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Archive for November, 2010

Nov 23

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The Beauty and Desolation of Detroit

As many people may be aware the city of Detroit has admittedly seen better days.  To give an example the current population about 40% of its postwar peak.  This has resulted in what can be bluntly put as an excess of building stock, much of it in decay.  While it’s not something we think about very often the slow decay of buildings has a strange surrealism and beauty to it, this has been captured by various photographers in Detroit recently particularly well by the these photographers (see links below).

http://www.marchandmeffre.com/detroit/index.html
http://seanhemmerle.com/ (Look at the Rust Belt under PROJ)

Photograph by Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre. http://www.marchandmeffre.com/

Nov 22

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McCarthy Library Receives Merit Award at the AIARE 2010 Design Awards

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It was a great win for TLCD this past Saturday at the AIA Redwood Empire Chapter 2010 Design Awards. Napa Valley College’s McCarthy Library, which was completed in 2009, received the Merit Award in the Built Category. With 57 entries in total, the 2010 competition was one of the toughest yet. Projects ranged from private residences to large education facilities, backyard studios to estate wineries. During the awards ceremony, local architects and their invited guests meandered through the banquet hall to view presentation boards for the submitted projects.

While we all settled into our chairs for the awards announcement, there was a tiny hum of excitement across the hall. Wendy Young, AIARE Executive Director, started off the awards by thanking the sponsors and expressing how great it was to have so many talent individuals gathered in one space.

When McCarthy Library was revealed as the winner of the 2010 Merit Award, a huge round of applause came from the TLCD peanut gallery.  Senior Principal Alan Butler accepted the award on behalf of the TLCD team and appreciated the hard work and creativity that made the McCarthy Library a reality.  Check out the submission photos for the McCarthy Library in the slideshow above. To view the full list of all of the Design Awards entries, visit the AIARE website.

Nov 19

TLCD Gang at the 2010 Sonoma County Healthcare Conference

Yesterday several of us attended the North Bay Business Journal’s 2010 Sonoma County Healthcare Conference. TLCD Architecture has been a sponsor of this event for the past three years and was encouraged by the strong turnout at our booth. “What is an architecture firm doing at a health conference”, you ask? Great question! Since this was overwhelmingly the most frequent question at last year’s conference we decided to beat everyone to the punch and place tent cards on all the tables encouraging attendees to stop by our booth and find out why we were there! It was very successful and many people stopped by and entered to win our fitness package that we raffled off at the end of the conference. So why was an architecture firm at a healthcare conference you ask? TLCD is committed to our local healthcare community and feel it is our responsibility to be sure all the health providers in our area are aware of the award winning design services that are available to them in their back yard. Many healthcare providers, especially the smaller or independent practitioners are not familiar with the rigorous review and planning regulations that are involved in order to realize their maintenance and expansion plans. In all, we had a great time meeting people in our community who share our commitment to healthcare excellence and informing them about how TLCD can assist them by improving the quality of their facilities for their members. Thanks to Marina and Bridgett for all their hard work and preparations, it really showed!

Nov 17

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Leslie Smith recognized as a Revit Certified Professional

I recently received a notice though AUGI (Autodesk Users Group International) www.augi.org announcing the Autodesk Certification Roadshow.  Free certification testing was being offered for one day only in eight different cities. San Francisco was listed as one of the host cities so I decided this was an offer too good to pass up and registered to participate. As a longtime Revit user, I felt pretty confident in my knowledge of the program but felt it would be beneficial to have official documentation of my level of proficiency from Autodesk.

As a tool for preparation Autodesk provided a “roadmap”, a list of topics that would be included in each exam.  I also blitzed through the book “The unofficial Revit 2011 Certification Exam Guide” by Elise Moss.  It provided a good review and I even learned a few new things.

The Associate Exam is a 60 minute multiple choice test.  This was fairly basic, a good general overview.

The Professional Exam is a 90 minute hands on exam. You work through exercises in a Revit model and report answers to questions in the exam. This was more indepth, included the use of worksets, design options, modifying families, massing, etc. I felt the test structure itself was well organized and easy to use; all instructions were simple and easy to follow. I was able to finish both test well under the alloted time and yippee passed both. The tests are scored immediately, no waiting for results. So now I am officially recognized by Autodesk as a Revit Architecture 2011 Certified Associate & Certified Professional.  Bonus TLCD Architecture www.tlcd.com is listed too!

In addition to printed certificates, I have permission to use official Autodesk logos:

While in between tests, I had a nice conversation with the proctor and a representative from Autodesk regarding TLCD’s use of Revit and BIM in general. All in all a great experience and a real boost to my confidence.

Nov 17

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Jason, Guy & Mark’s Excellent Adventure!

A couple of months ago, TLCD was invited to speak about our BIM implementation at an event sponsored by Autodesk and our VAR, Ideate Inc., called “BIM in Government” at the General Services Administration building, the “Ziggurat”.  We decided this would be a great opportunity to reach out to a new client base, and introduce two of our principals to this marketing format.  So, on November 16th, Jason Brabo, Guy Messick and Mark Adams headed up to Sacramento.  Jason & Guy presented for an hour, following an Autodesk rep, and it came off extremely well.  Jason in particular did a great job giving a mangers perspective on BIM use.  We were able to raise TLCD’s profile among a new group of owners (and competitors!) and had fun doing it.

Nov 16

The Uglies

I found an interesting document on the San Mateo Community College website about common oversights that create “The Uglies”  This is something that we all could spend a few minutes looking at.

-aB

The Uglies-San Mateo CCD

From the document:

Okay, so “The Uglies” is not exactly the best way to characterize what’s going on in these photos.

• But there are other things going on that we want to call to your attention, and ask that you do not replicate these conditions in our facilities! These examples illustrate conditions that are:
– Difficult to maintain
– Difficult to operate
– Not durable enough for our institutional or environmental conditions
– And yes, some really are just ugly

Nov 16

Sketchbook

 

I think that almost every architect has more than one sketchbook in a bookcase at home with one or two sketches and good intentions to fill the rest of it. I bet I have ten or more and some of them have not been opened for a decade or more. My last two trips to Italy, I have finally gotten over my inhibitions (what if I do a bad drawing!?) and carved out the time to sketch regularly. This fall, while my wife Margaret was in Italian language classes, I went out and walked, took pictures and sat and sketched. My goal was to do at least one sketch each day. Linked on Flickr are some of the sketches I did.

We spent ten days in Rome, then travelled northeast about 3 ½ hours by bus to the town of Ascoli Piceno in the Le Marche province. It is a vital and economically robust town of 60,000 with a medieval core that dates from the 11th and 12th century. We stayed in an architect’s home overlooking the town that that had been converted to a B&B by his nephew, so you will see lots of views of the towers from above. Urbino was our next stop and focused around a renaissance fortress on a hilltop that is every travel photographers dream. Our last stop was Ferrara, a town about the size of Santa Rosa with an intact walled core dating from medieval and renaissance times. Sketching was a relaxing way of making myself sit quietly in one place for a while and really contributed to making this into a true vacation. I’ve got a couple of slide shows scheduled in January to show both the historic and contemporary facets of our trip.

 

Nov 10

Results on the Sonoma County School Bond Measures

Seven out of the eight school bond measures in Sonoma and Napa Counties won approval during last Tuesday’s voting. The vote to increase property taxes will pay for $107 million in construction and maintenance projects, including solar installations and classroom improvements.

TLCD was chosen as the architect for the Bennett Valley School District, which will receive $10.6 million for projects at their Yulupa and Strawberry Elementary School campuses. Other successful school districts include West Sonoma County, Sonoma Valley, Twin Hills, Forestville, St. Helena, and Cloverdale.  Unfortunately, Piner-Olivet District, which we were also awarded work for, did not pass its bond measure.

TLCD’s K12 Education Practice Area has been actively following the bond measures and expects a number of RFPs to be issued within the next few months.

For a full synopsis on the bond measures, check out the article from the Press Democrat.

Nov 3

Corb Colors

Did you really think that all of those incredible modernist interiors were monochome?  Well, now you can access the 80 shades of paint in the Le Corbusier collection, which is manufactured by the Swiss company KT Color.  See link below for NYT article.

http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/28/his-true-colors/

Nov 1

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State of Ohio Goes to BIM!

Yet another major owner joins the growing group of entities that not only require BIM for their projects, they have a protocol in place.  Of particular interest is the chart for architectural service fees, indicating the difference between BIM & Non-BIM projects.  See link below:

http://www.das.ohio.gov/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=VD8N3VDCjno%3D&tabid=305

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