Research Nation: A Visit to Finland, Part3

What's New in Autodesk Architectural Studio r2?

LaiserinLetterLetters

Laiserin's Lemma—Watches Tell More Than Time




Today's Top-Level Take-Away: Words of Wisdom
> "Every creative act is a sudden cessation of stupidity."
(Edwin Land)
> "Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them."
(Alfred North Whitehead)
> "It's not true that life is one damn thing after another; it is one damn thing over and over."
(Edna St. Vincent Millay)



Research Nation: A Visit to Finland, Part3
The massive Finish R&D efforts for information and communication technologies (ICT) in construction, design and real estate that we've explored in the last two issues might be interesting academic exercises of merely local interest, but for one key ingredient: the Finns practice what they preach. Companies in every corner of the Finnish real estate cluster actively commercialize and market the results of national systems and software R&D projects—both for domestic consumption and for export. What is it like to run an entire country with the innovative spirit and entrepreneurial drive of a Silicon Valley startup? (albeit with the managerial wisdom and deep pockets of a national enterprise). Nervous competitors plying their own AEC and FM technology wares in other parts of the globe may have good reason to wonder.
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What's New in Autodesk Architectural Studio r2?
Bill Mitchell, FRAIA, Dean of Architecture and Planning at MIT, observes that the interface metaphor of most CAD software has remained virtually unchanged since Ivan Sutherland's Sketchpad program nearly 40 years ago (coincidentally at MIT). Ironically, Sketchpad's descendants have little to do with architects' use of sketching as a mode of design thinking. With its initial release of Autodesk Architectural Studio (AAS), Autodesk recaptured and digitally reintegrated this sketch/design process and workflow. Release2 of AAS offers significant speed/performance improvements over r1, a bunch of handy new or enhanced 2-D and 3-D design tools, and another bunch of viewing/navigating/workflow productivity enhancements. This version is a "must" upgrade for AASr1 veterans and a "must have" for any designer who hasn't yet laid down her pencils and markers.
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LaiserinLetterLetters
An occasional sampling of reader electron-mail, or "keep those waves and particles pouring in, folks!"
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Laiserin's Lemma—Watches Tell More Than Time
If you have even the slightest interest in Design (with a capital "D"), then run—do not walk, do not pass "GO" or collect $200—I repeat, RUN to the nearest on-line or old-line bookseller and buy a copy of Watches Tell More Than Time by industrial design master educator Del Coates. Subtitled "Product Design, Information, and the Quest for Elegance," this McGraw-Hill title crams more design wisdom into its 250 or so pages than you likely have in your entire library of design references. Among other things, Coates lays out a solid foundation to explain the range of psychological and physiological responses to "good" or "bad" design. He also makes a persuasive argument for a new kind of CAD that will "emerge from a fusion of parametric design technology and expert- or knowledge-based systems."
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