I was stoked to see tonight’s close up article about capturing as much of Christchurch before the demolition crews move in.

Jason Mill a Christchurch architect is currently capturing HD images of buildings throughout the Christchurch CBD and with the help of Google Sketch Up (I think) he is creating a virtual model of the city. From what I understand Jason has been working on this for a number of years not just since the earthquake and the concept is awesome.

Taking the work that Jason has done Mark Billinghurst from HitLabNZ provides the ability to walk down the virtual street and see what Christchurch was like before the quake.

I have posted about Mark before regarding his work with augmented reality and it was great to see how Mark is combining Jason’s work to allow the imagery to be delivered to a mobile phone that is location aware so you can see exactly what was previously on the empty site in front of you.

While it is great to see this virtual record being created it is also good to see its potential for communication during the rebuilding phase with the ability for proposed buildings to be ‘dropped’ into the site for the public to see and experience prior to the actual construction.

Beyond using 3d models for visual communication for the general public, the rebuilding of Christchurch also offers architects, engineers, planners and the council a unique opportunity to build an accurate BIM representation of the new built environment – more on that in a future post.

In October 2003, Murray Pearson and I- as the then directors of Cadimage Solutions – divested our Architectural Visualisation business and along with Gareth Ross established Buildmedia Limited.

For the initial 15 months I was involved as a director until Cadimage Solutions sold it’s majority stake to Murray. At that time I became Managing Director of Cadimage and my focus was on both ArchiCAD and our Cadimage Tools. Ironically when I was first employed by Murray in 1997, it was to re-establish the visualisation part of Cadimage that had been in gradual decline as the popularity of ArchiCAD increased.

Cadimage, Buildmedia, Murray, Gareth and myself have remained in close contact since 2003 – we shared offices until 2007 – and as of a few days ago I am now once again a director of Buildmedia. My involvement has come at a time where Buildmedia is ready for a new phase of growth with Murray having sold his shareholding to Gareth, giving Gareth the opportunity to stamp his mark on the company.

Buildmedia do some amazing work across Architecture, Product and Visual Simulations and I am excited to be involved again.

Credits:

Images: 1, 5-7 St Heliers Development by Cook Sargisson & Pirie Architects

Images: 2-4 Matiatia Marina Visual simulations

Image 8: St Michel bathroom furniture

Image 9: Marley guttering

Image 10: Wiaroa Canal development

Image 11: St Michel bathroom furniture

Image 12: Nulook architectural detail

All images copyright Buildmedia 2011

Here are a couple of recent articles that are definitely worth a read if you are thinking about starting a business:

Evernote Shows Startups: ‘Free’ Can Pay – by concentrating on making customers happy you can use ‘free’ products to make money. Also, don’t get hung up on the percentage of your customers who pay, but the number of customers who pay.

From the latest issue of Idealog a great read by Rowan Simpson about the Mythical Startup – most overnight successes take time!

As a GRAPHISOFT Partner we hear about the next version well in advance but we are sworn to secrecy so I am stoked that today we can talk about the next version of ArchiCAD – Version 15. ArchiCAD 15 delivers some awesome features and I can’t wait to get it to my customers:

May 3, 2011

BUDAPEST, May 3, 2011 — GRAPHISOFT announced today ArchiCAD 15, the latest version of its premium design software for architects. ArchiCAD 15 enriches architectural forms available for designers to unleash their creative minds. The new version also expands the scope of the BIM workflow to include renovation & refurbishment projects.

“ArchiCAD 15 addresses architects in their native language with innovative approach to handling design spaces and forms,” said Miklos Szovenyi-Lux, Vice President of Product Management, GRAPHISOFT. “In addition to reinventing the 3D design space and providing architects with a wide array of new design tools, ArchiCAD 15 also addresses the increasing number of architects who earn their living from renovation and refurbishment projects,” he continued.

ENRICHED ARCHITECTURAL FORMS

The evolution of forms has always walked hand-in-hand with the evolution of structures. From the simplest barrel vaults to the most sophisticated rib vaults, the architect has always aspired to combine durability, utility and beauty (Vitruvius). These very principles can be seen in the finest examples of Modern architecture as well. ArchiCAD 15 expands the design capabilities of its BIM tools, including new Shell structures, to support the broadest spectrum of architectural shapes and forms found in both classical and modern architecture.

NEW DEFINITION OF DESIGN SPACE

The evolution of the design process has gone through at least as many revolutionary steps as the forms and structures themselves. During the course of the past few decades, architects have gradually left the “flat-lands” of 2D sketching for the exciting “high-lands” of designing in 3D virtual spaces. The increase in freedom brought about by the third dimension, however, adds a new degree of difficulty to orientation in space as well. ArchiCAD 15 introduces 3D guidelines and editing planes to revolutionize the 3D space definition, making the perspective view the natural, 3D environment for building design.

RENOVATION WORKFLOW SUPPORT

The advent of modern technology has significantly increased the life-cycle of a building. As a result, renovation and refurbishment projects are nearly equal to the volume of new buildings in most of the developed areas of the world. ArchiCAD 15 expands the design scope to renovation and refurbishment projects with native BIM design and documentation workflow support all the way through.

In addition to the impressive list of new and refined design tools and workflows, ArchiCAD 15 includes improvements to its IFC interface and OPEN collaboration workflow with engineers, full 64-bit support for the Mac OS, and improvements to its parametric object libraries as well.

ArchiCAD 15 will be released May 23, 2011. Shipment to customers will begin a few weeks after the official release. Following a tight release schedule, all 26 local versions are planned to reach the market by the end of Q3 2011.For more information about ArchiCAD 15 please visit: http://www.graphisoft.com/archicad/

For a live demonstration of ArchiCAD 15 please register for the coming “BIM and DESIGN” Webinar on June 7, 2011.

About GRAPHISOFT

GRAPHISOFT® ignited the BIM revolution with ArchiCAD®, the industry first BIM software for architects. GRAPHISOFT continues to lead the industry with innovative solutions such as the revolutionary GRAPHISOFT BIM Server™, the world’s first real-time BIM collaboration environment, and the GRAPHISOFT EcoDesigner™, the world’s first fully integrated building energy modeling application. GRAPHISOFT’s innovative solutions have fundamentally changed the way architects around the world design and collaborate.