Arch1392 Reflections

With another semester now over I have had a think about ARCH 1392, what I have learnt, and my impressions of the subject.

Working in a team has both its benefits and downfalls with which we experienced both and the progressive nature of the course meant there was always something happening and to prepare for, even if it was small like a blog entry, or larger like the presentations and finally building to the final model in UT3.

I found the blogs to be a reasonable size for a weekly task and the presentations every 3 weeks were also achievable.

But as we had no experience in UT3, I thought perhaps there could have been some demonstration of the basics and common tasks we would all use that could have saved us lots of time later and allowed us to focus on producing better models with more features rather than trying to perfect things such as creating and applying textures and meshes from 3ds max, which ultimately was easy but the learning curve to get there was high for different tasks.

The first few weeks of the course where the lectures were not sorted and the course was still finding its feet, would have been an ideal time to get us all up and running with the essentials, which I understand wont be a problem in the future as UT3 is covered in first year in the new degree, but thought it might be worth a thought for the next time a new course/subject is undertaken.

Working in a team was great for us when producing our presentations, with fun ideas to present from different people appearing in what I thought were the more entertaining presentations of the course. We seemed to have a good balance for presenting and they were enjoyable to produce.

However due to the personal situations of members of our group, the bad side of team work was also experienced in the fabrication part of our project, with only 2 of us left to build the UT3 model at the end of the course. Perhaps this added to my feeling that we needed some teaching in it as we had less manpower than other groups, but leaving uni deep into the a.m. to achieve our basic results whilst satisfying to finish, left me feeling we could have achieved much greater results with more hands on deck and less time wasted learning the ropes and losing hours of work through constant crashing of the program when importing certain objects.

I also found in hindsight and from interacting with members from other groups that maybe more time spent giving UT3 a go from scratch rather than rushing to the comfort of 3ds max and trying to import everything, may have lead to a more user friendly model in regards to the technical problems we encountered.

Whether or not I will ever be in an office that uses this technology I dont know but I am glad I have the knowledge to offer it for either my own clients or to a prospective employee which will hopefully gain me an edge over other job seekers in the future.

I found our time with Matt effective and also for those travelling to get to uni and working found it easier to do our meetings after class than try to come back for 30mins on a seperate day.

Ultimately, with all the troubles we had technically with UT3, I found it fitting that the final presentations were abandoned due to technical problems in UT3!!! Whilst most of us were happy to go home to bed on Wednesday, I was looking forward to experiencing everyones models and as a group checking out each others work.

All in all I enjoyed the studio type course and found it refreshing from the standard structure of subjects which breathed some life into a hectic uni schedule and I think much was learnt by all in the first running of this course.

Reflections on topic order

After some discussion, these were our thoughts on the order we think the topics would be best in:

Planning - good to set a plan from the start
Intent - Possibly could be with planning we thought.
Records - learn the value of keeping records early on
Hierarchy - Would know a bit about the hierarchy of your group and
building by this stage
Context - start to think about the context of your building in its
surroundings
Knowledge - Plenty of time to get a  heap of knowledge by this stage
Remuneration - Doesnt need to be to early in our opinion.
Conflict - could be good to reflect on any conflict from later in the
semester

Conflict

“Whenever you're in conflict with someone, there is one factor that can make the difference between damaging your relationship and deepening it. That factor is attitude.”

The above quote by William James I believe is very true in regards to maintaining a working relationship in a collaborative effort when conflict arises. I believe a lot of conflicts can be happily resolved if both parties are open to solving it rather than widening it.
To often I see people dig there heels in, when a little compromise can see instant results......I guess ego comes into it a lot of the time.

So in the situation where conflicting parties cannot resolve their differences, it is important that the hierarchy in place can do it for them.

In the case of our project, we are yet to have to deal with any real human conflict but in theory our protocol to solving a problem would be this:
* two parties try to solve it themselves, if it doesnt work then:
* Speak to team leader, leader gives decision and if one party still is not happy then:
* Go to our group tutor or course convener and discuss resolution...this is to be the final 'appeal' so to speak, and whatever decision comes from that is final.

But conflict may not necessarily just be among humans. We have experienced conflict amongst machine, with exports of our 3ds max model not being accepted by UT3. In regards to this conflict there may not always be a reasonable solution as machines cant reason and compromise, what it wants is exact or it wont go on. This may lead to us redoing work in different ways wasting valuable time and still not guaranteeing a result.

I think more human conflict would have arisen in our project if we were all confident in every aspect of what needed to be done and then it would have been up to our individual ideas and designs about how to do it. However as we saw a foreign path to complete this project, know one in particular seemed set in any particular idea that they would really fight for, i.e. we were all flexible in what and how we achieved our goal.

So whilst I am happy to not have had to deal with any human conflict, it may well have been a better learning experience for us all if there had been!

Refernces:
http://thinkexist.com/quotation/whenever_you-re_in_conflict_with_someone-there_is/227935.html

Planning

Planning is an important part of everyday life as well as in the professional world. Things such as planning your day to allow time to get to the shops or pick up the kids and any other tasks require you to plan your time, although for regular life it is commonly done in your head, however a common example of everyday life planning in a written form is the shopping list.

In uni life, student diaries allow students to plan ahead and mark when assignments are due or when an exam takes place and thus how to allocate enough time to prepare for it.

In our collaborative effort, planning becomes an essential part of working in a team as we need to plan when we will have certain tasks completed, time and places to meet as well as the allocation of our tasks discussed earlier which is a form of planning our work.

In the professional world, in my personal experience, each week a list of all current jobs is prepared and ranked in order of preference and due date. I am then required to follow this plan to complete the work. Without this planning, dates would be missed, jobs overlooked and in general a far more disorganised practice would be run.

So what does it mean exactly to plan? Simply to organize what you need to do ahead of time and allocate the time in between to achieve your desired outcomes.

Some examples of well known planning:

· The season draw of the football codes, released before the season starts plans every match, venue, date and time with which a game will be played.

· WW2 D-Day invasion – this major military offensive was planned as the allies big attack against the enemy and is one of the larger logistical planning tasks undertaken.

· The tube railway system in London – a plan copied by many as its well organised structure is the yard stick for railway planning.

So essentially good planning allows the smooth running (or at least attempted smooth running) of a task and gives a structured organisation for all to adhere to.

References:
http://articles.bplans.com/index.php/business-articles/writing-a-business-plan/What-Makes-a-Good-Plan?/
viewedMon May 26, 2008

Remuneration

Remuneration is typically in the form of money paid for work completed. It is how the world works, I do some work for you and you pay me for it.

'Some examples of remuneration are:

• salaries and wages
• gratuities paid through an employer
• bonuses, commission and other similar payments
• vacation pay, taxable allowances and benefits
• directors' fees
• payments for casual labour
• amounts paid by an employer to 'top up' benefits, and
• advances of salaries and wages.'

However it is not always as simple as that and there are many variations along the way that can effect whether or not you are paid and how much you are paid.

Firstly, there should be an agreement or contract between the two parties for exactly what needs to be done and how much it is worth. You should then document what has been completed and alert the client of any variations that happen along the way that may alter the original arrangement.

These could be, in the architectural world for example, drastic changes imposed by council or the client that require the amending of plans and as such extra work which can lead to a variation in payment. If these things are not discussed and left until the end, disputes can and do arise.

Remuneration though is not always in the form of money, it may be a contra deal or in the context of university work a grade or result that allows you to proceed to the next level of study.

In our collaboration work where the remuneration is not payment but grading, it is important that all members feel there input is rewarded accordingly and is not dragged down by others.
The allocation of work done earlier in the semester would qualify as a variation as mentioned earlier, as certain unknown elements now require more work than thought and as such we all need to chip in to other areas to complete the task to ultimately get our remuneration.


References:
http://www.rev.gov.on.ca/english/taxes/eht/faq_remuneration.html viewed tue may 20th 2008

Context

Context

“Always design a thing by considering it in its next larger context - a chair in a room, a room in a house, a house in an environment, an environment in a city plan.”

The above quote relates well to our project as each part of what we do has a relationship to other (sometimes larger) parts of our building and environment.

For example our building (as discussed in hierarchy) begins on the lower floor for ordinary people, but that is to house more prestigious upper levels which then leads the focus toward the central dome. This in turn is set in our nations capital. So our building is designed to meet the context of our highest federal court.

This context is important as it effects the design of the building, as many lower courts built all around the nation are not as symbolic in the nature of there designs and are more designed to fit the context of there own local environments.

The actual materials used to contruct the building however do not appear to be specific for the context of the surrounding site or the building itself as Harry Seidler has used almost identical designs in buildings including the MLC building in Martin Place, Sydney which shares no contextual meaning with the high court of Australia in Canberra but remarkable resemblance in materials.

THE MLC BUILDING SYDNEY

The proposed High Court Of Australia Canberra

Many buildings, in particular energy efficient buildings, are designed with the environmental context in mind and materials chosen represent that. For example many buildings in Tropical Darwin are built on stilts to create airflow underneath with louvers to increase cross ventilation and also provide some shade to be outdoors to combat the tropical environment.

This is in keeping with the context of the building environment and would be out of place in Siberia……

So building context is usually related to the surrounding area and the use of the building, however it is not always totally encompassed and general non specific parts of the design can be used without affecting the overall context of the design.

References:
http://thinkexist.com/quotes/with/keyword/context/ viewed may 13 2008
http://www.futuredarwin.nt.gov.au/recreation/building.html viewed may 13 2008
http://www.emporis.com/en/wm/bu/?id=108161 viewed may 13 2008

Hierarchy

Hierarchy is an order which is used to progress a certain element through logical steps i.e. in a typical computer you have a file which is stored in a folder which is then stored on a drive.
This means you can find your information simply by following the hierarchy of: C:\simon\hierarchy.exe

Governments have a hierarchy from the prime minister downwards and probably the most common and well known hierarchy is in the military where a rank is assigned to each soldier and they must follow orders accordingly.

Hierarchy is also present in our collaborative group with myself being labelled the team leader. However, whilst this may be relevant to solving disputes amongst members, what I have learnt is that the real team leader is the person who continually ensures that the project is heading towards the desired outcome. In this regard, whilst I have done my best, our group tutor Matt has really been the group leader.

Hierarchy in relation to our building:

The building hierarchy consists of a square superstructure turned diagonally on a podium to orientate its forecourt symbolically towards parliament. The superstructure consists of vertical service cores carrying long span roof trusses in a crossover pattern which supports a glazed dome at the centre.
The glass dome provides light to the central open space while the enclosing walls are formed by long span beams with glazing in between attaching to the leg of the square cross. 3 of the enclosed 4 quarters of the cross are occupied by the circular court chambers while the remaining quarter forms the entrance.

The building structure reflects a social hierarchy in that the base contains the administrative offices and services while the upper levels accommodate barrister’s and judges chambers. It could also be claimed that the glass dome then extends the hierarchy to the heavens in a subtle reminder that there is only one other power higher than the courts. Very medieval in concept and reminiscent of the great cathedrals of Europe.

REFERENCES:
'Architecture for the new world. The work of Harry Seidler'
By Peter Blake
Horwitz Australia Ltd., Sydney
Wittenborn and Co.,New York
Karl Kraemer Verlag, Stuttgart

Intent

Intent to me means what I intend to achieve and how I intend to achieve it.
My intents for this collaboration project are:
* To learn how to work in a team environment to achieve an outcome.
* Improve my skills in new areas of computing (UT3, wikis etc)
* To improve my presentation skills.
* Finally to improve my skills in researching and presenting a building with no detailed and specific information.
* And of course to pass my subject.......

With all of the above combined I intent to be a more employable person with a wider range of skill sets and collaborative skills than other potential applicants.

ACHIEVING MY GOALS:

Working in a team environment
'Projects often require that people work together to accomplish a common goal; therefore, teamwork is an important factor in most organizations. Effective collaborative skills are necessary to work well in a team environment. Many businesses attempt to enhance their employees' collaborative efforts through workshops and cross-training to help people effectively work together and accomplish shared goals.' (1)

With the above quote in mind, this subject has become a 'workshop' and 'cross training' which will help us learn to work together to achieve our desired outcome. How I intent to improve and learn in this area is simply by participating with my team and completing my set tasks which will in turn teach me some of the pitfalls of collaborative work and also show my strengths and weaknesses in the area.

Improving my skills in computing
My intentions are to conquer new technologies such as UT3, wiki's and other collaborative tools, along with new software encounted in video editing and presentations.
I will achieve this by completing tutorials given to us along with my own research from several internet sites. With this as my base knowledge I will then start the tried and true method of trial and error within these programs!

My Presentation skills
Through the multiple presentations required I will learn as each one happens (and from observing others) the best way to keep my audience interested and awake.....
From our initial presentation I thought we did well in regards to keeping people entertained as there have been others which have been....well simply boring. I have learnt that to get your message across (no matter how good your subject knowledge is) you must keep people interested and doing so with light humour seems to be a good way to inform.

Research
Last semester I completed a subject which required the study of built buildings with heritage value, whilst in this subject we are required to research a building that was not built and as such requires guess work and comparisons of similar buildings for information. I will become skilled at this type of research through the development of our model.

This is my intent and how I plan to follow through with my intentions to get my result.

REFERENCES:
'teamwork' viewed 26th April 2008
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teamwork

Knowledge

Thinking of knowledge in a collaborative effort makes the following come to mind:
1 - What knowledge of the project as a whole do we possess.
2 - What individual knowledge of specific instances of the project do we each possess.
3 - What knowledge needs to be learnt in order to complete the required tasks.
4 - And finally the knowledge of the actual building we have chosen to do.

The project as a whole, I believe we came into the project with a fair bit to be learnt. But it soon became clear what would be needed to achieve the end result (our building in UT3) , but not yet the specifics of how we would achieve it. We have broken it down to choosing a building, choosing how we would create the building and then finally how we would incorporate it all into the UT3 engine.

Our individual knowledge of certain aspects of this process were also discussed and became apparent early on (V for example has excellent knowledge of 3ds max whilst Marko has exceptional knowledge of Revit). None of us had knowledge of UT3 and is something we will all gain and learn from each other throughout our collaborative effort to produce the final product.

So what we need to all learn is obviously UT3 but also increase our knowledge of existing systems to aid in the development of our building with our team members. An important aspect of the pitfalls of teamwork is also valuable knowledge to acquire. Timelines to achieve goals are critical to ensuring we are all progressing at the necessary speed to meet our final deadline.

And lastly our knowledge of the High Court of Australia by Harry Seidler and how it fits together with the surrounding landscape will vastly improve in order to complete our final task. How the building is constructed and the different materials used will all be necessary to complete the model, and studying his existing buildings help us gain an insight into what he may have intended for parts of the building with which there is no certain information.

RECORDS

Keeping records is a crucial (although a little boring) element in collaborative work. It provides documented proof of what people are committed to, what people have said and is essential in resolving disputes when they arise….and when money is involved, disputes always happen!

A first hand real world example of keeping records (in the form of minutes in this case) for dispute resolution, was a council meeting for a medium density job I worked on a few years back, where council agreed to the colour schedule in a meeting (which ended up being built) but conflicted with a note on the drawings (a leftover that was not changed). When council insisted the roof be changed to match the drawing, a review of the minutes revealed they had actually agreed to the change and it was ruled the roof could stay as it was built.

In our collaborative work, documenting what has been agreed on is going to ensure we all pull our own weight and achieve the goals we have agreed on. The email below, which we all have, clearly shows us agreeing on the division of work amongst our team.

Architect Peter Aeberli says ‘what if the project is not running smoothly, or relationships break down and the architect, realising it has long since expended the contract fee and there is still work to do, makes a claim for additional fees, which the client rejects?’

‘This means the architect must provide evidence that the work for which it is claiming additional fees is extra to that for which the contract fee is payable. These records must be sufficient to refute any suggestion that the work
is not extra at all, but was part of the originally envisaged scope of work’

So well kept records are essential for maintaining a collaborative effort and are absolute in solving disputes where members of the project cannot agree on who is responsible for certain work.

References:

Good housekeeping Better records are the key to claims for additional fees

http://www.aeberli.co.uk/articles/PRACTICE.pdf - viewed on friday april 11 2008

Discipline

Discipline

The disciplines involved in our collaborative work to produce the proposed High court of Australia by Harry Seidler in its final form in UT3 are:

Exterior modeling

Interior modeling

Internal texture mapping

External texture mapping

Surrounding landscape mapping

Building/landscape research

Video presentation

Lighting

Animation

Image manipulation

Sound

We have each assigned ourselves to a particular disciplines from those required above and will progress our areas as they become available from our teammates prior works e.g. V has done a great external model which she can pass on to the external texture mapper and also to the surrounding landscape mapper which can all finally be added into our video presentations in a more complete form.

We will focus on our individual tasks but due to the team nature of the project pass on our effort s to teammates to help them further theres which will ultimately culminate in our final product.

The use of collaboration amongst our tasks allows us to focus our skills on one area we are good at (or push ourselves to learn new areas of development)whilst our teammates work on there specialized areas and join them together as we progress and exchange skills.

We chose our disciplines via our group emails (with surprising ease, I expected more clashing for certain tasks) with most choosing things they knew they could accomplish but some also choosing to tackle a new task they had not yet attempted which will allow a good mix of productive work in our comfort zones along with some challenging new skill sets which will require some more time and energy and brain storming amongst team members.

My personal disciplines I will tackle involve texture mapping of surrounding landscapes (something I have not done to much of with my works usually involving an interior focus), video presentation (a skill I have done on both an educational and hobby level) and Sound (I have done a little bit on my previous video presentation work).

And lastly there will be a bit UT3 editing for all of us (with some choosing to tackle it as a main focus) which is totally new to me and yet another program I will try to cram into my brain!

Group Building Decision

Our group has decided the building we will model is the high court of Australia proposal by Harry Seidler. We had narrowed it down to that and The Performing Arts Centre in Abu Dhabi by Zaha Hadid.
Whilst the Hadid building was certainly more visually amazing it presented computing challenges we were unsure we could manage at this stage in UT3 (since we have limited time and no knowledge).
The Seidler building still offers us a challenge and an interesting building we feel we can impress with but we are more confident we can pull it off within the software we will be using.
We will now start to gather further information on the building and start to discuss who will tackle which parts of the project.

Week 2

Asynchronous messaging

Asynchronous messaging, or non realtime messaging has become an important part of business and pleasure that takes on many forms ranging from the fax machine to the more modern message boards used over the internet and the commonly known email. It has become an effective means of communication for collaborative work and each system has its own strengths and weaknesses when it comes to this.

The fax machine (or facsimile) is one of the earlier forms of asynchronous messaging that was invented in 1843 but not widely used until around the 1980's. It involves sending data via the telephone line through a fax machine that is received on the destination via another fax machine. They are now cheap and readily available and can be used on any existing telephone line. Most importantly for a lot of people/business who are somewhat computer illiterate they are very simple to use, involving simply placing the item to be sent in the machine and typing the number as you would a telephone (and are often combined into phone/fax machines which automatically detect if you are receiving a phone call or fax). They are received instantly at the d

estination end and can send and receive multiple pages at a time.

Most modern day faxs come with memory systems which will store your pages in the event of paper outages or cartridge problems.

Which leads us to the negatives of a fax. As with any cartridge or ink based system the ink system needs to be changed periodically which is an added cost and procedure along with varying levels of quality depending on your machine and current ink levels. They can be a times hard to read and unreadable when ink runs out during printing. They also use paper which again is an expense and can jam in the machine, as opposed to the more computer based systems (blogs, email etc) which are entirely digital based and only require printing when necessary and don’t cost per item whereas a fax is charged at a phone call rate per fa

x.

But the biggest setback for a fax is that it cannot carry computer files only a paper copy of something that is printed and as such will likely not be used at all in our collaborative effort as it is of little use compared the far more advanced systems discussed below.

Due to these reasons a fax is not a very effective form of collaboration for multiple messages that go back and fourth or anything of utmost quality.

Following on from the fax, another form of asynchronous messaging widely used around the world is email (or electronic mail) which has many advantages over the fax machine such as the ability to send messages both privately and to multiple people depending on your requirements. This allows you to maintain privacy for sensitive documents and yet send and receive to multiple recipients for a collaborative effort. A large advantage for email is the ability to send any type of file (within size restrictions at both ends) and format the document in anyway required i.e. for quick discussion amongst project team m

embers it can be quick and informal or for a more formal approach can be formatted on a letter head. It is also cheap, with the only expense being your contract with your ISP and your software (many of which are free).

This is very useful system for collaboration and has been used by our team already to coordinate and discuss our choice of building for the major task.

It is very simple to know when you have a new message and emails can be accessed on phones as well as other portable devices.

The disadvantage of the email system is that it cant be viewed on a public space, it is in house. If you were dealing with 100 people then a message (although grouped) would have to be sent to each of them as opposed to the use of a message board which allows you to post an announcement that everyone will see when l

ogging on. They also are not as easily grouped as a message board into topics which can easily be accessed for past reflection. The email system also relies on the welfare of your computer, in that if your internet connection goes down or computer crashes you are unable to access your information unless you also used webmail.

Message boards or forums also rely on your computer welfare but offer some advantages over the email system. You can make public messages that all members of your team or viewing audience can see and restrictions can be set to allow as little or many people as you wish to have access to your messages. This is a very powerful t

ool for collaboration and is a great way for discussion and creative team work to happen from afar. Everyone can see announcements and data can be exchanged or posted for multiple people to use when needed and the format of a forum allows it to be easily organized into topic threads with date and time of posts so work is easy to follow and keep up with the latest discussion or data. The use of the private messaging system also allows private exchanges between select users where needed.

However a message board will generally rely on email notification to let you know when a new message has been posted rather th

an people having to continually go to the site just to check if anything new has been posted. It also creates a 3^rd possible problem as even if your and your recipients computers are functioning fine, the host that stores the forum may go down rendering it unavailable to ALL members of your team.

Similarly the blog (or weblog) is posted to a site and can be very useful for team work. Your team leader can post instructions and thoughts to all on the tasks that need to be done or have been done and also allows for comments to be posted at the end of the entry. Whilst not as effective as a group discussion tool as a forum, it is a great way to follow or organise a project or record the progression of a project as can be seen by this subject.

references:

http://inventors.about.com/od/bstartinventors/a/fax_machine.htm viewed 30th March 2008

http://static.howstuffworks.com/gif/productImages/8/4/00000110984-MozillaThunderbird10-large.jpeg viewed 30th March 2008

http://www.blahusa.com/whatdefinitions/files/27.jpg viewed 30th March 2008

http://ts.wollzelle.com/assets/2007/9/21/fluxiom-blog.jpg viewed 30th March 2008

Week 1

The building I have chosen is a proposal for the high court of Australia by Harry Seidler.
I chose it for a few reasons including: It was designed by an Australian architect who is internationally recognised and is arguably our most famous architect. The building also would have been in our national capital and is very unique in design. With 'ramps winding around the circular upper void' and the fact it is a courthouse, I believe would make a very interesting example for us to model and create a virtual environment in UT3.....I can imagine it to be a great level in multiplayer type FPS games such as HALO etc.



The design itself has a very futuristic feel to it with large circular elements and a void extending through the center of the building lighting it as can be in the attached images.
Although it may be hard to model and much guestimating done on the detail (as it has been hard to get much detail of the floor plans) I think it would be a very interesting and challenging building to do and would definately be original.
Originality is important to me as many of the works done and studied through the course are a little less 'out there' and to model and study a fresh building will be an interesting challenge.

As you can see the building is not small and I am not 100% certain if the scale is to large for what we will need to do in UT3 as I am not familiar with that software at all but if it is achievable I quite like the feel of this design and the impact it gives when you see it.
I think I can put together good video presentations in adobe premiere of the creation of this and also map materials nicely in 3ds max. I think I would need some assistance using revit from my colleagues to model it who have more experince in a BIM than I do.

So in summary after browsing the net, I hit the library and stumbled across a book in which I have found a building that is of impressive impact and scale, is very unique and was designed by an Australian architect for what would have been the high court of Australia in the ACT, all important factors for me when thinking about the project at hand.



REFERENCES:
'Architecture for the new world. The work of Harry Seidler'
By Peter Blake
Horwitz Australia Ltd., Sydney
Wittenborn and Co.,New York
Karl Kraemer Verlag, Stuttgart