Sunday, September 26, 2010

Neglecting the blog but busy nonetheless

Hard to believe it has been so long since the last post.  It was a crazy summer and then school started too, which seems to always complicate things.  I just returned from the Architect R&D Symposium in Chicago and the Taubman College Future of Technology Conference.  Both planted a number of interesting ideas.

Other news from the summer is that the Shadow Pavilion won an Architect R&D Award and a National AIA Small Projects Award.

I have been especially busy with our work for BLU Homes.  Since February our firm has been doing design work with the prefab company out of Boston.  It is an interesting match that grew out of our work with CATIA and our interests in construction and fabrication.  BLU uses CATIA to completely model the houses and provide customer customizations.  The model captures all the information and then produces all the shop drawings for the factory.  In many ways it is another arrangement of the key players in the construction process, for us a new form of practice which questions the roles and relationships of traditional practice.  Within one team there is design, manufacturing, marketing, and sales. 

I should have some images to show soon but until then here is an image of a recently delivered project in Massachusetts.  There are three prefab units that are used as a painting studio, photo studio, and media space.  The open house for the project was last weekend, during my last trip out to Boston.