Every Monday morning, team members in the Philadelphia and Princeton offices gather together via video-conference to discuss firm news and upcoming events and projects. Since 2003, founding partner Allan Kehrt, FAIA, has delivered his Monday Morning Musings, weekly slices of personal insight into the design profession, to the firm. To comment on any of his posts, send an email to us. We look forward to hearing from you. |
| July 24, 2006 Range I spent some time this past weekend with Jordan's A Concise History of Western Architecture. It was nice to review some architectural history, to see how much I've forgotten, and to try to put the work of today's architects into the continuum of historical context. Modern architecture at times seems both lost and found. The freedom contemporary design allows us has resulted in some of the worst buildings ever conceived, generally defended by semi-articulate, but very talkative architects who try to explain their buildings into legitimacy. Simultaneously, talented and creative architects throughout the world are building some of the most thoughtful, intelligent and delightful buildings the world has ever seen. When I look at our architectural continuum I wonder whether the profession has always had this wide a range of the bad to the good, or whether we have somehow changed the framework of design with an 'anything goes' attitude. So anything does. |
| July 17, 2006 BIM (again) A little less than a year ago I wrote a piece on Building Information Modeling and how its adoption was inevitable. It's here now. The office has recently started to train our first group of architects in Revit and we have high hopes for our ability to use it creatively and productively. As we become proficient in the use of building information modeling and as the product evolves over the coming years to include the work of our consultants it should offer us many opportunities to improve both the way we produce our work and the control we have over it. Architects have been criticized for abdicating much of their responsibilities to others such as construction managers. Part of this was because others were able to convince clients of their more extensive knowledge of the building process, the materials required for construction and their ability to control costs. As building information modeling grows in sophistication, architects will be in control of the entire product and process to an extent never before achieved. We will have the entire building built within our model down to the smallest detail and as such, have an unsurpassed understanding of the building long before construction begins. If we are wise we will use this to become again, the master builders we once were. |
| July 10, 2006 Speeds Alvin Toffler, the futurist responsible for the pioneering book, Future Shock has a new volume, Revolutionary Wealth. In it he describes his view of what is happening in the world today and outlines how current trends may affect our future. In one particularly interesting passage he deals with the rate of change in America and evaluates how various social institutions are coping with that change. He frames the ability of each of these to adapt in terms of automobile speed, and by this method compares the success of each. The only organization that is coping well is the modern American company whose need to adapt is paramount to their success and survival; he says they are the only ones going one hundred miles an hour. Other less successful examples are Labor Unions at thirty miles per hour, government bureaucracies and regulatory agencies at twenty-five, the American School system at ten, and the Congress and U.S. political institutions at three miles per hour. If his assessment is correct it is easy to understand the disconnect between what we do every day and the antiquated, review and approval processes with which we have to deal to get our work built; we're moving at least four times as fast as they. |
