bentleyuser.org - The Lars Word: Letter from New York

The Lars Word: Letter from New York
by Lars Hesselgren - 24 November 2005

As you may know I have recently changed from a CAD nut to a Techno nut. On my 60th Birthday I went into part-time mode which in fact simply changed my work/work balance from 5/2 to 3/4.

Research is a much bigger pond than Computing. Computing is a necessary tool in the modern world, but what can we do with it when it encounters reality?

I am now 2/3 through my autumn tour which I designed to be the initial impetus of forming yet another group – I seem to be a serial groupie – Bentley Community, SmartGeometry Group and now KPF Research.

My e-mail count from 1/11 till 11/11 (10 days): read about 270, sent about 150. Where would I be without my Crackberry?

Tuesday 1st November 2005

Caught train to Paddington, on to the Architectural Association where I had a brief lunch with Robert Aish and Hugh Whitehead – we discussed the presenters at the upcoming SmartGeometry Conference (1st February 2006 at the British Museum).

Spent a little time at the students GC course and very interested in seeing Xavier from Foster showing a yacht design and the use of GC in that context, followed by Hugh showing off the Kowloon snake roof (and why does he never mention the towering building in the background by KPF?). Fosters surely know their stuff.

On to LHR, plane to Zurich.

Wednesday 2nd November

Day 1 of workshop at Leica; this is the Leica that owns Cyrax scanning (there are numerous other Leicas independently owned). Amused to find out that Leica has just been bought up by Swedish conglomerate Hexagon, moving Leica from Bentley-size to Autodesk size.

Purpose of workshop is to look ahead and specify innovations and areas where Leica should spend their R&D money and time. Their primary market is surveyors (the instruments are professional, not cheap 20k-40k type cost) so the workshop consists of 15 surveyors worldwide (US, UK, Germany and a few others) and one architect (me).

After they have made us work they do a presentation about their current R&D. Because of non-disclosure I can only mention in outline their ideas.

It is however clear that there is strong convergence of data acquisition with image capture – the two are really the same thing. The ultimate in that trend is of course the 3D camera. There is already at least one in existence based on pulsed infrared, but Leica is after accuracy, I mean real accuracy. One of the participants is the surveyor at CERN and his accuracy requirements are staggering, microns over kilometres type stuff.

Thursday 3rd November

Day 2 – my workshop today is centred on animation and interior data capture. One of the participants is from Plowman Craven, his primary business is archaeology and movie industry sets. Both are of course relying on scanning and we all agree the real bottleneck is processing captured data into useable, structured CAD.

Naturally one methodology is better software, but AI is just not good enough. Another option is to put better tools into the hands of the surveyor on site, in effect at least partly building the model there and then (concepts such as automatic edge detection and local GPS come into play).

The actual workshops are very well run – there is a structured process for brainstorming moving into requirements definition which I find very instructive.

On train back to Zurich chat to German surveyor, he surveys train alignments for High Speed Trains – currently doing the Belgium to Amsterdam track (which will terminate at Amsterdam South where KPF’s World Trade Centre is the new gateway to Amsterdam). His requirements are tough, at those speeds longitudinal curvatures matter.

Catch plane to LHR

Friday 4th November

Bentley BIM summit. Arrive a bit late, miss Fosters presentation, get BDP, Whitby Bird and others instead. BIM good, why is take-up slow seems to be theme. I think the curve is accelerating, there now are firms doing it seriously and there is absolutely no chance going back.

J Parrish does a great presentation on stadium design (as usual). He is followed by Sir Sebastian Coe who really is inspirational, we now understand why London won the Olympics (and NY lost, in spite of KPF designed stadium, how could the NY State Legislature have pulled funding two weeks before the Olympic selection date? They had no Seb Coe).

Discussion in afternoon is usual rerun of BIM argument; I raise the importance of trust in a litigious society. BDP seems to have handed over their geometry generation to their structural engineers, a huge mistake by their architects I think, geometry is design.

Speak briefly to Brad Workman and Huw Roberts of Bentley – a good summit and pitched right. Bentley Community meeting day before seems to have gone well (Stylianos Dritsas from KPF showing off the new and improved GC model of the Bishopsgate Tower by KPF (I know because I did the geometry implementation), GC front end with lots of C# code at the back end).

On to LHR, catch plane to JFK

Saturday 5th November

Train to Boston, chance to do some GC helical maths for KPF workshops later on.

On to MIT where students are being taught GC, organised by Larry Sass. Lots of familiar faces, Robert Aish is there as well. Help out the students, trouble shoot with somebody who has built a 4 dimensional array. Struggle with a student on weaving, leave till tomorrow; quiet dinner with Robert.

Sunday 6th November

GC course continues. Finally reduced to scripting for weaving problem, Kyle Steinfeld from KPF NY office helps out.

We do presentation to students of Bishopsgate tower, Stylianos shows up (his girl friend is still in Boston) and runs Bishopsgate model live to students; the power of real C# coding very clear.

Dinner with friend, she is an advisor to US Treasury.

Monday 7th November

I start with a meeting with a materials Professor at MIT. He has been working with SOM (Freedom Tower). We discuss possibilities of joint research.

Then I have a meeting with a Ph D candidate at Harvard, he wants case studies on parametric studies. He knows Gehry Technology well (as do most people at MIT) so we discuss their approach, which seems really construction management oriented, so I consign them to the BIM bin yet again.

Take my US Treasury advisor to meet Neil Gershenfeld (you must read his book Fab), he is Director of the Bits and Atoms Laboratory at the MIT Media Labs. He is hot stuff intellectually and motors on hi-tech digital manufacture. He set up a ‘hack’, a package of digital manufacturing devices planted all over (inner Boston, Africa, India, Norway) and this has grown into a serious movement. His catch phrase is ‘Innovation is Aid’, people are manufacturing hi-tech components themselves they could not conceivably purchase and are innovating against their own needs, not being educated as consumers.

The next hour is riveting mostly about money, venture funds, State Department, Treasury, politics. Americans know how to use money, to them it just another tool. I begin to understand why the global financial system springs from US.

Tuesday 8th November

Meet with Larry Sass, computation group within the Architecture Department at MIT. We discuss collaboration and research.

Lunch with journalists who freelances for Architectural Review, he did an article based on an interview with me published in September.

Have time to go and buy my 60th birthday present from my children – I find a wonderful Nikon Coolpix s4 digital camera – it does panoramas, time lapse photography and you just fold it up to get into your pocket.

Train to NY

Wednesday 9th November

Go into KPF NY and finalise preparations for KPF Research Workshops. Naturally there are a lot of people to talk to.

Afterwards go to NY Architecture Centre to hear SHoP present. They do interesting small stuff and don’t mind getting their hands dirty. They go (if they are allowed to) to the man who runs the machine, that way digital data is really used. Interestingly they see it as a way to reconnect architecture with the craftsman, I completely agree.

I pick up a rumour that Gehry Technology’s Catia based Digital Project is not compatible with Catia’s PLM software – if true it seems a bit silly.

I have dinner with Paul Seletski of SOM – he is Chairman of AIA Tech Chapter in NY - and some others. As usual discussion revolves round BIM / Revit; GC gets a look-in.

Thursday 10th November and Friday 11th November

Run KPF Research workshops and this includes video conferencing back to KPF London office. I have set the themes but I am determined to extract ideas from our members of staff and I use the workshop technique I learnt at Leica. Some of the themes are obvious; Biomimetics is by far the most popular, maybe because like sustainability it can mean so many things to so many people.

The others I can’t discuss here for obvious reasons but clearly new technologies which will impact construction and architecture is in my gun sight.

Saturday 12th November

Write the summaries from the workshops. Learn to use SharePoint, our new home for KPF Research; so far for invited participants only.

Aspects of SharePoint annoy – it is obviously partly written in Java and the occasional Unix / web like construct sneaks in – this from a company that supposedly rules the desktop.

I have heard that relatively soon ProjectWise will become a plug-in to SharePoint – I will be interested in seeing that.

Sunday 13th November

Write up new research ideas I have been promising myself for a long time. Then go on to use GC and as usual within an inch of my goal when I realise I should have structured things differently.

Decide to add to the diary, GC has to wait till tomorrow, it’s 10 pm and I am still partially on UK time so I am going to bed.

NEXT PART WRITTEN AT JFK ON WEDNESDAY EVENING

Monday 14th November

Into office again, continue the SharePoint build. Several meetings with people who are sorry to have missed Thursday/Friday workshops. Scheduling times to avoid the deadlines that plague our industry is clearly impossible. We work on developing a straddled Friday/Saturday structure. Talks on developing the concept for KPF Research 2006 – it will be our first complete year.

Dinner alone.

Tuesday 15th November

I go on to McGraw-Hill Innovation Conference (the reason for staying on for a few more days).
It kicks off with Neil Gershenfeld (see above). He is very inspirational; he likens digital manufacturing to be in the VAX (or minicomputer for you newbies) era – halfway between mainframes and PC’s. His Fab Lab concept is motoring like wild fire, empowering the poor and rich alike; the former to create products they could never afford to buy, the latter to create products only THEY want – customisation for one person. The ‘scream bag’ the classical example of something I don’t want, but the creator wanted.

But the more important comparison he makes is the modern proper fab lab - generally speaking into the multi-billon costs (where your Pentium is made) – and natures which uses RNA as a computer. He points out that the error rate on DNA (step up from RNA) is 99.9999% - far better than any manufacturing technology we have. He also expands on ‘Internet 0’, the protocol for very simple devices like light bulbs; check it out on the net.

After that there are presenters of different new products. These are interesting in themselves, liquid between sheets of glass, optic fibres in concrete. However ultimately I think consigned to the bin marked ‘novelties’. The guy from Flexitec is more interesting, they have done almost all the ETFE stuff around – Eden, Fulham hospital and so on – and they have some novel ideas which are appealing (variable acoustics and multi-layered printed technology, solar cells and so on).

Another BIM presentation – mid-west outfit, they do all the right things but their stuff is really ugly. Find out afterwards they are TF users; nobody asks and they don’t tell. Marketing so subtle it somehow misses the point. Chats to the guy afterwards, he agrees GC is interesting new babe on the block.
Reception, lots of familiar faces, some new sharp ones – a woman who works with KPF, but she did bits of Hubble – real credentials.

Wednesday 15th November

Americans are mad – we start again at 7:30 am! I am still partly on UK time so not too bad. The first bunch of presentations by very American young woman – but who really knows her way around materials (among others she works with KPF). She shows lots of good stuff, hygroscopic concrete, bamboo plywood, soy-based binder to replace polyurethane. 3cam manufacturing plant, double-curved material pressing. All the material is available on the net from McGraw-Hills Innovation page.

Then comes the presentation of the Herscht building in NY – 57th St / 8th Avenue. I have walked past it every day for a week now, it’s the Fosters diagrid building with lost corners – it used to be ‘birds-mouth’, now the marketeers have got hold of it it’s ‘Eagle’s beak’.

They put on a great show, it is a quality building. But frankly not that innovative, it is a bog standard diagrid steel structure, perfectly normal façade, some semi-clever mechanical systems. It is essentially state-of-the-art, not innovative. And inevitably tagged ‘Green’, ’environmentally responsive’ and ‘sustainable’. I suspect that as usual we architects a bit get carried away.

DAMN – LAST CALL ON MONITOR

Rush down to gate – no we are delayed an hour – voice only message; why the hell can’t they keep monitors up to date?

BACK TO LOUNGE

So back to KPF – more e-mailing, look at Vegas project – more than 5,000 bedroom hotel; it’s big. Plan return to KPF NY. Limo to JFK, he drives miles north to avoid rush, make it in an hour.

Tomorrow I’ll e-mail this down my modem from the farm in the country. Two weeks well spent? You bet.

Catch plane to LHR.

Lars