Douglas R. Seidler

Earlier this week Adobe announced Creative Suite 4. From what I can tell, Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign received minor updates… probably not worth the upgrade. Dreamweaver - Adobe’s web editing software - received the most attention this time around and is now available for trial as beta software. If you do not currently own CS3 or CS2, I recommend purchasing the Design Standard Edition which costs about $400 (for students).

There is a good article at Slate.com by Brendan I Koerner exploring the true “Greenness” of Bamboo flooring. The scale of production, methods or harvest, assembly and transportation all impact what is considered by most to be the “green” alternative to traditional hardwood floors.

Bamboo does have loads of green potential. But as is usually the case when it comes to crops, much depends on how the bamboo is managed, harvested, and ultimately made into flooring. Many producers assume that consumers won’t pay attention to such behind-the-scenes details and will be dazzled by smooth-talking salesman who toss around words like “sustainability” and “sequestration.”

…bamboo’s environmental edge can evaporate if the stuff is heedlessly grown. Given the recent vogue for bamboo among Western consumers, producers in Asia (specifically China’s Hunan Province) have been aggressive with their planting, often at the expense of old woodlands and their attendant ecosystems. To goose their yields, these plantations employ plenty of fertilizers and pesticides, thereby negating one of bamboo’s primary advantages.

read the full article here

I only began to understand how complex construction drawings are when I started teaching 4 years ago. Prior to teaching, my experience communicating with consultants, contractors, architects, and interior designers through the conventional 2D drawings is almost always straight forward (I do admit these drawing produced their fair share of errors in the field).

The build blog has an interesting post that shows use of 3D analysis / cut away drawings in other fields to allow everyone immediately understand of these complex relationships.

I wonder if BIM will help us produce more legible construction docs or only provide more of the same (slightly more coordinated) construction docs.

President Bush signed a transportation bill on June 6, 2008 that includes $45 million for a levitating train from Las Vegas to Disneyland. The project has been in the planning stages for quite some time. This bill represents a shift in the federal governments view on mass public transportation as a solution to congestion on the nations highways.The AP reports 

Derided by critics as pie in the sky, the train would use magnetic levitation technology to carry passengers from Disneyland to Las Vegas in well under two hours, traveling at speeds of up to 300 mph. It would be the first MagLev system in the U.S. The money is the largest cash infusion in the project’s nearly 20-year history. It will pay for environmental studies for the first leg of the project.  

This automated bicycle parking garage in Tokyo, Japan is an good example of how other cultures live and the priorities they place on alternative transportation.

Douglas Seidler represented his paper:

Who’s Teaching Technology?

Methods and strategies to develop effective digital design curricula

at the Boston Architectural College’s Foundation Faculty Workshop March, 19, 2008. This paper was previously presented and published with the Interior Design Educators Council 2008 Annual Conference in Montreal, Canada on March 2008. Seidler’s paper continues his research on constructivist education theory and its application in design education.

You can read more about this paper at: dougseidler.com

AutoCAD 2009 is now available for trial download. To receive your free 30-day trial complete and submit the form at autodesk.com.

New features in 2009 include:

• Ribbon - With the ribbon interface, overall drafting productivity is increased as the number of steps to reach a command is decreased. The ribbon interface presents command options in a concise visual format. allowing you to quickly select commands based on the work you’re doing . Moving between applications is now quick and intuitive. The ribbon is both customizable and expandable so that it can be optimized for each user and meet each company’s standards.
• Menu Browser - Reviewing and working with several files is no longer a tedious and time-consuming process. The new menu browser interface allows you to browse files and examine thumbnail images and provides detailed information about file size and file creator. Plus, you can organize recently used files by name, date, or title.
• Action Recorder - The new action recorder saves time and increases productivity by automating repetitive tasks without requiring the skill or assistance of a professional CAD manager. Users can quickly record a task, add text messages and requests for input, then quickly select and play back recorded files.
• Layer Dialog - The new layer dialog makes creating and editing layer properties faster and less prone to error. Changes are instantly reflected in the drawing as they are made in the dialog. The manipulation of the dialog box has been simplified, and columns in the dialog can be individually resized so the contents of that column or its title are not truncated. Individual columns can be fixed in place so that the rest of the columns can be scrolled through and referenced to a fixed column such as the layer name.
• Quick Properties - The easily customizable quick properties menu increases productivity by reducing the steps to access properties information, ensuring that information presented is optimized for that particular user and project.
• Quick View - The quick view feature uses thumbnails instead of file names, making opening the correct drawing file and layout faster and decreasing the time spent opening incorrect drawing files.

The Material Project is a material & building reference that anyone can edit. This type of community edited knowledge base provides an opportunity for design professionals and graduate students to share their material research and building research with each other as an accurate and evolving investigation on material in design.

The Material Project was started in the Fall 2005 semester as a printed research collaborative of graduate students studying Advanced Materials and Methods at NESAD in Boston, MA. The collaborative, lead by Professor Douglas R Seidler, continued into the Spring 2007 semester. The written collaborative and resulting knowledge base was migrated to the MaterialWiki project in the Spring 2008 semester.

see more: materialproject.org

Suffolk University has partnered with Apple to publish audio content from course lectures through iTunes U.Doug Seidler will podcast lectures from his Advanced Interior Design Communication studio in the Spring 2008 semester.  Students can download free archived lectures through iTunes. These audio archives can be played on any computer and any mp3 player.To access the lectures:

1. Download and install the newest version of iTunes
2. Log in to Campus Cruiser
3. Click the BlackBoard link at the top of the page
4. Click our course link from your list of courses
5. Click the iTune U link

Once you setup the podcast, iTunes will automatically download new lectures after each class (you will not have to follow the steps above).

Douglas Seidler has been invited to join Amy Crumpton’s panel presentation on the implementation of Buiding Information Modeling in the Interior Design Curriculum. This panel will present “state of the profession” industry information as well as how specific programs have implemented the technology, including software, textbooks, and successes and opportunities in the area.  Amy Crumpton is an Assistant Professor of Interior Design at Mississippi State University.The 2008 Interior Design Educators Council conference will be held in Montreal, Canada.