Author: Campbell

Ikea and Augmented Reality

I’ve talked a little about Augmented Reality over the last couple of years and have seen many use cases, though many have seemed a little too gimmicky to me and not very practical.

Although this news is over a year old not I have only just come across it and I think Ikea have done a great job in showing a really practical use for AR and also have taken a step at revolutionising their product catalog.

Using their application you can actually place Ikea furniture in your house / office / room and see how it will look. The app uses your phones camera to show the room and places the required objects, which then can be photographed even though they don’t exist!

This is especially good for any New Zealander’s who want to take photos of their house with Ikea furniture – which is still not available in NZ!

Here is a video showcasing the IKEA iPhone application:

Email Overload

I just returned from 4 days leave in New Caledonia (yes it was very hot and relaxing!)

However, today I decided to get on top of my email before I head back to the office tomorrow. Once Outlook sync’d up I had 329 emails.

While sometimes I average over 200 emails/day, 80/day while on leave was quite a surprise!

I read once that email generates email, and I have had first hand experience that the more I send the more I receive – and fortunately the less I sent also resulted in less received.

All in all, not too sure how I received 80+ emails/day when I wasn’t sending any.

Anyway this reminded me of a post I recently read discussing the idea of an email charter:

Houston, we have a problem.

We all love the power of email connecting people across continents. But… we’re drowning in it.

Every year it gets a little worse. To the point where we can get trapped spending most of our working week simply handling the contents of our in-boxes.

And in doing so, we’re making the problem worse. Every reply, every cc, creates new work for our friends and colleagues.

We need to figure out a better way.

But how?

Here is the key cause of this problem:

The total time taken to respond to an email is often MORE than the time it took to create it.

The full post is definitely worth a read and to date there have been over 200 responses.

The overall result of the post has been the creation of http://emailcharter.org/

Christchurch CBD Captured

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.

Buildmedia

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

Some Start Up Advice

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!

ArchiCAD 15 – Broaden Your DESIGN Horizons

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 Serverâ„¢, the world’s first real-time BIM collaboration environment, and the GRAPHISOFT EcoDesignerâ„¢, 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.

Berlin

I am currently in Berlin for the annual GRAPHISOFT International Partners Conference but have managed to find a couple of days to explore Berlin – a city with an incredibly rich history that I could never do justice to explaining.

Instead I decided it is easiest to simply provide a selection of photos showing the old and the new architecture along with many of the ‘monuments’ that illustrate the history.

ArtScience Museum – Singapore

If you browsed through my photos from yesterday you may have seen an interesting ‘lotus shaped’ building.

The ArtScience Museum building was designed by renowned architect Moshe Safdie and certainly has some interesting features, including:

  • The roof of ArtScience Museum allows rainwater to be harvested and channeled down a 35-meter water drop through the center of the structure to the reflecting pond at the lowest level of the building. Rainwater is recycled and redirected through the water feature to create a continuous cylindrical waterfall. The rainwater is also recycled for use in the museum’s bathrooms as part of Singapore’s Green Mark program.
  • Surrounded by a 40,000-square foot lily pond reflecting pool, ArtScience Museum floats over a dynamic new urban terrace with commanding views of Singapore and Marina Bay Sands.
  • A total of 10 “fingers” that make up the building form plus two bay windows with special views of Singapore and Marina Bay Sands. The tallest “finger” stands 60 meters above ground.
  • The interiors of the “fingers” are unique gallery spaces with natural lighting from the fingertips illuminating the sculptural interior wall forms.

While I didn’t have time to venture inside below are a few more photos:

Singapore – Old and New

I am currently in Singapore for a few days en-route to Berlin for the annual GRAPHISOFT International Partners Conference.

While I have passed through Singapore many times I have never had the chance to walk and explore the city and it’s history.

I am staying right beside the Singapore river so today talk a walk down stream.

Sir Thomas Raffles landed in Singapore in 1819 and signed a treaty on behalf of the British East India Company to develop Singapore as a British trading post and as inscribed on the plaque below his statue this was to change Singapore forever.

The contrast of the old fishing village and the modern metropolis is clearly evident today:

Further downstream I arrived at Marina Bay home to the Marina Bay Sands Casino ands it’s 150m long roof top infinity pool:

The double helix bridge:

And the Art and Science Museum:

Along the way I discovered many architectural gems from today and yesteryear:

Accelerate 2011 – #0to60

“It’s not the big that eat the small, it’s the fast that eat the slow”

On Thursday afternoon I left Webstock to head up to the beautiful Hawkes Bay and enjoy two evenings and one day of mixing it with some of the people behind some of New Zealand’s fastest growing businesses.

2011 is the second year Rod Drury from Xero has held his Accelerate conference at the Black Barn Vineyard.

Thursday night started with a social gathering for those who had arrived in Havelock North already. It was great to catch up with a number of old faces and meet many new ones as well.

Friday the conference proper started and, after a brief introduction by Rod, Sam Morgan kicked off the morning session talking about the importance of the business model. This high level over view was then looked at in detail in conjunction with a series of presentations from the likes of Sonar6, Jucy, Sidhe, Aptimize, Snapper and VoucherMob.

The presentations were awesome and many people shared some amazing insights and numbers and Sam and Rod were able to pull out both the good and bad points of the various business models – some of the presenters certainly have a few tough but exciting calls to make in the near term!

Lunch at a vineyard is never a quick experience and Accelerate was no exception. The setting was great and the networking over a great lunch was very enjoyable.

During the morning various topics came up that were to form the basis for the afternoon sessions where discussions and examples were discussed from off-shore development to staff incentives.

A really interesting example from the afternoon was from Sonar6 and talked about how they have shifted their sales focus from the small end of the funnel (converting leads to customers) to the big end (converting suspects to prospects.) The examples and methodologies discussed were incredible and show the power of experimenting, informing and then a small bit of selling. Interestingly since shifting their focus, Sonar6 has made more sales with less sales people!

Following the afternoon session we had another enjoyable evening of networking which included more food and a concert Minuit in the Black Barn Cellar.

Conferences such as Accelerate are extremely positive. Due to a high level of trust amongst participants highly confidential information is shared freely in an open and stimulating environment where everyone benefits.

It is hard not to leave a conference like Accelerate feeling pumped up and the credit must go to Rod for not only organising a great event but also in the people he attracted. Many of New Zealand’s business angels attended along with a couple of VC’s from Silicon Valley.

You can read more about Accelerate from Rod or from Mark Robotham who has a more in depth overview of the day which has saved me significant typing time!