From VDC Project Coordinator Pierce Reynoldson:

Timbrel vaulting modeled with TNA software and constructed using CNCed cardboard formwork from custom Rhino script. Or, in plain English, traditional tile vaulting designed and constructed with cutting edge technology.

Block Research Group’s Freeform Catalin Thin-Tile Vault:
http://blog.archpaper.com/wordpress/archives/29786

After the construction video there is another video (Voussoir Geometry – Planarization Strategies <http://vimeo.com/32849267> ) that shows a tessellation script at work in Rhino. There are more videos in the link as well.

Okay – we’ve been “one-upped” in a big way with this one. We were (and are) enamored with the cantilevered meeting spaces in our Autodesk Headquarters project, but Danish bank Nykredit’s Headquarters just blow that execution out of the water. Designed by Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects, the conference rooms appear to float effortlessly within the atrium.

From Schmidt Hammer Lassen’s website:

The design for the headquarters of Nykredit, one of Denmark’s leading mortgage banks, is conceived as a transparent cube, providing clear visual connections with Copenhagen Harbour. The ten-storey glass structure is one of Copenhagen’s largest office buildings and features a dramatic atrium flooded with natural light providing links to all levels. The entrance level houses a reception area, a water sculpture by artist Anita Jørgensen and an auditorium. A staircase leads up to the atrium where suspended meeting rooms, glass elevators, staircases, balconies and walkways create a lively working environment; three cantilevered glazed meeting rooms are suspended from the third and fifth floors. Several internationally recognised artists have contributed to the decoration of the building. Olav Christopher Jenssen created a 30 metres long mural, while a giant bronze sculpture by sculptor Per Kirkeby stands centre stage in the atrium. Kirkeby also designed the adjacent plaza, enlivened by 20 bronze sculptures. Despite the building’s vast glass façades, thermal load is reduced by using the water from the nearby harbour to cool the building. In addition, the double layer façade is designed with sections that can be opened for natural ventilation. The roof also features opening panels providing further natural ventilation.

From Tocci VDC Modeler Graham Salzberg

One of the things I most admire about working for Tocci Building Company is their conviction to be at the cutting edge, while constantly striving to improve the delivery process in order to achieve the best end product. This is also evident in the companies hiring practices, which has built an arsenal of employees with a diversity of backgrounds and experiences. Tocci’s encouragement for its employees to continue to build on their professional development outside the walls of its office helps foster a stimulating work culture that ultimately reflects back to the company’s ability to think outside the box and stay at the forefront of the industry.

As for myself, when I send off my co-location schedule at the beginning of the week, it states that, I am “out of office” on Mondays. On Mondays I can be found at a local architecture firm that focuses on sustainable design. There, I am taking the opportunity to supplement my professional development and strong passion for sustainable architecture and design. The firm is an innovative residential Architecture and Energy consulting firm located in Boston specializing in single family residential architecture using advanced building science techniques and practices for the ultimate goal of attaining the most energy efficient solutions possible with the greatest ROI in mind. (both for the client’s wallet and for the environment.)

What I learned this week on “Zero Energy Design” Mondays:

Currently, I am in the middle of the Schematic Design phase of a single-family residence located in the greater Boston area. The interior will be completely redesigned to create a new open floor plan, including, a new kitchen, master bedroom/bathroom suite and the addition of a new loft with a roof top deck capitalizing on the views of the woodland of the surrounding area. The exterior of the house will receive all new finishes, while the entire house will gain a new thermal envelope or Deep Energy Retrofit.  The DER is a process of eliminating as many thermal bridges as possible within the existing building’s envelope. This is achieved by creating a new thermal envelope with the use of generous amounts of insulation, new energy efficient windows and doors and a method of detailing that maximizes their effectiveness. The other main goal in a DER is to achieve the maximum level of air tightness possible. With detailing such a tight assembly, many uninformed critics of super insulated homes say that it creates poor indoor air quality and potential for mold within the assembly due to the lack of breathability. In fact, the indoor air quality is controlled to the point of achieving an IAQ level equivalent to breathing the air as if you were outside. The building science knowledge of the wall assembly can differ on a case-by-case basis based on climate zone and the number of heating and cooling days, and if designed properly, allows for the vapor to transfer through the assembly while still maintaining proper air sealing.  The efficiency and quality of the IAQ is achieved by use of an HRV (Heat Recovery Ventilator) or ERV (Energy Recovery Ventilator). This type of system is strictly used for supply and return air (not active heating and cooling) and is also extremely energy efficient because of its heat exchange coils in the unit itself which allows the warm return air from within the house to pass by the incoming air from outside to reducing the energy needed for the heating and cooling requirement of the house.

As I am wrapping up the schematic design phase, and when we get approval of the proposed design,  we will then begin the design development phase where I will discuss in more detail the areas related to the DER and the method we will be using in order to achieve our new thermal envelope.

During December, we spend a lot of time reflecting on our year – our projects, our process and the industry. One of the trends that will likely carry over in the coming years is the consolidation of BIM software vendors. Although new software programs seem to be cropping up every day, there has been some interesting activity in both M&A and partnerships. The major things we’re still talking about: Autodesk’s acquisition of MAP and Trimble’s acquisition of Tekla.

Faulkner begins his acceptance speech saying not he, but his work, received the award.  He didn’t get the award because he’s so great, but because he’s worked hard and his work is good.  He refers to the “agony and sweat of the human spirit” in order to create “something which did not exist before.”

All of us in the building industry share the writer’s urge to create, only our tools are different.

This urge is not without cost:  to think new, to design ahead, to build different, to labor side-by-side:  this work is not without the “anguish and travail” of our literary counterparts.

In Faulkner’s time the world faced the threat of annihilation from the atomic bomb.  Today we face the debt threat and credit crisis—perhaps not a sudden death but slow strangulation.  In uncertain, highly volatile times, Faulkner urges a return to the “old verities and truths of the heart;” similarly we appeal to you, our partners in building, who have shown pride in your craft and restored honor to the profession—Keep calm and carry on.

- Lila Tocci

___________________________

Faulkner’s Speech in Full:

Ladies and gentlemen,

I feel that this award was not made to me as a man, but to my work – a life’s work in the agony and sweat of the human spirit, not for glory and least of all for profit, but to create out of the materials of the human spirit something which did not exist before. So this award is only mine in trust. It will not be difficult to find a dedication for the money part of it commensurate with the purpose and significance of its origin. But I would like to do the same with the acclaim too, by using this moment as a pinnacle from which I might be listened to by the young men and women already dedicated to the same anguish and travail, among whom is already that one who will some day stand here where I am standing.

Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only the question: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.

He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid; and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed – love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, of victories without hope and, worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands.

Until he relearns these things, he will write as though he stood among and watched the end of man. I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure: that when the last dingdong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking.

I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet’s, the writer’s, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.

From Nobel Lectures, Literature 1901-1967, Editor Horst Frenz, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1969