News and Developments
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News and Developments |
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The Boston Society of Architects is pleased to announce that the project chosen for the 2003 Designers 3D CAD Challenge is a PlaySpace for the Ronald McDonald House of Boston, an organization which provides a place for the families of children with cancer.
This year we open participation to all designers - architects, engineers, landscape designers, interior designers, and more - from practicing professionals to students. We welcome them to bring their laptops and their favorite CADD programs to the World Trade Center Boston and spend 3 hours developing design ideas for a great cause.
We will alternately display what is being modeled on each laptop on
a huge screen so your colleagues and audience can share the virtual reality
design experience as it is happening.
April 14, 2003
The 2003 Designers 3D CAD Challenge continues its role as a public service, while at the same time allowing us all to get a view of how the various different CADD programs work in a real design context, by taking on the added challenge of a "traditional charrette" - a pro-bono public service to solve a community problem. For over 200 years there have been dozens of architectural charrettes each year where architects and other designers come together for a marathon design session to solve an architectural problem for the public good. This year, instead of yellow trace flying about the room and flipchart presentations, we take advantage of the technology of architectural CADD and the Designers 3D CAD Challenge to allow the designers to do their designs faster and more comprehensively and to allow us all to watch the charrette in a better way with large screen projection of their digital work underway.
Thus, this events objective of being "architecture as a spectator sport", begun as a competition using imaginary projects, now truly takes on real architecture while spectators can watch. We also open the field to all the charrettes designers to bring whichever CADD systems they wish.
By opening the field to designers to bring whichever CADD systems they wish, this means, of course, that we cannot guarentee that there will be equal representation of the different CADD programs. In the past we made sure that there was at least one designer using AutoCAD, DataCAD, Arris, ArchiCAD, VectorWorks, and so on. This year, if all the designers choose to use AutoCAD (for instance) that is how it will go. The presence, or not, of CADD choices the various designers elect to bring will indeed tell us something about the usability of these programs. Our plan is to switch the projection of the main screen during the actual design charrette from one designer to another to discuss their current design solutions in progress, AND, to identify what software they are using, as well as have running comentary on whether that particular CADD software is helping or hindering them to express certain design ideas.
For the lucky community chosen to have a problem building or building site solved by a consortium of designers as an architectural design project, this particular venue offers a greater level of visibility to their problem (and to them addressing that problem), a better level of interactivity - as they will be able to see more clearly as different design proposals come up on the big screen, and, finally, a better way to document and implement those designs - as the whole thing will be digitally recorded so it is easier to display later for various community groups and builders.
For the participating designers, this venue will alow them to really show their design skills, make use of their favorite CADD system (or systems) to enable them to go further than they could with yellow trace, perhaps advocate for their particular software, capture the audiences attention with dynamic virtual reality walk-throughs of their design, and perhaps make a name for themselves.
For the audience, whether they are students of architecture there to see how the real design process evolves, or whether they are seasoned professionals interested to see what the limits or the abilities are of the various CADD systems, the large screen projection system will make this event without precedent.
For the profession, as the event actually unfolds in November, and, long afterwards as the designs and commentary are posted on the web and published, this venue can serve to be a turning point in the merging of design software technology with architectural design as a whole.
GML - April 14, 2003
The Design Project
On our initial appeal last month we have received numerous responses from architects, and communities, of possible candidates for the design project building or site. We are going to discuss the various projects at length, and, also, we are not yet closed to even more proposal possibilities. We will have a meeting of the BSA Committee on Design Software this summer where we will discuss and narrow down the possibilities (all are welcome to attend, meeting date not yet set). At least for this year, preference would be for a project somewhere in the Boston area. Also, there is a preference for a project involving a Building (whether new or adaptive use) and also one where it may be possible to actually come up with possible design solutions in just a few hours.
So far, we have received proposals for :
Boston Central Artery - a public museum building on the land newly created by the removal of the highways
The Pierce House in the Dorchester section of Boston - adaptive
reuse as a history classroom forgrades K-5 of the Kenney School SPNEA