Produce personalized presentation boards that distill complex concepts into simple visual representations with a few helpful tools and effects.

by: Daniel Davis & David Fano of CASE

This year marks Smartgeometry’s tenth anniversary. For architects it’s been a decade of breathless innovation and listless stagnation. In this article we look back at the success of SmartGeometry and ask why the building industry isn’t keeping up.

The original instigators of Smartgeometry – Lars Hesselgren, J Parrish, and Hugh Whitehead – worked together at YRM (now part of RMJM) in the late 1980s. Together they helped shepherd parametric modeling and associative geometry into the field of architecture, and witnessed how early-stage three-dimensional structural analysis and late-stage clash detection might change practice. Yet in 2003 they found themselves disillusioned and asking, “Why is it that ten years have passed, and we still cannot even get close to the kind of capability that we had then?” [1]. In other words, why is the building industry failing to keep up, or worse, falling behind. It was a question that would inspire the first Smartgeometry conference, and it is a question that still lingers a decade later.

The following article, by Michael Mehaffy & Nikos Salingaros, originally appeared in Metropolis Mag as "Why Green Often Isn't"

Something surprising has happened with many so-called “sustainable” buildings. When actually measured in post-occupancy assessments, they’ve proven far less sustainable than their proponents have claimed. In some cases they’ve actually performed worse than much older buildings, with no such claims. A 2009 New York Times article, “Some buildings not living up to green label,” documented the extensive problems with many sustainability icons. Among other reasons for this failing, the Times pointed to the widespread use of expansive curtain-wall glass assemblies and large, “deep-plan” designs that put most usable space far from exterior walls, forcing greater reliance on artificial light and ventilation systems.

Partly in response to the bad press, the City of New York instituted a new law requiring disclosure of actual performance for many buildings. That led to reports of even more poor-performing sustainability icons. Another Times article, “City’s Law Tracking Energy Use Yields Some Surprises,” noted that the gleaming new 7 World Trade Center, LEED Gold-certified, scored just 74 on the Energy Star rating — one point below the minimum 75 for “high-efficiency buildings” under the national rating system. That modest rating doesn’t even factor in the significant embodied energy in the new materials of 7 World Trade Center.

What's going on with these supposedly "sustainable" buildings? Read on, after the break...

On April 12, 2013, the Board of Health of the Commonwealth of Virginia approved new laws deploying building codes and architectural regulations sanctioning that clinics offering first trimester abortions meet the same building specifications as newly-constructed, full-service surgical hospitals. Mandating compliance within about 18 months, these standards will entail significant and costly alterations to existing facilities that may bankrupt many clinics in the state.

The political maneuvering which occurred to achieve these architectural arrangements, and the responses of concerned professionals in Virginia, were well documented in the press. The Health Commissioner resigned in protest. The chair of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Virginia’s School of Medicine called these building codes “arbitrary and capricious.” A director of the University of Richmond School of Law wrote an editorial challenging the legislation on legal grounds. Almost 200 physicians took a public stand, denouncing the politicians and urging the state to reject the architectural alterations.

Health policy analysts, social workers and advocates for low income women - who will be greatly impacted when these local clinics close - continue to speak up and organize. We have heard from just about everyone with a stake in the impending architectural arrangements. 

Except architects. 

By its very nature, architecture has an obvious, and powerful, public presence. No matter who commissions buildings, they form the material backdrop of public life; the design of every building impacts towns and cities and the experience of those living and working in them. Architecture, though, is more than a stage-set. While, all too often, designed “iconic” buildings are indeed objects, and often vanity projects designed to show off the aspirations and egos of certain clients and architects, the space both inside and around these buildings, like most others, is public space: shared space, space used by communities of people, and space that often has psychological and emotional effects on very many of us. Think of shops, department stores, banks, offices and the many other buildings that, privately owned, play important roles in everyday public life.

It’s this internal aspect of public buildings that has been increasingly marginalized as architects and clients work together to maximize the external impact and character of buildings.  After all, the public life of a public building, be it a court house or shopping-mall, does not cease once you are inside.

The problem with articles like “China’s Great Uprooting: Moving 250 Million Into Cities”, recently featured in The New York Times, is that they contribute to a misleading and simplistic narrative about China’s economic development, casting it as a story of “good” versus “evil”.

This was recently highlighted by a critique authored by the NYU Stern Urbanization Project in which The New York Times article in question was called out for being overly sensational and reductive in how it covered China’s policies concerning internal migration from the countryside to urban areas.

This article, by Michael Mehaffy and Nikos Salingaros, originally appeared in Metropolis Mag as "Science for Designers: The Meaning of Complexity."

Today’s designers seem to love using new ideas coming from science. They embrace them as analogies, metaphors, and in a few cases, tools to generate startling new designs. (Computer algorithms and spline shapes are a good recent example of the latter.) But metaphors about the complexity of the city and its adaptive structures are not the same thing as the actual complexity of the city. The trouble is, this confusion can produce disastrous results. It can even contribute to the slow collapse of an entire civilization. We might think that the difference between metaphor and reality is so obvious that it’s hardly worth mentioning. And yet, such confusion pervades the design world today, and spreads from there into the general culture. It plays a key role in the delusional expectation that metaphors will create reality.

Psychiatrists speak of this as an actual disorder known as “magical thinking”: if our symbols are good enough, then reality will follow. In the hands of designers, this is very dangerous stuff. 

More after the break...

A better workplace can foster better social dynamics, more creativity, an increase on production, and of course, improve the quality of life of the ones using it on a daily basis.

We have partnered with HP to recognize the projects that are pushing the boundaries in this area, creating remarkable spaces for work, and also to foster experimentation among students to think about the workplace of the future.

We have therefore divided the competition into two categories: for professionals and for students.

Professionals
Architects from around the world are invited to submit their recently completed workplace projects. The jury will award entries that are able to demonstrate innovations in this area in the form of sketches or diagrams.

Use your power of synthesis to show us why your project introduces innovation to the workplace!

Students
Students from around the world are invited to design an innovative workplace within a given generic floor of office space. This constrain will force students to operate on actual market conditions.

Unleash your imagination within a delimited space to show us how innovation can be made possible in today’s structures, to foster tomorrow’s ideas!

Schedule, eligibility, prizes, and general rules after the break.

This article, by David Brussat of The Providence Journal's editorial board, first appeared at providencejournal.com.

In a rating of energy efficiency by the Environmental Protection Administration, New York's venerable Chrysler Building scored 84 out of 100 points; the Empire State Building, 80; but the modernist 7 World Trade Center scored 74 (below the cutoff of 75 for "high efficiency"); the Pan Am Building, 39; Lever House, 20; the Seagram Building, 3. The New York Times reported this story last Dec. 24 under the headline "City's Law Tracking Energy Use Yields Some Surprises."

It was no surprise to Nikos Salingaros and Michael Mehaffy, who have investigated why modern architecture thrives despite its inability to live up to any of its longstanding promises -- aesthetic, social or utilitarian.

I see a convergence of sorts. It might be a coincidence but, then again, I think not. The wheels of “Pacific Standard Time”, the Getty’s juggernaut architectural assault on and about Los Angeles, have been turning for what seems like months now with exhibit after exhibit and symposium after symposium.

Is it just me or is “Pacific Standard Time” fatigue setting in? I’m not complaining. It gives me a lot of material to write about so I don’t have to just make stuff up. It corresponds with something called history, after all. But where is the self-reflexive, self-effacing, ha-haExit Through the Gift Shop wink about it all? It’s all so damn serious, isn’t it? It seems cooked up to be so monumental and deterministic. So Grand Narrative from the get-go, right out of the institutional blocks, like a marketing campaign.

For me, university was about finding the confidence to explore creativity, the notion of self, and determining my own measurements of expectation. Last year I wrote an article entitled “10 things you don’t get taught in architecture school,” which provided advice on how to succeed in an academic setting. Having now graduated, the following article is reflective of my first 2 years working full time in architecture.

My experience in the office so far has required another round of self-configuring: repositioning the value of free thinking, redetermining the notion of self within the larger context of someone else's expectations, and managing my objectives with those of others. The measurement of success is no longer determined by me, but by various organisational objectives and requirements.

Essential to the journey of finding my current job, I have initiated substantial life changes that include establishing a career strategy, reevaluating how I position myself in the field of architecture, and questioning who I am as an individual and what I want to contribute to the profession.

After the break, the 10 things most responsible for my obtaining a job in architecture...