the lines you are drawing on your sheets, might actually become something meaningful in terms of space, light and real experience.
But unfortunately, a lot of elevations and plans can easily become re-pros of current trendy line patterns. That is what gets built – irregardless of what it actually takes to ‘make the line or shadow’ in real materials.
Beyond the Hall door were architects some of them and did manage to speak with a good deal of logic about lighting interiors. However that still doesn’t bring us any closer to lighting up our streets does it. But it is a good start.
Generally speaking in the architectural world, things relavant to design such as space, light, time and people are:
‘Known about by everyone, but never talked about’.
A lot like some other ‘no-go’ areas in everyday existence I suppose. I have thought a great deal about natural light in architecture myself. While space is often spoken about in relation to gravity, I certainly believe that most of what space means to us as human beings is related to how the eye responds to natural light and how ‘far’ the eye travels.
Louis Kahn, Unbuilt Master Works is based around experiments done at MIT using Discreet Lightscape software in the late 1990s. It is about the best place to ‘start’ to think about architects and light in modern day design. Couple of copies in Bolton Street library.
Thankyou for that assessment Graham, I was thinking it was just me. There are some nice books available about just lighting interiors and exteriors. I mean, the ‘Green Energy’ guys might not like it, but lighting does help parts of a city. Other places I think are too dark are Kings Inns park at night and Constitution hill apartments directly oposite. Other car parks and areas around old buildings. I.e. spaces which are ‘used’ as car parks during daylight hours, but become dark uninhabited places by night. Hospitals come to mind here.
BTW, has anyone been watching the Discovery channel series about Thatcher-ism and the Concorde?
When it became obvious that Concorde supersonic travel was no longer a profit maker, BT and AF didn’t take long to wonder what to do.
I had to laugh, that when concorde had only a month left, suddenly all the French nation decided to become all patriotic and nostalgic about a ‘lost piece of French world class engineering’.
The Brits were rather annoyed by that, as the French couldn’t give a toss about Concorde when it was flying and making money. They waited until it was finally axed to support it.
Funny thing, public opinion, national pride and nostalgia!
Yeah, on the subject of Parnell Street area, what is it with the lack of street lighting. I have known that place for 10 years, and dispite of all the development, from a place to play soccer at lunchtime, to a place to park and shop – it is still to this day, the same dark, un-inhabited wind pitch black sort of a wind tunnel it always was.
A similar situation exists along the canal banks on the south side of the city. Really is lighting up a street really that big an issue? It will burn more electricity, but it would contribute toward a feeling of less exposure and isolation while using the streets.
Gas lamps came into London way back, and contributed to the Victorian habit of ‘shopping’ in certain parts of the city. Never before had shopped ever used large windows as display cabinets to the street for their wares before.
There is a nice building on the Naas Road, where its whole front elevation becomes a display cabinet to the motorway, full of motorbikes. I think that Bolands Mills could serve a similar iconic function – displaying the people inside the building using it perhaps?
Nice projects there on your web site Hector. Have you looked much at Brown in the past year?
Or spent any time in England experiencing them? Is there any equivalent to Brown on the continent?
In Canada, I know they could build a road equivalent to Dublin to Belfast to completion in six months. We cannt even go from Tallaght to O’Connell Street without stopping and starting every couple of hours for tea and bickies! 🙂
Ireland has no problems with scale when you put real bastards on the job. Dell computers in Limerick is the largest single workforce in the country – 3,000 people and the equivalent of a small rural town. It supplies most of the IT needs of Europe, Middle East and North Africa!
How to be your own FOA with some scafolding!
http://www.a-matter.com/eng/projects/Mackay-Apartmenthouse-pr074-01-r.asp
