How Architects Work in the Current Times

Oct 2010

By Ethel Baraona Pohl — Filed under: Software , BIG, HP

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DesignJet - HP

“What defines the Internet is its social architecture. It’s the living environment that counts, the live interaction, not just the storage and retrieval procedure.” -Geert Lovink, 2005

Last week we were invited to the HP Designjet Launch and BIG’s House 8 Presentation. The experience was really striking, because being there with some other architects and bloggers, made us think about how work systems are changing so fast, that some times is difficult to even notice them until you find yourself inside that system, working and sharing information without any limitations.

That made us re-think about what social networks and web 2.0 are doing in the field of architectural production. All the new tools we’re discovering every day, make the practice more collaborative and open. Some months ago, we wrote in a guest post for Ymag:

Now communication is more dynamic and also it may be a little bit confusing because of that. With blogs actualized every single day and using social networks as facebook and twitter, architects may have a personal contact in between them, with the users of their buildings and also with researchers that are working on new materials and constructive solutions.

At that time, we were speculating and trying to describe the reality we found around us, but now, we can positive say that the architecture field, at least the firms working on projects in different countries at the same time, is taking advantage of all these tools to materialise ideas, as Bjarke Ingels [founder of BIG] showed at his presentation.

DesignJet - HP

There are also two points we want to remark here, the first one is that we find amazing that some big companies, in this case HP, are providing their clients not only their products, but also a service using cloud computing. The ties in between users from different places help to create new ways of understanding the work-flow. With these new tools, now it’s possible to enable technical design teams to easily access, share and print large format project files online anytime, anywhere, as they pointed.

For the event, they not only invited traditional media but also hp a group of bloggers, including The Pop-Up City, Archimag, urbanophil, pwcom 2.0 and us; and also gave us the opportunity to meet “face-to-face” some other people that we were already following via twitter or facebook. The fact of thinking on bloggers to attend to this kind of events is a positive one, that brings to mind Javier Arbona’s question, when he asked: “Has a blog actually had a significant impact on a building in the process of being designed or built? What was the outcome?”

House 8 - BIG

After the press presentation, we were invited to visit BIG’s House 8, that was released here at ArchDaily before, and also here you can find the work-in-progress videos. Bjarke Ingels presented the project and the book Yes is More. Here are some images about the House 8 in a cloudy day and some others about Bjarke’s presentation:

Cite:
Baraona Pohl , Ethel . "How Architects Work in the Current Times" 28 Oct 2010. ArchDaily. Accessed 26 May 2012. <http://www.archdaily.com/85403>