Thoughts and comments for the 1st semester..

I think this program was very intensive overall.

The discussion we had in the blog was very helpful as learning tools and material.

The way we had the course set up, I think the professors was very good about responding to everyone’s discussion postings in everyone’s blogs. It's good to have a professors that cares about every single student's answers and thoughts.

In the beginning of the week, there might be a little mishap as we all learning how to blogging, using blackboard, downloading, etc.. Overall, I thought the communication between teachers and students are pretty smooth throughout the semester.

It was fun and intensive courses. Each time I spent for each class really pushed me to think outside the box. Balancing between family, work and school could be challenging for each of us, but I think this is the beauty of this program, where we manage to hone our skill in managing time. I really enjoyed the format of this course because it I don't like to speak out in class, but this allowed me to give answers without speaking out loud. And it is on our own time.

I thought it was pretty creative the way that Chris has the course planned. Chris, you reverse the order on developing the building concept, where we have to create series of perspective drawings before we know where the wall is, and to create the model before we even know the floor plan looks like. This uniques and interesting concepts are valuable tools to enhance my skills.

For theory and history class, Herb really pushed hard on each of us about what we are here for, and why we are here. This helps me to think hard about my goals and carriers, because in order to be successful we have to have goal and purpose in our creative and unique profession.

For improvement, I would like BAC to offer a class that concentrate in preparation for ARE exams. I’m sure the majority of my classmates would agree with that.

In the future semester, I am hoping we can have breathing room the finals. This semester works fine, because of the snowstorm; Herb pushes the deadline 2 more extra days. Having the breathing room I really think this will help the individual to finalize and presented their work better.

Thorough the 5 semesters, I would like BAC to provide 1 small storage room for all us, where we can leave our X-Acto knife, models, boards, materials and supply on the BAC building, so we don’t have to disposed, waste it or carrying it back to our trip back home. The security at the airport can be a challenging and difficult with us carrying most of items back to home.

Overall, for the 1^st semester I think BAC is well prepared, especially the professors.

Final Image for Final Review 1

To see my previous blog, please check my Blog Archive. All of my works should be there.

This is my first initial study diagram. This is my attempt to recognize apple brand, "Regardless of what your lifestyle is, Apple will always fit to yours."

Final Image for Final Review 2

Anything from foods, toys, cars, etc, you can customize. This diagram shows the idea of "manufacturing pod," which is part of my 25 percent program.

Inside the pod, the visitors can experience the mass production processes with the flexibility of individual customization to fit their style.

Final Image for Final Review 3

The unique product display incorporated inside the glass ramps, and stairs to entice the visitors to explore the store. While the visitor navigates inside the store, the circulation collecting data from the visitors, and transferred the data to the pods in order to create the “personalize” apple products.

Final Image for Final Review 4

Apple brands are fun, different and creative. The building façade study is to show the dynamic of the new architecture can connect to existing surroundings in a respectful manner.

Final Image for Final Review 5

The fist floor plan is showing the product display and signatures element layout. Creating LCD wall as a divider between new visitors and old visitors whom did not wish to tour around the building, and they already know what they want to buy they can skip and go straight to the product shelves.

Final Image for Final Review 6

By elevating the pods base plate will create field of double height space within a larger spatial context. Undulating ramps wrapping, and turning to expose different pods inside the building. The field of space can be further articulated by contrasting the surface treatments of extruding and depressed area and the surrounding its environment.

Final Image for Final Review 7

The main entry is celebrated with the signature "Apple Gate" for familiarity and to welcome the pedestrian to go into the store. The building façade was created based on the circulation that wraps around the pods. As the results, protruding volumes intertwined to each other, with the vertical element (elevator) to hold the volumes intact.

Final Image for Final Review 8

One of the most important elements in Apple product is their innovative design. The new stores have Pneumatic Dispatch tube to transfer items (hardware components) between research pod (bottom) and testing pod (top). A lot of movement inside the pneumatic tube, thus creating dynamic movement that can be seen from the building exterior.

Green buildings need more incentives in U.S.

By Nick Carey and Ilaina Jonas Wed Feb 14, 8:30 AM ET

CHICAGO/NEW YORK (Reuters) - When it opens next year, the 54-story Bank of America Tower in New York will be the most environmentally friendly office building in the United States.

It will produce most of its energy at an on-sit cogeneration plant. It will capture and reuse waste water and rainwater. And it uses recycled materials in its construction.

The building is the latest in a trend toward office buildings that use less energy and cause less global warming. But developers say that trend is being held back by insufficient government support.

Seventeen U.S. states and 59 cities including New York and Chicago offer incentives for green buildings or require certification under the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED).

That, and demand from tenants, has led to a boom in green buildings, said Rick Fedrizzi, founder of the U.S. Green Building Council, a nonprofit group that issues the LEED certification.

Five years ago, it was hard to get developers to focus on environmentally friendly building. "Now, I get three calls a day from CFOs asking about what we do," Fedrizzi said. The council's green building rating system has gone from relative obscurity to a mark of prestige.

The Bank of America building in Midtown Manhattan, with 2.1 million square feet and six trading floors, will be the first building to earn a platinum LEED certificate, the council's highest.

But without $650 million in bonds intended to rebuild Lower Manhattan after the attacks of September 11, 2001, it may not have been built.

Jeffrey Schwartz, chief executive of ProLogis -- the world's largest developer, said the U.S. government is not doing enough to help green buildings.

"It's not cost efficient without (government) sponsorship today," Schwartz said.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

Environmental Protection Agency

argues that federal tax breaks of up to $1.80 per square foot and programs to promote energy conservation provide enough support.

"This is often not a cost-efficient process," said Herb Hauser, a consultant at Midtown Technologies. "More financial incentives would help."

Hauser is working on the $1.5 billion Steel Point mixed-use development in Bridgeport, Connecticut, that will generate 15 percent of its own power using wind, water and solar energy.

HIGH ENERGY PRICES

Green projects have grown rapidly in recent years. The U.S. Green Building Council has issued 546 LEED certificates covering 59 million square feet, up from 38 covering 5 million square feet in 2002.

For its part, the Environmental Protection Agency gave its Energy Star label, more commonly given to energy efficient appliances, to 930 buildings last year. It has certified 3,200 since 1992.

"Until recently energy policy in this country came down to praying for a warm winter," said Hauser.

Work on Steel Point will begin in the third quarter of this year and the first phase should go into operation within two years.

But developers say social pressure also plays a part, making green offices a must for a growing number of companies.

"Some companies have concluded they can use a greener building as a recruitment and market tool," said Brad Soderwall, project manager for privately-owned Houston-based developer Hines for a 60-story $450 million office building in downtown Chicago.

The building will be gold LEED certified, thanks to items such as pumping river water over water pipes in the basement to cool the building instead of a using a conventional rooftop cooling system. It will also have a green roof -- covered with plants to improve air quality, conserve energy and reduce runoff.

"Having a greener, more energy efficient place to work is important to a surprising number of people," he said.

Hines expects these measures will save $800,000 annually on energy bills. The main tenant, Chicago-based law firm Kirkland & Ellis LLP, required a gold LEED certificate in the lease.

Erik Olsen, Chicago's green projects administrator, said the city fast-tracks green projects, cutting permitting time in half and mandatory consulting fees by up to $25,000.

Dale Anne Reiss, global real estate director for accounting firm Ernst & Young, predicted that failure to go green could lower the value of conventional buildings.

"You could have impairment on your buildings that are not green," Reiss said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070214/us_nm/feature_climate_dc_3

Assignment for week 5 Final

Assignment for week 5 (WIP)

Assignment for week 5 (WIP)

assignment for week 4

assignment for week 4

assignment for week 4

Venice Biennale: Senseable City

The MIT Senseable City project had a big room inside the Italian Pavilion of the Biennale this year. So i'll just focus on that room for the moment, 'kay? The Italian pavilion is always a glorious mess. Loads of nice surprises in there but i never know how to make sense of it.

All the projects selected deal with specific aspects of the urban environment and digital technology. The star of the show was Real Time Rome, an information visualization system that combines different datasets in a single interface to reveal the rhythm of the Italian capital in real time.

Part of the room was dedicated to the work developed at the Tangible Media Group, headed by Hiroshi Ishii. Three kinds of Tangible Bits were demonstrating how artefacts can give physical form to digital information, making bits directly manipulable and perceptible.

Pinwheels are spinning in a digital wind from cyberspace (such as network traffic), showing how physical information can be communicated within an architectural space in subtle and aesthetically pleasing ways. The five sets of pinwheels in the room are connected to the Real Time Rome data and indicate the number of people visiting the Colosseo, Piazza San Pietro and other monuments of Rome. Faster movement and stronger wind indicate a higher number of people at the
monument at the current moment.

Five Ambient Orbs are connected to the Real Time Rome data and indicate the level of traffic congestion at different traffic intersections in Rome.

I was quite glad to finally get to see SandScape (image on the right), only that it was out of order then i visited the Biennale. This interface allows to design and understand landscapes through computational simulations using sand. These simulations are projected on the surface of a sand model that represents the terrain and you can choose from a variety of simulations that highlight either the height, slope, contours, shadows, drainage or aspect of the landscape model. You can alter the form of the landscape model by manipulating sand while seeing the resultant effects of computational analysis projected on the surface of sand.

Several information panels were detailing how the MIT BUS projects would revolutionalize the experience of taking the bus. From the bus stop to the the structure of the bus itself to its route.

With network and computational support, bus routes can become self-organizing systems in space and time much in the way of private automobiles and taxis, rather than structures with fixed routes and timetables. In the self-organizing bus system, bus operators would keep track of vehicle movements, electronically monitor demand from minute to minute, and responsively allocate service capacity to where it is needed most.

In addition, by means of mobile devices, passengers can be informed of when and where service will be available.

The researchers had also imagined a "reconfigurable" bus. Instead of a long, narrow box on wheels, buses could become flexible and wiggle themselves through the streets in a more agile fashion.

Buses can also become mobile network nodes (we've been promised that for years guys, can't wait to get that), so that passengers are connected for guidance, entertainment and mobile work. Both interior
and exterior surfaces can carry information displays. More in MIT: RATP.

The Zaragoza Digital Mile is ubicom dream landing in Spain. Digital media would be integrated into everyday aspects of the public realm to make it more flexible and adaptable to different users, activities, or moods?

The spaces, parks and buildings on the Digital Mile include free wifi as well as open access to the digital systems and responsive media elements located along the Mile.

There's a WATER WALL, a fountain where people can digitally control the streams of water. With a command – by jumping into the water or sending a message through an electronic device – the water can start and stop or change in pressure. Streetlight would change color or intensity in response to the time of day, demands for use, or artistic
desires. Digital street furniture -cafe tables, bus stops, and signage- display menus, bus arrivals, or the location of available parking spaces.

Affixed to the facades of buildings, URBAN PIXELS delineate the edges of the Zaragoza Digital Mile from the rest of the city. When viewed from the air or from the ground this ‘light’ footprint emphasizes
different moods or zones along the Digital Mile. Each pixel unit includes a solar charging unit and can be programmed wirelessly.

The MEMORY WALK makes visible the way people travel through the city by recording pedestrians’ steps across a space. Every time a footstep falls on a digital paver, the paver emits an additional increment of light. As people cross the pavement, paths of light are illuminated where people tread the most.

Last one, DIGITAL AWNINGS are screens that can rotate up, down, left, and right in response to people’s physical movements, or in the service of a collective special event.

There was also the prototype of an interactive bus stop. It could be used as a trip planning map, you place a finger on your destination and the bus stop will draw the shortest bus-travel path from where you are. Using GPS technology, it will also show you where the relevant buses are positioned in real time and when they will arrive at your desired destination. You can beam this itinerary to your mobile phone, or request an SMS notification when the bus is almost at your location if you don't want to wait there.

Besides, riders and passers-by can create digital graffiti or post ads or announcements on the bus stop by drawing with their fingers on the surface or by sending an image from their mobile phones.

Each bus stop is also a wireless Internet hotspot. All bus stops in the network are connected through a wireless meshed network, thus
spreading Wireless Fidelity WiFi Internet in the city. This allows people to receive location based services through their mobile devices.

Finally, the number of bus riders at a given location determines the size of the bus shelter, varying the length of the roof, bench and touch screen, which are customized at low cost using computer aided
design and manufacturing (CAD-CAM) techniques. The roof, like a tree, changes from full opacity to transparency and adapts to weather conditions like sun and rain. It uses a Moorish pattern found in Zaragoza's Aljaferia Palace.
The bench itself is formed by raising the ground using a CAD-CAM structure. The position and shape of the bench depend on its relation
to the sun and roof in order always to provide areas of shaded seating. Photovoltaic cells placed on the bus stop's roof provide up to 50% of the power required for its operation in Zaragoza.

This article is taken from the web.