“absolutely conceivable that the euro will replace the dollar as reserve currency, or will be traded as an equally important reserve currency”

Alan Greenspan 2007

All my purchases of ArchiCAD and related products are transacted with GRAPHISOFT in Euros so I keep a constant eye on the ups and downs of the Euro.

As can be seen from the above quote the Euro was once seen to possibly be a stronger  currency than the Greenback in the longer term – how things have changed!

With the recent turmoil in Greece, many commentators are questioning how long the Euro will survive.

For those of you interested I found this article in the NZ Herald (originally published by the Independant in the UK) quite informative.

Not surprisingly life has been a little hectic with balancing work, study and relaxing (not that much of that has happened!) So finding time to blog has taken a back seat.

Over the last 5 weeks a number of things have happened though so thought I should share a few highlights:

Board Meetings

We’ve had a couple of Board Meetings with our new director Lance Wiggs with another scheduled for later this week. Lance’s no BS approach is both refreshing and challenging. While it is early days the formalisation of Board Meetings has already provided a discipline that Tracey and I enjoy as we look to grow our business.

New Website

A couple of weeks ago we launched a new Website as the first step in a series of strategic branding steps. Over the last 9 months we have been working with Brian R Richards Limited to build our brand by following an approach similar to Better By Design. The new website consolidated two of our previous offerings in to a single platform on which we will build and deliver future solutions. Keep an eye on the website on the 9th June when we plan to launch our new brand.

ArchiCAD 14

GRAPHISOFT have announced the next version of ArchiCAD so our team is busy preparing for both the international and local release.

http://www.archdaily.com/51666/archdaily-building-of-the-year-2009-the-winners/

It was great to an ArchiCAD designed building took out an award:

http://www.archdaily.com/51658/building-of-the-year-2009-sports-zamet-centre-3lhd/

It is great to see New Zealand’s very own Pacific Environments Yellow Treehouse in the finals along with a number of ArchiCAD finalists from around the globe.

Check out the finalists and place your vote: http://www.archdaily.com/49280/archdaily-building-of-the-year-awards-2009-the-finalists/

However, 20 years ago was also the day that Murray and Sue Pearson founded Cadimage Solutions – the business I started working for 13 years ago and which I purchased 3 years ago.

In 1989 New Zealand was still in a recession following the crash of 87 and everyone told Murray it was not a good time to start a business – Murray’s opinion: it can only get better!

Twenty years later it is almost fitting to have survived another recession and be looking forward to returning to strong growth in the coming years.

Over the years Cadimage has had some remarkable achievements and now consists of a group of four companies with both local and global focus’s (foci?)

The Team at Cadimage (both past and present) have built a strong customer driven business which we can all be proud of.

New Zealand’s economy is built on small business and I personally think 20 years is a remarkable achievement.

I’d therefore like to thank everyone including the founders, past employees, current employees and most importantly our customers both here and around the globe to contributing to this success!

Cheers to 20 more!

Last week I was in Madrid for 4 days.

It isn’t too surprising that the first piece of ‘local’ architecture I experienced was the relatively new Terminal 4 at  Barajas-Madrid Airport.

Actually completed in 2004 the new Terminal along with it’s associated Satelitte terminal were not opened until 2006.

The terminal was designed by Antonio Lamela and Richard Rogers, and like a number of recently completed airports has an amazing sense of space.

One thing I found particularly interesting once I started researching the airport is that it was the Worlds 11th Busiest Airport in 2008 – something I found hard to believe as it was a virtual ghost town the day I arrived. Though more surprising was the fact that in the last 24 months I have passed through 10 of the top 13 busiest airports!

A couple of side notes:

• My camera has a panaramic function but no sticthing software (work that one out!) So I searched the Internet and found AutoStitch – which I used to compile the picture above (make sure you open up the full image) The image is actually constructed of 14 photos with the righthand end having two rows of images. I was amazed to fine AutoStitch managed to compile them all together automatically – I didn’t even need to assemble them in a rough order!
• The architecture of the airport interested me to the extent I wanted to see how effectively I could model it in ArchiCAD with some of the Tools we develop – check out the results here.

This year Graphisoft New Zealand have become the Principle Sponsor of the NZIA Graphisoft Student Design Awards – for this year and the next 3 years.

This sponsorship represents a sizable investment for a company of Graphisoft New Zealand’s size but I am sure we have made more than a few students happy.

Two nights ago we had the major Prize Giving where 4 students from each of Auckland University, Unitec and Wellington University competed to win a $5,000 cash prize along with an overseas trip.

Last night we handed out $10,000 in prizes to 16 students from across the first four years of study at the Unitex ScALA.

Tonight we do the same at the Auckland University School of Architecture and Planning.

Of all the Sponsorship, Advertising and Marketing we undertake, this exercise will be the hardest to quantify from a success/return point of view, but I can easily see that the money is going in a deserving direction.

I was never a good enough Architecture Student to come close to winning prizes of this nature – probably why I moved more into the technology side of Architecture. However, that said I know the money will be well received – even if some or all of it is spent on alcohol - and I am pleased Graphisoft has been able to support the New Zealand Student Community in this way.

As I am sure many of you do as well, I love a great shower! Or more accurately I detest a weak shower.

To hear about the proposed changes that will place limits on the flow rate of showers just seems that as a country we are continually focussing on small details and not big issues.

I can understand the need to conserve water and electricity etc but making allowable shower flow rates a law is one step too far!

You can read about the proposal in the NZ Herald.

The following comment in the article certainly sums up my thoughts:

“Does this Government have a mandate to mess around with our lives to this degree?” one blogger wrote. “We can’t smack our kids, now we can’t bathe them as we see fit either?”

I have heard some other intereasting thoughts/ideas regarding Sustainability based on experiences during my recent trip to ArchiCAD University in the UK. I will share those in another post soon.

Photographer: Simon Devitt

This building along with his Maimai house in Auckland’s Ponsonby are now finalists in World Architecture Festival awards.

Other finalists include Beijing Olympics’ Water Cube swimming stadium, and London’s new Wembley Stadium.

You can read more at Stuff.