Frank Duffy: Work and the City

3.8.10 | I was invited to join Contract magazine and its Editorial Advisory Committee at the publication’s annual Design Summit, last year held in Austin, TX. This gathering of august architects and designers practicing interior design/architecture (take your pick), seemed to have a good time listening to the two featured presentations:

>Second Life - a virtual reality technology and consulting business, as well as the host of the public web site of the same name

>Frank Duffy - the noted British architect, writer and thinker who presented some of the ideas from his new book Work and the City, 80 pages, (2008 Black Dog Publishing).

Environment >>, Events >>, Research >>

Faulty Assumptions Plague Too Many Green Lease Blogs

3.8.10 | Every day I get a Google Alert on green leases. I dutifully read them and then click on the various twits, blogs and websites listed in the alert. Sometimes there will be a well researched nugget. The typical article, however, is riddled with misconceptions, faulty assumptions, and over-simplification of the leasing process. Far too often, the authors do not grasp real estate economics or common building operating practices.

Green to Gold >>

Mokum Textiles Launches the Moderne Collection

3.8.10 | It may be a new name to many designers in the States, but Mokum Textiles has been established in its native Australia for over 30 years. The name of the company is derived from a sentimental Yiddish nickname for the city of Amsterdam. Mokum’s new collection, Moderne, is just as elegant and globe-spanning as the company’s namesake.

Materials >>, Product >>

Ted Moudis Associates Wins Two Awards

3.8.10 | Ted Moudis Associates (TMA) is hot. Other firms might be laying off, but TMA has been picking up some of the talent. The firm has the results to show for it. Recently it received two architectural design awards for its clients, Société Générale and Cottingham & Butler. Both projects received Awards of Merit from Midwest Construction magazine.

A&D Firms >>, Competitions and Awards >>

Going Virtual

3.1.10 | What is virtual reality? How does it differ from digital reality? Is it real? What is reality? Perhaps the greatest ramification flowing from the development of virtual reality – presently, largely a visual subset of digital reality – is the perspective it creates on our notion of reality. Obviously, without a contrasting experience, it is very difficult for us to understand our existential notions of reality.

Technology >>

Material ConneXion Comes Into its Own

3.1.10 | I always wondered why Material ConneXion was spelled that way. . . and why is that X capitalized? It was clearly a choice that emphasized a deliberate intent of the company, but the intent was remained a mystery until I visited the firm’s new space, located at 60 Madison Avenue in New York. I was aware of Material ConneXion’s status as a global material consultancy – the firm has four other locations, two in Europe and two in Asia, each with a capital X of a different color in its logo – and knew it focused on materials for construction and design, but as a resource librarian, I noticed it didn’t catalog materials the way that I or my fellow resource librarians did. During my visit I realized that Material ConneXion is a unique company that, in the end, expertly indexes what is possible in manufacturing and design.

Mogens Speaks

3.1.10 | Mr. Smed has the rare entrepreneurial combination of insight and predisposition to act. Fortunately, to this is added the ability to see things as a whole, and what amounts to almost a compulsion to do things better ( environmentally and for clients) and more efficiently. As a result, anyone with an open mind can find morsels of value and inspiration in his presentations.

Random Walk >>

Hum! Minds at Work

3.1.10 | While the idea of cognitive ergonomics is relatively new, it’s a concept that Kimball Office has spent years studying. In order to fully understand how the mind works at work, we must first recognize the office environment in which we work, and how such dynamics complement the mind. This column aims to identify the variables in an office setting, and the impact they can have on how the mind works.

Research >>