Journal | Miscellaneous
Fall Equinox
It’s 2:18 PM PDT – Happy Fall Equinox, also known as: Alban Elfed, Autumn Equinox, Autumnal Equinox, Cornucopia, Feast of Avilon, Festival of Dionysus, Harvest Home, Harvest Tide, Mabon, Night of the Hunter, Second Harvest Festival, Wine Harvest, Witch’s Thanksgiving, and the first day of autumn among other names. Welcome Fall.
Logic Gates
Capitalism OR Environmentalism. Why?
Logic gates are key components of a digital circuit. A logic gate helps to define a logical sequence of actions that take place under given circumstances with primary operators “and”, “or”, and “not”, plus their inverses. The typical logic gate will generate one output of either “true” or “false” with two inputs separated by an operator in the logic sequence.
Selling Short
Some have sold Building Information Modeling (B.I.M.) as a panacea tool to solve all the embedded and inherent problems perceived in the architectural profession: to streamline a firm’s productivity, to reduce errors and omissions, to better coordinate the work of the design team, to create more thorough visualizations of a project, among many other promises of such applications. Architects have in turn passed this vision on to our clients, our consultants, and to the general public; some of who now believe we have the option of just pressing the “reglet” button to automatically remove (or add) all the necessary and desired reglets in a project on a whim. The same is presumed true for walls, windows, flashing, and every commonly and uncommonly known building component. While this may in part be true (assuming you have very strict layering and can turn-off a “reglet” layer and the parametric objects “heal” themselves), what is missing from the equation is what happens then. Was the deleted reglet separating dissimilar materials to protect from differential expansion and contraction, was it part of the weather-resistant building envelope, was it an aesthetic device, or all of the above?
Nice to meet you
Introductions are exciting. Whether by accident or design, when you meet someone new you don’t know where it will lead – but just about anything is possible. In business, new contacts could be future resources or clients, new colleagues, employers, or employees; maybe even one of your closest friends.
In architecture, when that new acquaintance becomes a new or potentially new client, how does one go about getting to know each other quickly and deeply to assure compatibility for project success? Compatibility is acutely important in an Owner-Architect relationship as this relationship will usually involve months of time spent together working towards a common, usually intensely personal, goal often involving a lot of capital (both short and long term). So how do you get to know someone?
The year in review
This was a year of discovery and learning (aren’t they all – or at least they should be). One of the more interesting lessons learned this year has to do with firm identity. When deciding on the name Open Architecture Workshop I knew it was a mouthful. But the “brand” has important meaning, focusing on the words “open” and “workshop” are key to the foundation of the firm (see previous post of our interview with Harvest HERE); and of course “architecture” describes the core business. As initially expected there have been some minor misinterpretations and shortened use of the name. While expected, we decided to see what our initial efforts actually produced in response and then act accordingly.
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A one and a two…
Today marks the successful end of the first year in business; and more importantly the beginning of the second year that is going to be better than the first!
O.A.W. interviewed by Harvest
Harvest, an on-line time and expense estimating, tracking, and invoicing service that we use, has selected Open Architecture Workshop as the latest participant in their New Founders Program. O.A.W. participated in an on-line interview with the founders of Harvest, which is posted on their blog here. Read more about Harvest and their business services at www.getharvest.com. Thank you Harvest (Shawn and Danny) for this honor!
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