Thesis Progress (Monday, 04-20-2015)

I did some more research on Marc Kushner and his work, as the ideas he discussed in his TED talk and elsewhere intrigued me. I can summarize what I have read of his ideas so far into three points:
1. He believes that one of the many trends in architecture is increasing interaction between the average inhabitants/users of a building and the people who design it through technology, specifically through social media.
2. The increasing interaction between the designer and the customer/consumer has prompted architects to produce better designs more suited to the public's needs and wants, and the public to be more likely to accept more innovative and abstract designs from architects.
3. The increased feedback and the elimination of reliance on millenia-old symbols in design to "trick" the public into forming an emotional connection with architecture based on other experiences. "This is the end of architectural history," he says.

Kushner describes a time when his firm designed and built an audaciously styled new building in a vacation community in New York. Everyone was "scared" about it - his firm, the client that hired his firm, and the community itself. But his firm assembled and released "a series of photorealistic renderings" on Facebook and Instagram. The renderings gave everyone involved (photo)realistic expectations of what it would look like, so that by the time the building was complete, "this building was already a part of the community."

This is where virtual reality technology comes in. Allowing the public to experience designs before they are built can create a feedback loop in architecutre, and the only way to truly allow people to experience a space that does not yet exist is using VR.

That's enough for today.

I also spent a lot (a lot) of time catching up on blog posts. Maybe I should be spending less time on blog posts and more time on doing things worth posting.

Thesis Progress (Thursday, 04-16-2015)

Today I was working on research and structuring for my final paper when I discovered the work of an architect and website owner named Marc Kushner. I spent some of my class time watching his 20-minute TED talk, and the rest working on my research paper.

Thesis Progress (Tuesday, 04-14-2015)

Today I was absent, at home sick. I was focusing entirely on resting and recovering as quickly as I could, so I did not do any work on thesis today.

Thesis Progress (Friday, 04-10-2015)

Today I continued work on my final paper, although I was beginning to feel sick and did not get as much done as usual.

Researching (Wednesday, 04-08-15)

Today I continued working on compiling old research and conducted some new research. I am going to loosely divide the effects of digital reality technologies on architecture into two categories: the kind that impacts the designer and how real world works of architecture are designed, and the kind that impacts how the average person interacts with those works as they use and move through them.
I may have mentioned Microsoft's (relatively) new HoloLens device in one of my earlier posts. It was announced recently compared to the other devices I have examined, so that combined with the fact that Microsoft's developer programs are still some of the more cloistered despite the company's recent efforts to the contrary mean that I know little about it. What I do know about it excites me because it makes it look like my prediction that augmented and virtual reality were going to blur together is already coming true, since what Microsoft touts it as doing is a combination of the definitions of both. More on that blending later, as it may form the basis of the second set of effects on architectural design.

Re-searching (Monday, 04-06-15)

As I mentioned in my last post, I did a lot of research without documenting it. The problem was that I was reading relevant articles and lists of tech specs in my free time, but had not thought to apply them to my thesis. Now that I had learned this, I spent class catching up on blog entries and tracking down and documenting those sources.

Picking Up Pieces 3 (Friday, 04-03-2015)

Today I started going over sources I used in my project. I had relatively few sources - I had read a lot on VR and how it would impact architecture (and some on architecture itself), but a good deal of it was not documented. Going back and finding those will be a tedious and a little bit of a setback, but it will definitely be worth it and I have to do it before I can complete my report on my progress. That is what I have to report today. Hopefully this will be one of the last in the "Picking Up Pieces" series.

Picking up Pieces 2 (Wednesday, 04-01-2015)

Today I started looking through my files to conduct the survey of what I have done so far. It doesn't look too bad, when I think about it, and I am considerably less worried about producing than I was a few days ago (in no small part thanks to my talk with Mr. Correa.) I thought of even trying to contact someone at IrisVR or Floored, two great examples of companies that have not only been living and working what I began to describe earlier on in my project, but have garnered a lot of interest in the form of both private investment and positive press. I am considering contacting one or both for an interview. If I want to do that, however, I will really have to get organized, so organization and shifting away from introspection are the soupes du semaines for this week and next.
I will probably only work on interview questions for them once I have slurped my aforementioned goals.

Picking Up Pieces (Monday, March 30, 2015)

Today I talked with Mr. Correa about the finishing my project, since I felt a little lost. I'm sticking with my original work, fragmented as it is. I spent the rest of the period pondering this and what it would mean. As I near the end of the time I have to complete my thesis, the most important challenge I am facing is focusing my efforts toward a single point. Since my research was all over the place, I am going to first make a summary of what I have learned, then build a thesis around which to write my final paper, which will probably be a lot like my first presentation, but stripped of most technical details and replaced with analytical ones where at all possible.

Monday, March 16, 2015

Today, in an attempt to change tack (later halted), I did some research on skyscrapers and their various designs. Surprisingly, for all the diversity that modern skyscrapers show in their outside appearances, each employs one or two of just a handful of structural techniques to hold it aloft. Also interestingly, the most significant force on a large building's structure is not the live load (the furniture, people, and other objects that can be placed and moved around inside a building), not the dead load (the structural components of the building itself, and the load they place on themselves) but the horizontal shear caused by the force of wind against the sides of the building. This presents an interesting and unique challenge to architects and structural engineers who design skyscrapers - it means that they have to create structures that are even more horizontally stable than vertically stable. I learned a lot more, but that's enough for today.

Wednesday, 02-25-15

Today was the first day after the five day weekend. I was feeling groggy, but I registered for my AP exams and then squared some of the last of my college applications away in preparation for my jump into scholarship application season, which is now in full swing. I spent the rest of the period writing and thinking on my project, trying (struggling) to get back on top of what I was doing.

Wednesday, 02-18-15

I was not feeling very well today, so I worked on the SketchUp tutorials again. I can now make many basic polyhedrons and am moving on to more advanced attributes. I also searched for a few more companies that worked in architectural visualization in virtual reality, and found IrisVR, a company that makes a piece of conversion software that "instantly" turns normal digital 3D models into immersive versions of the same thing that can be viewed with virtual reality hardware like Oculus Rift. Lastly, I wrote some more on some of my earlier findings and am starting to think about a plan of action for the remaining time I have to work on my thesis.

Monday, 02-16-2015

Today, I did some more reading and examined a popular CAD program, SketchUp, for the first time. I found several industry blogs dealing with photo-realistic architectural visualization and techniques for making display models look more realistic, and another article on how digital cameras and the human eyes differ in the way that they capture images. After all of the discussion of CAD software I found, I decided to go out and get some of my own so that I could get a basic feel for the technology. I downloaded SketchUp, and spent an hour or two later in the day fiddling with its tutorials. I cannot allow myself to become too bogged down in the details, but I think that paying some attention to the nuts and bolts of the architectural rendering process is worth my while if it helps me to understand the spirit of the process as a whole.

Wednesday, 02-04-15

I was absent for the first half of the day today, so I was not in class.