April 23, 2013 Leave a Comment

Why Your Design Model Should Highlight Occupant Narrative

When working to create your architectural design presentation — how do you communicate the benefits of your design to your client? Do you simply rely on your design model to explain how the design will look? Or do you use it to explain the positive value that your client will get out of inhabiting your design?

You see, you can be strategic about the way you use your presentation design model when communicating with your client. You can use it to show how their needs and goals will be met. For example, if you are designing an office building, you can depict how ceiling height will play a role in triggering either more abstract thinking or more detailed thinking among employees. In other words, you can use your architectural design model features to demonstrate how your designed space will function.

The elements that you incorporate within your design model matter, as does the story you tell with your architectural presentation materials. Each rendering or physical model you create acts as a “snapshot” in time of your design. So, you want to be certain that you are choosing the best [Read more...]

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April 16, 2013 Leave a Comment

How to Maximize Your Rendering Lighting to Communicate What You Mean

Image: seier + seier | Flickr

Often, an architectural rendering is about capturing a moment. And that moment is meant to communicate to its observer something deeper behind that architecture. In particular, the lighting within a given rendering becomes quite revealing, as it sets the scene and brings life to materials. You see, light and shadow help a rendering to express itself. In fact, the following is a list of the various ways light and shadow help renderings to communicate:

  • Time of Day
  • Geometric Form
  • Materiality
  • Depth / Distance
  • Texture
  • Transparency
  • Reflection
  • Ethereal Quality

Overall, the lighting expressions listed above can be used to make a rendering richer — where it communicates a lot of information about [Read more...]

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April 9, 2013 Leave a Comment

Using 3D Models to Help You Create Architecture for the Senses

Do you ever design while you model in 3D? And have you ever stopped to think about what that model is telling you about your design? In other words, is it giving you all of the information you need to assess whether your design is unfolding in the way that it should? Of course, the model is heavily biased toward the visual sense — so it helps you to understand factors like lighting and materiality. But what about the other senses? How do you understand how your design will sound or will feel to the touch?

When designing architecture, it is important to understand how your design will impact its occupants through their senses. Is a space going to be noisy and loud? Is it going to feel cold or rough to the touch? You see, 3d models can be used to get a sense of your design before it is ever built. They give you the opportunity to make corrections, play with better ideas, and see how all of the pieces and parts come together. 3D Modeling allows you to “feel” your [Read more...]

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March 26, 2013 1 Comment

How Wearable Technology Will Change Building Occupants

Image: jurveston | Flickr

Technology is moving into the wearable realm — where it will be built into the things we wear like glasses, watches, clothes, and shoes. And this brings with it many advantages like anywhere information that is presented at just the right moment. Greater personalization will also emerge as such worn-devices target their user’s preferences, habits, and behaviors. All of these advantages of wearable technology will change your building occupant. They will be more informed, more self-aware, and more connected. In fact, they will even connect to their surrounding environments in new ways.

The key is for the architecture to make sense of new occupant interactions. As their wearables help them to live healthier and happier lifestyles — the architecture should do the same. In other words, architecture and wearable technology should work together to help [Read more...]

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March 19, 2013 Leave a Comment

Unused Urban Space Can Benefit from Sensory Installations

Image: Frankie Roberto | Flickr

The in-between spaces that remain within urban areas often pose many challenges for designers. Such spaces get left to form dangerous alleyways or corners that repel people. Also, such spaces do nothing to support their adjacent buildings — from a sensory design perspective. Urban space that is “left behind” often becomes unused, simply existing as wasted space — in other words, a missed opportunity.

That’s why it is wonderful to see projects like the one built at London’s Great Ormond Street Hospital. This aural installation takes advantage of what positives the space exudes, and uses those to its advantage to yield more than the sum of its parts. You see, in the in-between urban space (between two buildings) the installation called the Lullaby Factory serves to create music. By integrating instrument-looking horns and pipes, the installation exudes sound (and even song). And the best part is that the installation uplifted an otherwise doomed urban space into a special, uplifting, and engaging space.

Urban space sensory installations that coordinate with their adjacent architectural environments can really help an [Read more...]

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March 12, 2013 Leave a Comment

Augmented Reality: The Merger between Digital and Real 3D Architectural Space

Architecture is perceived as its occupants travel through its spaces physically, and the experience of doing so can mean traveling within rather static or fixed architectural features and elements. However, there is a more dynamic opportunity for architecture to be more personalized for occupant need — and that means the merger of augmented reality with architecture.

The Harvard Graduate School of Design student, Greg Tran, has recently created a thesis project video presentation which simulates what might happen as augmented reality unites with architectural space. In the presentation, you can see how architecture instantly becomes [Read more...]

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March 5, 2013 Leave a Comment

Design Boundary to Enhance Architectural Experience

Image: passer-by | Flickr

The experience of architecture often involves separating the exterior from the interior. Occasionally, the two meet through windows, doors, or other building fenestrations. Such a separation is not always a bad thing — since much can be accomplished through a design which separates the exterior from the interior. For example, the element of surprise or the element of safety can both be achieved by using an architectural skin’s boundary as a separator.

But what happens when an architecture’s skin disappears? If it becomes transparent, what does that mean for [Read more...]

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