I’ve had to map it myself for NYC couple of years ago, merge the data spreadsheet with a GIS map, pretty fun stuff to play with though.
Sep 21, 20 12:42 pm ·
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mightyaa
That is pretty cool. I know a lot of jurisdictions actually do have all the historic information. Once upon a time, I chaired the local Historic Board (south metro Denver) and part of our job was to conduct historic surveys (hire researchers to document every address in a set area). So we had original construction, architect/builder if known, and modifications as well as entire legal descriptions and historic covenants/easements and photographs on record (historic and current). It's available to the public through the local library and Historic Board liaison office. When I was in office, we had everything around our downtown and older (pre-1900's) neighborhoods. Basically, it was in part to assist us in the public education and trying to get historic designations.
Someone already did this for NYC based on open source data: http://bdon.org/building-age-nyc/. I'm waiting for them to link all of the old tax photos of buildings w/in a map, so you can just click on a property and see photos from the '40's and '80's.
Sep 22, 20 3:42 pm ·
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JLC-1
looks great, but it doesn't seem to be working at all
Sep 22, 20 3:58 pm ·
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JLC-1
my bad, you said it wasn't linked, I thought you could see the actual age by clicking
These stupid day long video conferences and people wonder why no one is getting anything done. Plus if you schedule a meeting anytime between 11 and 1 I’m going to be eating potato chips the whole time with my mic on and my camera off.
I have come to really appreciate people who do 30 minute video conferences with a hard stop.
I am a zoomthauritarian. Start exactly on time, no recaps for all the late fuckers, and call it "done" as soon as we stop discussing relevant items. I try to do 30 minutes but then the consultants moan it isn't enough time so I usually just schedule an hour then cut it off at 30.
Y’all, the first day back in the office was a huge self esteem boost, both personally (lots of Holy shit you look great) and professionally (you’re really kicking ass lately and we’re hearing lots of praise).
Knocked off one more ARE. Celebrated with some choice local craft beers. All this quarantine has been good for providing plenty of study time, so silver linings everywhere i guess? Work with what ya got.
Guys, over the last two weeks I've moved (downsized) from one beloved house to a new one, my work deadlines are off the charts, the fuckery of this country's political situation seriously makes me worried that a civil war is imminent, and likely deserved, I am under severe stress. But I'm checking in here today because:
It's abracadabra's birthday! The FOUNDER of TC completes another year around the sun, may we all be so lucky!
My wife teaches HS, and my kiddo started online preschool for an hour a day so we've reenacted this cartoon IRL. My kiddo is the second from the left, on the top row. My wife's class is mostly black rectangles though as no one turns on their camera.
inappropriately walked in front of the webcam again I gather?
Sep 23, 20 12:29 pm ·
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Wilma Buttfit
My kid is second from the left top row too (2nd grade). But her camera is usually off. I got zoom lectured by the teacher yesterday for not making sure my kid was doing all the busy work. Then I overheard the teacher showing her tats to the kids.
apparently some schools around here require the teachers to drive into the classroom and teach from there, since many just slacked off last semester. my 12 year is now actually occupied for school day hours, last semester, was done within 2 hours everyday...
Can't help but notice that my intake of Rage Against the Machine has increased exponentially over the last few months; my pessimism seems to track with the current ongoing political climate in America.
Earth, Wind & Fire. As in the leadup to the 2008 election, and even moreso now, I find soul music by Black Americans to be the most soothing and hopeful for me.
/\ I'm learning nothing has changed since the mid 90's cultulrally in our world...20 hour day so far and still going...
Sep 25, 20 12:07 am ·
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randomised
4hrs to go!
Sep 25, 20 2:04 am ·
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awaiting_deletion
yes, just did the 4hrs of sleep, based on my fit bit, I always hit 4 hours deep sleep and then the rest is light. I've always felt this way and accordingly have found all you really need is 4 hours of sleep. call it irony or just flat out denial and stupidity on my behalf, but the very philosophy I'm into lately (marc fisher, looks like this one was in a Dutchland hall (I understood 60% of intro)link) - TIME.
Over the last few years I get 4-5 hours of sleep more than half the time, and 7+ hours once a week at best. It's survivable but takes a toll. In the last ten years I've gone from looking ten years under my age to ten years over. Even light sleep is restful. I think the brain may only need a few hours to sort experiences into memory, but the body needs more time to recharge.
Wood Guy I think it's the opposite for me, in 4 hours of deep sleep the body is 100% and unless my brain feels warm (sometimes) its the light sleep in and out of dreams which does a good reset....NS get more sleep bruh or Belgian!
neuce....twas my birthday week, someone got me a mini-keg! and my 70+ year old booklets of older docs on Jamestown history from like 350 years ago came in, smells musty, how did they build back then...I'm a total looser, drinking and cad'ing Colonial time wall sections!
I'm sorry, citizen, you know I like you but I find this hilarious. I did not hide your comment, but this is what I see when I look at the blog post.
Sep 25, 20 4:56 pm ·
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citizen
LOL, Donna. I know you wouldn't do this-- and it is funny, you're right. And kind of sad. I never though I was prescient, but maybe I should look into this ability.
I posted to see if the apparently-very-brittle Mitch McEwen would exercise all that intellect in customary fashion. And she did not disappoint, unless you appreciate things like tolerance.
Sep 25, 20 6:01 pm ·
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b3tadine[sutures]
Citizen, that's awfully presumptive isn't it? What makes you think that bloggers have control over their blog posts? They don't. Not yet.
Sep 25, 20 6:09 pm ·
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SneakyPete
You posted that comment and when it got deleted you use it to make a sweeping statement about the blog author? That's a troll with no substance.
Sep 25, 20 6:20 pm ·
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citizen
That's totally fair, I'll concede. I was presuming that Mitch McEwen deleted the comment in question (and a raft of others), which I don't know to be true. I based the assumption on comparative rarity of comment deletion around here, and the uproar over the practice at another particular thread.
Just here to confirm that bloggers have no moderating ability for the comments on their posts. The bloggers probably have a lot of pull in asking for comments to be moderated (I haven't tested this theory), but we can't do it ourselves.
Sep 25, 20 6:45 pm ·
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SneakyPete
That seems like it would disincentivise people from blogging here. Why put your ideas out there if someone can spam troll you, even if only for a few minutes before you can contact a moderator?
que? (hide this), hahaha. that is the pathetic trait of milllenials or Z's or whatever. the inability to take on challenging thought or disagreement in words without getting emotional...
DTL, it's one thing to take on challenging thought. It's another to spend time and and energy trying, for example, to figure out how many people can safely COVID-distance on a flat earth before someone falls off the edge. There's no benefit to arguing with someone whose "facts" aren't facts.
lmao, good one, well written. totally get that angle.
Sep 27, 20 12:29 pm ·
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randomised
“apparently-very-brittle” etc. “tolerance” that actually says much more about the moderators than the authors, it’s the mods that apparently don’t allow certain comments when there is a non-white person involved. There is, in my experience, some kind of subconscious bias in that sense, being overprotective of non-whites, which is kind of degrading, people can stand up for themselves, but smothering discussions before they are even about to happen won’t allow that standing up, which are missed opportunities as even the topic or thread whatever would benefit from such on-topic discussions, in my opinion (obviously).
Sep 27, 20 3:08 pm ·
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citizen
Very helpful to know that bloggers don't apparently do the silencing. (Again, my apologies to Mitch McEwen.)
I wonder if the selective comment deletion isn't just good, old-fashioned hospitality. They manage to snag an Ivy-affiliated blogger to post occasionally; they keep comments open, with fingers crossed for praise and agreement; then axe other comments to avoid discomfort that might scare off the author from any future posting.
It's the same principle as shutting the dog into a closed bedroom when fancy company comes over. And while annoying, certainly within bounds for a private organization. Just a theory...
citizen, I'm actually not sure why Mitch isn't at editor status. The blogs are more for students and for half-baked ideas by people like myself. I believe you've been on archinect as long as I have and you'll notice over the years it's always had this "progressive political" approach to architecture, usually failing and anyone having any success at it becomes a blogger or writer, not a bad thing, but I think this constant demand for a "progressive political" agenda is silly sometimes. also, why are the threads like this or politics central far more active than any other architecture thread (except guess the plan). its literally the same half dozen people that frequent the 'nect argueing amonst each other about essentially - bull shit....your last paragraph is correct. some of us regulars "embarass" the other regulars. some are even banned from thread central.
Sep 27, 20 6:18 pm ·
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citizen
I consider my ideas at least two-thirds baked. Maybe even three-quarters.
I hear you. I have 15 "active" jobs, 9 open but that I don't have to do much for, and I'm currently courting 20 potential projects, many of which are likely to go to contract. They are all residential and many of them are small, but several are large renos or new homes. I work alone. Keeping track of 40+ clients and programs is proving to be too much, no surprise!
Sep 30, 20 4:34 pm ·
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Wilma Buttfit
You know those machines that make and stretch saltwater taffy? I feel like that taffy. I get pulled apart in one direction and then the other, and another. And nobody even likes taffy.
Concept (4) , SD (4), , DD (2), CD (1), CA (2). I'm not counting the proposals. Everything is moving fast though so I expect at least six project Concept and SD phases to move to CD's by the end of the month.
Oct 1, 20 10:26 am ·
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shellarchitect
WTF! Are you designing dog houses? That seems crazy fast!
I think I'm too old for this profession anymore. Another old person in my office and I had a serious dispute with two younger staff over how an RCP is supposed to look because apparently Revit doesn't show the underside of stairs?!?
We couldn't understand how the stairs and ceiling planes were resolving. I still don't know if the Revit wizards know how it resolves, even though it doesn't show, or if that connection just doesn't exist as something that needs to be designed. I suspect the latter.
OMG update: we can't put a door where we want one because the wall isn't included in the design option. Revit is a fucking nightmare. Using it is like someone driving into a lake because their map program said "Turn left now".
Oct 5, 20 10:53 am ·
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Non Sequitur
Donna, while design options are a mess in revit (and honestly should not really be used to make CD... but that's another story), you can turn on whatever you want in whatever view, just like in regular old CAD, if your junior staff knows how to work the graphic controls. Turning on the u/s of stairs is a single click.
edit. also, making a axo 3d view showing the ceiling to u/s stair is like 3 clicks. I'd say you need better junior staff but even the staff in my office will struggle with these commands. It's just not intuitive if all you do is rely on revit to do the "thinking".
Would you rather go back to a paper atlas because some idiots can't make smart decisions when using a GPS? My biggest peeve with Revit is when the users throw their hands up and say "but Revit won't let me do that." What would you do back in CAD days? Draw the damn door in with lines. Why don't they do that now? Who knows.
Or firm leadership complaining about Revit and how it isn't as beautiful as a CAD (or god-forbid, hand) drawing, or the kids don't know how to use it. Please, if you want to go back to CAD so badly, double the staff on each project and try to find fee to pay for it. Oh and double your insurance too for the inevitable coordination issues that will pop up. (or moreso than projects using BIM correctly)
"design options ... should not ... be used to make CD" Amen. AMEN. I've heard nigtmares about people using them for multiple sets within a model. NO. Options, by their very definition, do NOT belong in a model being used for CDs.
I started my post with "I'm too old for this" because the kids use Revit in brilliant ways that are just speaking a language I don't know and don't want to take time to learn at this point in my life and career. I'm fine for them to take over; if using Revit to communicate my intentions is what's required every day to be an architect I'm fine to leave the profession to others. What's challenging, and pointless, is trying to PM between junior staff and senior designers while I'm speaking an archaic language in which you draw what you want to see, not just look at what the software shows you, and designers are trying to see what they have been accustomed to seeing for 5 decades, and the whole time I'm trying to moderate between the two the owner is constantly screaming in the background that they can't afford anything so everything we draw will be dumbed down anyway. I've said it before, and I'll say it over and over: give me a good residential kitchen remodel and I'm happy.
(Specific to archanonymous: my junior staff absolutely FORBID me from using lines. I could totally make the printed (pdf) sheet look exactly like I want it to if I was allowed to use lines. But they won't let me.)
"you draw what you want to see, not just look at what the software shows you"
I'm a well-known Revit devotee and I 100% agree with this statement. If the software isn't showing you what you want to see, that's on you (*the Architect, not "you" Donna) to fix. My job isn't to create a picture perfect Revit file, it's to communicate a design to a contractor. Whatever it takes to get there.
I'm a weird age where I learned CAD in the late 90's, was forced to hand draw (for which I'm thankful) in Undergrad, and watched the Revit shift in real time during the first five-ish years of my career. So I see both sides, but also I disagree frequently with the older AND the younger folks.
Donna, revit does not give instant satisfaction like cad or sketchup does. It's more like "tell me what you want and come back in an hour".
Oct 5, 20 1:04 pm ·
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archanonymous
I hear you, Donna. Couldn't decide whether to thumbs-up or thumbs-down Jr. staff not letting you use detail lines. :(
Oct 5, 20 1:24 pm ·
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Non Sequitur
^I strongly discourage the use of detail lines in every situation unless it's a 1:5 scale drawing and we've got to show membrane tie-ins and what not... or mild graphic fixes. Never in lieu of families but... they are very useful in a pinch when you don't have time to draft it correctly or your staff is lazy.
NS - I agree and discourage it on my projects also, but if a junior shows me a drawing that is missing something and I ask why and the answer is "because revit" I'm going to lose my fuckin mind.
If they show me a drawing, we review it for actual design content, and then they say "oh btw, I couldn't get this door in in Revit so I drew it with detail lines - can you help me figure it out." I'll be happy as a stoned clam.
The most frustrating thing about this, is the fact that most of the model components are easily manipulated, either through visibility settings, or through simple tricks, that have zero to with "dumb drafting lines".
I typically keep my cool at the office but I recently lost it with a senior partner after I was told to check one particular revit project because "it was a good example of details". It was not. Not even close. Everything (and I'm not exaggerating) was a detail line with 99% of the model hidden.
What's this, a window in my wall section? Let me just put a giant mask over this perky thing and draw a few lines to show it as gyp + ACM.
Oh dang, the wall tag family won't work? Let me just trace our office standard tag with detail lines and float a text box inside.
Oh, this is a punched-window with a centre mullion? Dang, don't got a family with that exact configuration, let me just stick 2 typical casement windows together and overlap the frames. Bang, instant window!. Time for lunch.
Oh, don't have time to draft up all the required details, let me just draw all the membrane lines at 1:1 and then rescale everything to 1:20 and drop on a sheet. That'll read crystal clear.
and so on... and this is a "senior" arch who claims families are too complicated.
People in my office find it completely acceptable to use generic walls for existing buildings, never thinking of course that there might be ducts penetrating them, or that structural may want to know the construction so they can determine if the joists, or new lintels will work...fuck! Oh, and let's draw exterior walls, of a multi-story building, on each level.....FFS.
I'm honestly pretty forgiving of alot of this stuff... as long as the work gets done. People have to come to the realization themselves that the fastest way to get it done... is to do it the right way (or the Revit way) they can't just be told that.
I'm also so freakin far off piste from what Revit is good at geometry-wise, that it takes a great deal of fuckery to get the projects done, at least for me. I'm no ZHA-level Revit user though either.
Oct 5, 20 7:12 pm ·
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atelier nobody
My other problem is that I wear two hats. When I'm wearing my QC hat, I couldn't care less how they get it done as long as the final PDF is right, but when I'm trying to integrate specifications and QTO with Revit, it matters A LOT that the model and details are done correctly.
Oct 5, 20 7:29 pm ·
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awaiting_deletion
Just tell junior staff to hit "F1" and "figure it out". I find everyone wants a youtube video or their hands held these days. It's software written by people, not rocket science. Like literally search what you want to do, eventually you'll learn the language. Software can conform to anything you want. With that said, sometimes I make $200+ hr hand sketching, sometimes I make that in CAD, sometimes in 3d modeling software, and rarely in Revit (doesn't make sense for most project we do)...whatever works.....
most brilliant moment I ever saw from an old fart -
"I can't do that in this software". - me
grabs sharpie, draws on screen says "that's what I want."- old fart
Oct 5, 20 8:48 pm ·
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awaiting_deletion
as an example. I was certified in Revit 12 years ago. 4 years later an Engineer wanted me to make a Revit file act and look AutoDesk's boiler plant software, not even sure that exists anymore.
Some manuf. had families that did what amounts to "4D" for simulation software..Taco or something...hit F1 a few times, a bit of googling, figured out we really needed the Plant Software (was like $10k) but faked it. he got the job, bing bang boom, installed the MEP crap. So Donna, just tell the junior staff to use F1 if they consider themselves intelligent ;)
Even an architect can fake MEP Bioler Plant design using F1...
Oct 5, 20 9:09 pm ·
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midlander
the essential problem is junior employees who don't recognize what needs to be shown and take no initiative to figure it out. this problem is endemic and platform agnostic. it's the the product of laziness and ignorance, tempered by an unearned sense of self-satisfaction.
your problem Donna is simply not having enough confidence in the process to call out bullshit when someone presents it to you. Revit has some weird behavior in automatically hiding some elements in RCP views and the modeler should look up how that works and figure out a reasonable workaround.
Donna - I'd just tell your junior staff that it's not impossible in Revit, just difficult and the sooner they figure it out the better future projects will work. AKA - call them out on their BS and lack of understanding in Revit.
I hear you Chad, but also as a counterpoint: The problem isn't that junior staff don't know Revit. It's that they don't know how 55+yo architects are accustomed to reading/writing the language of drawings. That's not a failure on their part. Either it's my job to teach them how to draw it MY way, or it's MY job to learn how to speak their language, or it's just time for me to let things move along without me (which is, given the state of the world, preferable to me right now).
Oct 6, 20 1:59 pm ·
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atelier nobody
I'm very lucky at my current company to have junior staff who actually want to learn how we used to do it with pencils and 2D CAD, and to understand the details I sketch them instead of just copying them (and y'all better not be thinking of poaching any of them - I will fight you), but I still run up against "Revit can't do that."
Oct 6, 20 2:05 pm ·
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Non Sequitur
...or counter-point to your counter-point, it's up to the revit users to learn how to bend BIM models to meet both expected graphic standards and maintain BIM flexibility.
Pro-tip, when someone says "Revit can't do that", 99% of the time, they are speaking from ignorance... unless you're asking your central model to make you a cup of coffee... if that's the case and your staff has figured it out, drop me line because I'm still brewing mine the old fashion way.
A variation on "Revit can't do that" is "I don't have time to figure out how to make Revit do that and still meet the deadline," which I at least have some sympathy for.
people at my office are starting to draw site plans in Revit and coordinating that model with civil. It's horrible, but I get that it's on me to adapt rather forcing my opinions on them. As a side note, there are a handful of comments older people say to those producing the drawings that just make them look old. Like, complaining about line weights while completely missing the really stupid shit that makes the project unbuildable. I'm thinking of making bingo cards, but I'm scared to find out if I'm one of the old people or young people.
lineweights is a lost cause. i remember being exasperated by the inevitable diversion during crits to listen to some crank talking about lineweights in near mystical reverence for their ability to communicate an essence we were failing to express。while even then publications like detail or el croquis present everything in flat black and white without much differentiation of lineweights.
Oct 6, 20 11:37 pm ·
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Non Sequitur
curt, I'm not old but I will crucify someone on improper line weights without a second's thought. Good drawing habits show that the staff cares about the quality of their work and makes me feel more confident that because of this care, there is "less" unbuildable shit peppered everywhere in the drawing set. Side note, we still have not coordinate a site plan with civil. So far it's been CAD import to detail lines because who needs a civil headache when I have line weights to slaughter.
Lineweights are important, but spending 90% of a QA review on lineweights while overlooking obvious code violations is a problem. I may or may not be speaking from experience.
tduds, code stuff and other important bits are not overlooked... at least in my case, since I hammer those out early in the CD process. Near the end, what is left is cleaning up the drawings to meet standards and legibility, at least on projects that I'm on. Don't know what the B and C teams are up to tho.
Oct 7, 20 8:27 am ·
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curtkram
I'm all for a good set of drawings, but if your schedule is fucked and you don't have adequate staff something has to give. My point is "lineweights" becomes a crutch for people who clearly have no idea what they're doing, but they need to say something so it looks like they're still relevant. There are things in a set of documents that are more important. Figure that stuff out first. Like make sure the specs are coordinated with the drawings, then you can talk about lineweights.
I feel like at least 30% of my TC posts are me kvetching about my job while simultaneously extolling the virtues of working for a "top office" as only someone who truly has Stockholm syndrome can.
Got 3 interviews lined up this week, and really hoping that at least one works out and at the last minute I don't trot out the "thanks, but I don't think I'd be a great fit at your firm" line that torpedoed my last round of interviews. Realizing it is just so hard for me to break out of the routine, the safety I know (even if it is slowly killing me from stress), and the perceived "importance" of working at a "top office."
i was in a similar position- the fear will evaporate quickly, and you'll realize exactly how miserable you were once you're surrounded by sane, normal people. quality of life will go way up, and you'll never look back. as you say, that importance is only perceived.
Ditto, ditto. I was in a position like yours AA. The only think was I wasn't brave enough to leave - it took the 2008 recession and my layoff to realize it wasn't worth it. Now I work to live and balance my life much better. I've had interviews and discussions with firms that wonder why I'm not at a bigger firm in a bigger city doing bigger, better projects. I tell them there is more to my life than architecture.
First deadline passed rather well, don’t know why I always get so worked up about it, I tell myself afterwards...but with the next deadline approaching I will probably forget that realisation coming Monday. For now it’s weekend and celebrating the 1st birthday of my kiddo!
Just finished a few concept images for a proposal meeting today with a client. Had an 11 hour day yesterday (for me that's a long day) finishing up the drawings.
Hopefully we get the work. If not I wasted 18 hours of my time.
They came in three weeks ago and wanted to see some conceptual stuff next time they where in town. I started the conceptual design stuff then stopped after they never got back to the partner they where in contact with about when they would be back in town. A week ago they finally got back to us and set the meeting up for today. On Monday they called to see we could do a zoom meeting yesterday. We where all already booked.. Partner contacted them right away (voicemail and email) and told them we where already booked but provided alternative times and days for a zoom meeting. Partner kept calling and emailing to verify they where still coming today. Never heard a a thing.
The partner did, yes. I was leery as it's a developer and contractor partnership. The clients where also in the news for just buying land for the development (around 11 acers) from the city.
Oct 8, 20 7:02 pm ·
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randomised
Maybe they will still show eventually, too busy buying land?
No idea. The land purchase was finalized within a week of our first meeting. Personally I don't care if they come back. Unless they have a good reason for the ghosting I wouldn't want to work with people who are this irresponsible and non responsive. I've told the partners so.
Canadians have thanksgiving? I thought you where all a bunch of socialist heathens with great health care and exquisite manners?
Oct 14, 20 9:55 am ·
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Non Sequitur
Chad, the only logical reason I have to take up arms (as permitted under the canadian firearms act) is to protect my birth right to stuff my face full of pumpkin pie on the 2nd weekend of october. Insert Braveheart style war cry.
It's always enjoyable to read good writing about architecture in non-architectural publications. Refreshing to get outside the design bubble and listen to how normal folks interpret our lives & livelihood.
I have to say, this actually made me think a bit less of Zumthor.
great article thanks. totally fascinating and gives me a better understanding why he does what he does. why does it degrade your view of zumthor? he sounds exactly as obdurate and willful as i imagined. like jorn utzon, willing to go out fighting. and probably in the end right on the big ideas.
Zumthor certainly sounds traumatized by his childhood but then also hasn't grown past it at all?
I kept going back and forth, cheering this: "His starchitect colleagues were faxing it in from nine time zones away. So much for regionalism." then rolling my eyes hard at this “ 'My colleagues are so conceited, they don’t ask me, ‘What do you think? This is your bath.’ ” Like jeez man talk about conceited?!
Images of Kolumba make me weepy with joy. Bruder Klaus hits me SO HARD in its making, but then you hear him say his first girlfriend's pickup line on him was "You look alienated" and ugh I want to vomit.
I feel like I'm sick to death of old men making "masterpieces". Then I think of Scarpa's Castelvecchio and Saarinen's MIT Chapel and so many other deeply moving, beautiful places - buildings - and I don't want to live in a world without them.
This is true, midlander. I guess I’m not saying I’m tired of Zumthor’s work, but I am tired of fawning articles about “iconoclastic” old white men. They have their successes, and should bask in them, but, let’s look at younger people and possibilities more.
Doubtful anyone here picked up the location of the shop (OLG is a clue) but it's actually a few blocks north of my office. I saw the pic on social a while back and saved it for a rainy monday.
Oct 14, 20 8:23 am ·
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Bench
but is it the French version of OLG! (L'GdLd'O ?)
Oct 14, 20 8:35 am ·
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randomised
All I saw when reading that article was Zumthor faxing his LACMA revisions from 9 time zones away!
Test results came back negative (email at 4am). Still waiting on wife's. I'm still in tip-top shape tho... but that's probably because I'm almost entirely built of day-old cold black coffee.
Good news so far, NS. Fingers crossed for the second result. And, correct: never underestimate the awesome power of old coffee and skepticism infused with middle-aged weariness. It's like Superman's underwear.
is Arg - Argentinian! fuck you! man. I liked you. Maradona is bullshit. Tony Schumacher and Lothar Matthäus kicked your arse...I'm glad you're family is OK, but we can not have a civil conversation. You're fuckin' Argintenian bullshit...Brazil doesn't even like you and between the motherland and Brazil we have real futball players.....oh wait, that was an arghhhh...in English bruh, I realize you Canadians are backwoods English with perverse French influences, but like the downplayed I'm cranky arg is arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.......where shall I send the case of Belgium Peace Beer?
Oct 17, 20 4:39 pm ·
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Non Sequitur
Yes, please send me that Belgian beer case. I’ll hold off my attack beavers for now. Arghhhhhhhh.
so you're a true Canuck. PM me bruh, seriously I'll send you a beer (kids are intense man when shit comes up). I'm hoping to score the anti-New England Patriots pack from the source....but what about the badgers?
it's a bit like school again, an extended period of frustration and anger, followed by resigned acceptance. in 2 years you won't understand why anyone complains about it.
Oct 16, 20 10:41 pm ·
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midlander
but secretly and never ever around a bim manager you will wonder if there could be a better way...
Oct 16, 20 10:41 pm ·
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square.
i'm quite confident there's a better way. just waiting on those robots..
Architecture is NOW ephermeral. Maybe you wanted to be an architect to do something solid, something timely, you know something meaningful and permanent like a Pyramid...nah...it's just currency man, currency.
Rant: My teenage daughter doesn't believe me that she has a cyber perv old man stalker. I show her the weird coincidences between my websites and hers and then out of nowhere, she has an account on soundcloud. she's surprised I have one. of course I have one, that's where music was cool for a bit or maybe it is again now that teenagers are liking music they don't want their parents to see.
I see her likes - Insane Clown Posse and some bad rap music pervert subjagating wimmin shit, yada yada...she's in deep shit with me.
Here's the difference!
.. when I was sneaking around Ice-T's OG tape in my walkman (i've linked it for the kids) it was just me and Ice-T. It was me and my world and some shit that had an opinion on it. It was not some dude (and I'm certain an old man) 1.5 hours away (yes we can trace people on the internet) or maybe its foreign agents given her Edgy Russian music selection - icepeak.
When I was a kid and had issues with society and my parents and I rebelled there weren't any weird random perverts offering helping hands, it was me and then I would go to my parents and say - I hate all your fundamentalist religious bullshit and we'd talk. No different here for the most part (my daughter is a mini me) but there wasn't some perv who likes my little pony along for the ride (and I'll find you!)...these fucking peeps exist -wormhole
Rant over.
Now delete me or just email me these guy's addresses.
ha, I forgot the point - Modernism is fleeting (ephemeral). hence post - modernism. Most humans aren't modern....see works by Albert Camus, and a timely one
Oct 17, 20 3:57 pm ·
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randomised
Had Ice-T’s OG on tape too! Ah the memories, all the depressed kids walking around impersonating Kurt Cobain, me pretending to be a gangster...good times!
Oct 18, 20 4:30 am ·
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randomised
“ What does one have to do to get deleted around here?!?!”
Are you contemplating forum suicide by moderator? You could also just autodelete and spare them a lifelong trauma!
Oct 18, 20 3:26 pm ·
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Non Sequitur
No UDS reference? I’m confused. Also, I’ll put my teenage bleached hair, baggy jeans, plaid jacket and wallet chain up against your IceT any day.
Oct 18, 20 4:31 pm ·
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curtkram
ranomized, i think it's a moon cycle thing. he just likes to get deleted every few months.
Oct 18, 20 4:35 pm ·
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randomised
Haha, I’m sure there’s an UDS song for that Non...my musical upbringing was quite different though, from MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice straight to Tim Dog and Ice-T, from there onto Bodycount back to Jimi Hendrix and forward to Suicide in Seattle with a side of Britpop and experimental Radiohead to electronic music and big beat back to Jacques Brel, post-punk and post-colonial African stuff. Very eclectic and random, some would say all over the place, basically how I drink my coffee or eat my eggs and connected to life events and experiences that inform my musical preferences...
Oct 19, 20 12:50 pm ·
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Non Sequitur
Had both Brel and Pearljam at my wedding ceremony. Check-mate.
It's funny, tintt, because that's one of my recurring stress dreams: finally showing up to studio in the 4th week, once everyone else is busy and well underway on projects. No detention, just the anxiety of being so far behind. I dream this several times a year.
Detention in my dream was more like a therapist's office. They told me I was "OK" and to not listen to the oppressors. I was like, I'm NOT Ok (oppositional) and refused to go back to studio.
citizen I have the same dream several times a year. Every time everyone else is so far along and I'm screaming at myself "Why did you fuck around the whole semester and not work on this?!?!"
My recurring nightmare is that I get to graduation week and they are like "ohhh, you didn't satisfy your math requirements, you'll have to stay another year to take calculus."
Oct 19, 20 11:47 am ·
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midlander
me too! which is particularly inexplicable because I was an excellent student in math.
My usual dream is: it's finals week and I suddenly remember a class I haven't actually been to since the first week of the semester. I actually had something sort of like this happen in real life. I didn't forget I had the class, but I was drinking a LOT that quarter and it was an 8:00 AM class, so I basically blew it off, but couldn't quite shake my Presbyterian roots so I showed up for the review week and the final...it was the only time I ever got an honest-to-Pete "F" in any class.
sorta had something very similar while still in school. I audited many elective classes and signed up for some but on occasion, dropped them when I realized the final req (like a giant research essay) would conflict with my arch degree deadlines. I did not need the elective credits but still took one or 2 per semester just because. Anyways, recurring dream during my undergrad was always panic when I realized I had a day or so to finish that paper from a long-dropped class. Studio habits at the the time certainly did not help.
I routinely had dreams where I forgot to attend a physics class until the middle of the semester when I saw my grade was an F. Backstory is that I had signed up for the class IRL but dropped it pretty quickly because it wasn't going to work with my schedule that semester ... but for some reason it stuck in my mind as a responsibility I wasn't fulfilling to haunt my dreams. Even in later years when I had completed the science requirement with another course, I'd still have the dream that I had forgotten to attend this physics class.
I have the recurring dream about forgetting to go to physics class too.
Oct 20, 20 9:24 pm ·
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curtkram
I actually didn't go to physics class. I guess that means I lived your dream.
Oct 20, 20 9:53 pm ·
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citizen
Gaaah! Physics class in 1st year... so dull. And difficult, for me. It was the first time I realized in my entire schooling that I didn't have to go to class, and nobody would care or say anything. So I rarely went. What freedom! Then came the D, and I was mortified. I humiliated myself in the instructor's office trying to explain something (acceleration, maybe?) in a feeble attempt to save my grade. No dice.
Fast forward about 15 years and I'm back on campus in the same building. (The firm had been hired for renovations.) I walk by and see him sitting in that same office. Rather than stroll down memory lane, I just smiled and kept moving.
My dad was a physics teacher so I think I had some inert ability cause somehow I felt confused all those semesters but ended up ok. Glad I studied it unlike that slacker curtkram. :)
My new realization is that I can't be bothered with staff who honestly don't give a fuck about how construction works. Having spent a few frustrating days trying, and failing, to convince one of the "designers" that you can't just make up shit on working drawings. Double the frustration level when those drawings are super duper basic like stud size and location of grade or structural levels. No, I'm not asking the client to demo half that existing block wall + lintel just because your arbitrary magical window trim feature won't fit.
Give me one hour in the evening and a well chosen craft beer and I'll do what you tried to do over 2 days. /rant
I couldn't be a teacher. I don't have the temperament. I have had to have that 'talk' with some that I'm actually paying for their ability to think instead of just their time.
exactly archanonymous, we are not just picking things from a catalogue of existing solutions and products, where's the fun in that, don't need to study very long to do that...
My last firm had a designer like that. They fired the Nonsequiter of the office when those problems kept arising in CA. I left shortly after. Let me know real fast management was just as clueless.
side note, It's actually one of my responsibilities to train staff in all sorts of things since I'm A. the youngest in the management circle, 2. the most well-rounded in terms of graphics, CD, CA and software knowledge, and iii. the most disciplined and consistent. So I've changed my focus on this one person and broke tasks down into simpler steps with plenty of examples/explanations.
Good going, NS. Frustrating at times, I'm sure. But if it's part of the job description, so be it. And if the youngster holds up their end of the bargain, could be a satisfying (if not quick) outcome.
I've been in a similar situation a couple years ago.... Me: late 30s, climbing into management. Tech: Early 50s, never made any career advancement but refused to put in the work (or even ASK) to be given more responsibility. Got frustrated at having to take orders from somebody with two decades less experience. He started fucking the dog so we let him go. Nice guy but it's a team effort, and if you don't want to play the game, get off the field.
Oct 21, 20 11:51 pm ·
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citizen
Got it, NS. And bummer, yes.
This is extra-curricular, but I wonder if a visit to a job site would help. I'll never forget the first time I walked a project in framing that I had done the CDs for. It literally opened a new world of understanding-- as it did/does for most of us, I'd imagine. If someone's never actually seen an actual control joint, or a double top plate, or a joist hanger, or a jamb shimmed into an opening, etc, all those funny lines remain completely abstract.
They extended ours by 6 months as well, but the start date of the next window wasn't changed, so now there's 6 months of having to choose which courses go where. And I don't think most people have figured that out yet, and are in for a big surprise in a couple years.
Much better to overlay a bunch of detail lines on a base plan, then sketch the design options, then draw what you want in Revit once.
Oct 23, 20 11:49 am ·
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tduds
Options are great if you use them in a very specific way, and an absolute nightmare if you don't. Most people I've encountered who use Options don't use them in that specific way.
Design Options are a tool meant for use during SD and then jettisoned during DD. They don't play well with CDs, and they don't play well with people who don't organize their model well.
I hate filing drawers, because when I put everything in one folder in the back, I can't get to my stuff without removing the drawer, and what are all of these other folders for, anyhow?!
Almosthip, don't take that personally, the thumbs down is for the sentiment, not the poster. The moment anyone starts creating multiple models for a workshared project the wheels start to come off.
Worksharing allows multiple staff members within an office to work simultaneously in one central file without conflict. Without this it would limit work to one user per file.
Any time you create orphan files with options in them, someone has to manually cut and paste them together, leading to unnecessary rework and updating.
Design Options are fine, as long as you follow some simple guidelines.
If you are forcing views to show a specific (non-primary) option, you're probably making things complicated, either because the person above you on the totem pole doesn't know (or care) about how the process works (Revit or not, running multiple competing ideas in the design for longer than it takes to choose one is a terrible idea) or you don't.
If you leave DOs in the file after a decision has been made, you're making it harder on yourself.
If you try to use multiple sets of options within the same area, you're setting yourself up for failure, as elements can't be divided between option sets.
Etc.
It's just like ANY tool, it has its use, and the old "when all you're used to using is a hammer, all you see are nails" adage applies.
Oh, and before anyone accuses me of being some Revit apologist, I hate it, I just hate it less than all of the other options. When I work with people who cannot figure out Design Options after a few days I shudder to think how bad their work would likely be in CAD, where they would have to remember to coordinate between drawings and update their xrefs etc etc etc.
Donna, this isn't aimed at you, I would bet much money that youll pick it up in no time. You'll probably still hate it, but you'll get it.
IDK, I just must work in a very small office but we only need one person to do design development of a model. Multiple hands don't touch our models till they go to CD. Central models are not created until the floor plan and elevations are set.
Oct 23, 20 1:42 pm ·
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Non Sequitur
My first step is to set up a central model and worksets. Nothing gets drawn, modeled, summoned, killed, unless it's got a workset ready.
My two hours of Design Options went well, and I dutifully accepted the primary and deleted the option as soon as the discussion was through. I have a rockstar younger person in the office who walked me through doing it properly. I'm able to see the value in Revit, just get so frustrated by it daily. Hourly, even. But I AM enjoying little bits of its utility. That said....I still don't really understand WTF a workset is.
Donna - think of it like a layer. Or, I guess, a layer group. We use different Worksets for different scopes - Envelope, Core, Structure, Interior, M/E/P, etc. each has a workset. It makes whole scopes easy to toggle on & off, and it's easier for people to simultaneously own different pieces of the project - skin, core, unit layouts, and so on, without stepping on each other's toes.
As a background, back in the day there was no way multiple people could work in one file without issue. Worksets were created so you could "borrow" the workset and the software would know it was yours, not letting anyone else change the elements on it to avoid errors. This was set up manually, and had to be kept manually. Eventually they created the tech to do element based ad hoc worksharing, which made the NEED for worksets moot. At this point many large firms had instituted worksharing into their workflows and so it was left in. Now folks use it to lower PC resource utilization (by unloading heavy worksets), to subdivide linked portions, and (against best practice advice) for visibility control.
just because revit is the best we have now, doesn't mean it's the best possible solution, or that it's a particularity enjoyable piece of software to use. in other words it's both possible to recognize that revit does some pretty great things, but that also it's not intuitive or user-friendly, which is a problem. the amount of technological bullshit one has to wade through to make a drawing, compared to the old days, is mind-numbing. there has to be a better way eventually.
it's apples to oranges, but i still think rhino is the best architecture software.. i still enjoy time spent on it, and it feels more appropriate for a field that is so dependent on the visual.
You can all give me a thumbs down but Im literally the only person in my department. The lone A in a land of engineers, until I need SME I really don't see a need to have a central file.
Some form of tractor racing today between Carsington Reservoir and Turnditch. Clocked them at 55mph, which is impressive as the both had tipper trailers filled with rubble and slick tyres in the wet.
Welp, two of my three interviews went really well, but when it came time to hammer out the other bits, both offers fell apart.
You want me to have 10+ years experience, a license, have led large projects, Revit proficient, rendering and modeling proficient, know how to do specs, ca, project management, and more, and you're going to pay me all of $75k a year? Fuck right off.
I’ve heard this from others lately too. Firms are using the pandemic to really lowball offers at the moment. Such a race to the bottom mentality that only succeeds in driving people from the profession.
Midwest is a rather large area . . . care to be more specific?
Oct 26, 20 2:39 pm ·
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axonapoplectic
That skill set you can go to a GC or owner and make a lot more money. I feel like a lot of firms fail to grasp that they aren’t competing with other firms for people with that skill set. My last office lost a whole bunch of our junior and middle management revit gurus to GCs because they refused to pay them a decent salary.
Oct 27, 20 11:47 am ·
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archanonymous
Yeah... I tried once to go to an owner, someone I had worked with on a past project. It was kind of sad but also reaffirming they said "Archanonymous, I would love to hire you, but I would hate for you to stop being an architect. The project that we did together was one of the best I've ever been involved in, so for that reason, I'm not considering your application." Maybe he was blowing smoke, but also probably correctly perceiving that I don't really want to stop being an architect, just want to be paid better.
I keep getting a PA/PM job posting on linkedin for a local firm. There are several minor red flags, but the big one is they say this person is responsible for stamping drawings, but they are somehow also reporting to a manager. If I’m stamping drawings then I have an ownership stake in the firm.
I've received messages like that before and I'll typically reply that the arrangement they are proposing is not permitted as per our architect's act and professional association. They never reply, but then I don't hear from that particular recruiter anymore, so... win win?
Not enough snark from you. Next time reply it sounds like they are applying to work for you in the given scenario and you'd be happy to review their portfolio?
Bench, I try to keep the snark to a minimum on Linkedin but once I could not contain myself when a local contractor contacted me for a license arch/sketch up modeler. I do not believe they appreciated my comments regarding their visible neck tatts on their profiles.
Oct 28, 20 8:43 am ·
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Bench
Neck tats are so 5 years ago. Down here its all about face tats now! (Really)
What's wrong with neck tats (or face tats)? Asking for a friend...
Oct 28, 20 12:27 pm ·
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Non Sequitur
Rando, I personally don't care what others consciously decide to do with their bodies. My neck tatt comment was in the context of a snarky LinkedIn response to a wanker contractor.
Roof leaking over back bedroom and front bedroom. Lovely 60 year old damp plaster, wallpaper coming away. Carpet is even wet in back bedroom, and the loft is very damp.
The property needs re-roofing. It has concrete tiles that have become porous and have moss growing inside as well as on the outer face. You can easily break bits off.
Informed agency so will have someone coming out. However, the landlord has said they might sell.
Ironically, since the ban of no DSS tenants (we’re not on any benefits) agencies now require 3x rent as net income for affordability checks. We don’t make that, based on local rent prices.
Oct 28, 20 7:15 am ·
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randomised
Jeez, you can't even rent a place as an architect based on two incomes...that's fucked up!
Oct 28, 20 12:26 pm ·
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Jaetten
Wife is full time student atm, so just my wage. Mind you I’m not qualified yet, but I’m on a good salary thankfully.
Oct 28, 20 1:38 pm ·
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randomised
Ah okay, I misinterpreted the "we", still sucks though. We wouldn't be able to rent our current apartment (edge of centre of Amsterdam) according to those rules either on just one salary and can't buy anything in the city either even with both our salaries.
Oct 28, 20 6:05 pm ·
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Jaetten
Roofer will be here this afternoon. Better half has started to strip away some more paper to see what the walls are like under - It's awful, and that's just the orange and green paint! Water streak marks all the way down the wall from ceiling.
Prices are ridiculous, I hear everywhere is seeing large price jumps to rent. I pity gen z, they're never going to own a home.
Oct 29, 20 9:03 am ·
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Non Sequitur
Jae, where is this? I am assuming in the UK if my memory is half-decent. 3x net income is rough... my mortgage costs + utilities + taxes don't even add up to 3x my household net.
Oct 29, 20 9:12 am ·
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Jaetten
Think you may have miss-read NS, net income needs to be 3x rent to pass affordability checks, although the avg rent is apparently 1100pcm and
avg wage is 1600pcm gross according to ONS.
Limiting my postings today in respect for Our Lord, the great sir Sean Connery. Also, but unrelated, I'm refinishing my kitchen cabinets outside... but still.
I'm a fan of his, and sorry to hear of his passing. But seriously, without that damned James Bond, what are the chances any of us would've ever heard of him? (This is part of my beef with people who enjoy tremendous fame then claim to hate the reason they're famous.)
I don't mean to be all negative, but it's anybody else really struggling lately in dealing with just how stupid the average person seems to be? I'm not the smartest guy in any room I walk into, but my sense is that the average person has never heard of the concept of "critical thinking," let alone practices it. I feel really frustrated that so much of my health and wealth are in the hands of morons I wouldn't trust to pump my gas.
Sorry, just very frustrated today. Time to take a breath and relax....
I share that lament. Thinking critically, challenging long-held assumptions, rejecting popular opinions... it's hard work. Many people aren't up for it, I believe.
This is true, and sad. Here is something that scares me: my husband spent some time working in an autobody shop many years ago, learning car body techniques. Granted, this wasn't mechanical repair, it was body work, but nevertheless: he said pretty much every person in the shop was high (on various things) *the entire workday* as they worked on cars. So you've got people taking cars apart, reassembling them, and sending you off to drive into traffic with a vehicle that had been pieced together (including things like door locks and fender mounts) by people who are so hopeless in their lives that they just get wasted all day long. It's both lack of education AND lack of hope, and it sucks. But it's the majority of people: if you have a masters degree you're in an 8% minority of USians.
I'd submit that education is no indicator of tendency toward critical thinking, much as we wish it were. Some of the most rigid, lazy minds I know hold lots of degrees. I think levels of curiosity and humility are better markers.
I disagree, citizen, for the simple reason that higher education leads to encountering different viewpoints, as well as having actual classes about this and similar subjects. I'm not suggesting that the uneducated are any more or less intelligent than anybody else, but the likelihood of being exposed to new / different ideas is absolutely higher for those with advanced schooling.
Nov 1, 20 11:57 pm ·
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bowling_ball
Sorry, I'm only speaking to your first sentence. I agree with the rest.
Nov 1, 20 11:58 pm ·
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citizen
No problem! Plenty of room for disagreement on this. And I'd agree that the capacity (skillset)is probably higher for educated folks, but that the tendency is probably more related to personality.
Nov 2, 20 12:29 am ·
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SneakyPete
I think the word lazy is much maligned. An intelligent laziness is efficient as fuck.
Citizen, I tend to find those who have pursued more education also often correlate to having both a broader curiosity and humility about the world ... much like what BB said.
Nov 2, 20 8:28 am ·
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Non Sequitur
Below-average amount of critical thinking is the only reliable universal constant I can rely on. More so than gravity, esp these days.
Nov 2, 20 9:11 am ·
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archanonymous
There's plenty of canuckistanis here, so I guess it isn't a USA-centric problem, but I can never decide whether to be frustrated with people who lack critical thinking skills, or the politicians, voters, and society that saw fit to systematically defund education to pre-emptively kneecap the populace's critical thinking skills so they are more susceptible to paranoia, propaganda, and agitation.
We should have warning labels on people like we do on food. Contains high levels of fooldum. And we should have basic vocabulary test to have to pass in order to have money and vote. And laminated pocket reference guides to logical fallacies.
It does make me glad I'm educated and capable of following a train of thought, able to foresee the outcome of events, analyze language, and make accurate observations and comparisons and speak about them.
Tintt, like scout merit badges + sash? Like, once you're crossed too deep into one dumb-ass area, you get dinged and have to add another critical thinking fail badge for all to see.
I'm sure there is a point of diminishing returns ... so let's focus on bringing up the lowest levels where the return is likely to be greater.
Nov 2, 20 12:51 pm ·
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proto
where's that carlin clip?
“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”
Less cynically, but no less devastating: NPR had a sociologist on about a week ago that stated that humans despite being able to process logically were social creatures and inevitably are influenced by their social groups, often overwhelming their educational or intellectual training in support of emotionally satisfying decisions. We are all kind of dumb that way...
Unrelated to anything (but slightly tangential to design), we bought a truck!
Gonna spend the winter DIY'ing a minimalist camper in the back, and once those forest roads are clear... well I'll be posting a whole lot less that's for sure.
I'm enjoying my new place in the very very small center of the venn diagram of truck owners and anti-car activists.
All I want is a truck for dirt roads and also to make it illegal to drive that truck in 90% of the city. Also no trucks should be bigger than this one. Nobody needs a truck that big unless its for industry, & then they can get a special license.
Nov 3, 20 10:40 am ·
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Wood Guy
If you care about mileage with a pickup you picked the wrong one. Toyotas are great but their regular engines guzzle gas. A newer full-size F150 or Ram gets well over 20 mpg, while you'll do well to get 15. In this case, size does not matter.
Nov 3, 20 12:15 pm ·
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SneakyPete
Getting over the big rocks and through the big puddles is important, though.
Nov 3, 20 1:02 pm ·
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tduds
I care more about size than MPG. Most F150s younger than I am are butt-ugly & oversized, and I just cringe at Dodge's recent tilt into what I see as fragile masculinity avatars. Not to mention the uptick in pedestrian deaths as truck hoods get stupidly aggressive...
In a similar vein, there was that Dattner salt shed in NY a few years back... love when these humble, necessary buildings are turned into exciting urban moments by good architects.
I've worked on some infrastructure projects and it's always funny that things that would be immediately dismissed as too expensive (like stainless steel, type 316 especially) are such a small blip on the budget compared to the other equipment/construction that no one even thinks twice about them. *In a lot of cases the 316 stainless is actually needed though because of corrosive environment, etc.
I remember one project in particular where I had a bit of a disagreement with the lead designer that type 316 was "needed" ... it's not in the particular project location and there are lots of buildings without it ... but he got it anyway because it increased the cost by fractions of a fraction of a percentage point that it didn't really matter and nobody but me actually questioned it.
Yep, EA, ours is in a marine environment (in addition to the potential releases from the plant process itself), so it was between 316 and PVDF. The 50-year LCCA showed close to a wash between the 2, so we got the stainless. We were actually pushing for copper, but the City didn't like the idea of green patina over time - they thought people would mistake the patina for leaking sewage.
Copper is a material on my bucket list. I've done one project with some very minimal roof repairs that needed copper flashing, and one or two with some interior elements that were made from copper (portion of a countertop, IIRC) ... but not one with a significant amount of copper yet.
It's saved you from the frustrating hell that is galvanic corrosion.
I fondly recall a lunch and learn where the Revere rep told us how copper these days wasn't patinating as quickly as it had in the old coal and steel mill days.
Nov 3, 20 7:22 pm ·
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mightyaa
I did a remodel to one once... Yep, lab quality materials/finishes and some interesting high tech spaces and consultants just for the monitoring of the city sewers. Even weird stuff like injectors to encapsulate the gas in the sewage throughout the infrastructure. No idea how complex the system was and the monitoring before this project. That's also when I met the guy with the worst job ever; He was a diver and 'cleared stoppages' in the tanks as well as emergency response if someone fell in. Probably not what he had in mind getting his diving certificate...
EA - I've done one building with a copper roof, a senior living for retired Catholic clergy. If anyone hasn't yet had the privilege, the Catholic Church has very deep pockets (or at least did before the sex abuse settlements).
Nov 4, 20 5:19 pm ·
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atelier nobody
mightyaa - We're just doing cladding and insulation replacement (original is all ACM) on the first egg-shaped digesters ever built in North America. We're doing another existing digester project where we're adding new piping - on that one, my only role as architect is to help the engineers route the new piping through the already crowded tunnels.
EA - I've done one building with a copper roof, a senior living for retired Catholic clergy. If anyone hasn't yet had the privilege, the Catholic Church has very deep pockets (or at least did before the sex abuse settlements).
Nov 4, 20 5:18 pm ·
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Non Sequitur
they still have deep pockets... hopefully deep enough to pay all the remaining millions of settlements.
Im too far north to offer support to anyone, in fact I should get my own emotional americain support and it should be someone from Hawaii. I think they need me to do a site visit there. Its going to be -18C tonight here and I dont have the plastic on my windows yet!
It went from +19c yesterday to -7c today. I'm okay with all of it, even down to -50 as long as I'm dressed properly. In fact, since moving to Hoth, I probably spend more time outdoors in the winter than summer.
Nov 9, 20 10:35 pm ·
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randomised
Love being outdoors in winter so much more than in summer, you can easily dress for the cold but dressing/undressing for the heat just doesn’t seem to work for me...
Well, I had 40mm of snow last tuesday... got the winter tires on and everything (app was previously scheduled, so just coincidence)... and now we've been in a 5 day stretch of +20c temp. Come on winter!
Nov 10, 20 11:01 am ·
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proto
@Chad I hope you were on a SAR training/mission to be out backpacking in -40F (really?!?)
My sister sent us a photo of my nephews and niece in what appears to be around 2.5 feet of snow as they were helping to dig out their grandparents' home.
proto - no I was out for fun. When you know what you're doing and have enough snow cover you can manage quite well. For winter backpacking the hard thing is moisture management. The idea that you can just put on more clothing to keep warm isn't true.
I'm (fortunately for weather and unfortunately for visiting) further than 9-10 hours from her and her husband's family, obviously on the southern side of the border. Where I grew up and my parents still live is closer. Ironically, even though she lives in a different country, she is one of the closest of my siblings to where we all grew up.
I knew a guy in my arch program at school from Edmonton, but that's not quite as far north as where you're at Almosthip, right?
Nov 10, 20 5:07 pm ·
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tduds
My takeaway from this thread is that Canada is too big.
B3ta it's already a libertarian commune according to that diagram from the Libertarians thread - it's just the bottom left 'green' version :)
Nov 11, 20 8:17 am ·
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Non Sequitur
Hip, those USA area figures from wiki include coastal/territorial waters while the Canadian ones does not. This note from the wiki is very interesting regarding the Brisitsh estimate of 9,525,067km2 and USA estimate of 9,833,517km2 :
3:The following two primary sources (non-mirrored) represent the range (min./max.) of estimates of China's and the United States' total areas. Both sources (1) exclude Taiwan from the area of China; (2) exclude China's coastal and territorial waters. However, the CIA World Factbook includes the United States coastal and territorial waters, while Encyclopædia Britannica excludes the United States coastal and territorial waters.
The CIA World Factbook lists China as fourth-largest country (after Russia, Canada and the United States) with a total area of 9,596,960 km2,[8] and the United States as the third-largest at 9,833,517 km2.[9]
Notably, Encyclopædia Britannica specifies the United States' area (excluding coastal and territorial waters) as 9,525,067 km2, which is less than either source's figure given for China's area.[7] Therefore, while it can be determined that China has a larger area excluding coastal and territorial waters, it is unclear which country has a larger area including coastal and territorial waters.
So yes, Canada is much bigger... and with much more empty space. Let's keep that space empty tho, it's nicer here without hoards of M'ericans messing it up.
I had suspicions that I was being too helpful but suspicions confirmed when after reviewing (not responding to) this weekends email onslaught, a lot of sub's PMs are starting to introduce me to their foreman as the superintendent. I really need to learn how to say "do your job" without feeling guilty.
Even the ancient garbage dumps have historical meaning Chad. Future archeologists will look at your retail shell projects and understand a lot about us and what we place value on.
i swear to god i saw a thing on tv that said gold finish bronze was the "in" thing now. like we're going back to that for real. i'm sure it was some sort of one-off life in the midwest thing that isn't a thing, but a little bit of me died inside.
I could get behind that, Donna! But in the Art Deco manner where the aluminum was cast and unadorned or finished just like "holy shit, look at this amazing new metal we just invented, let's use it everywhere."
Thread Central
Meant to be above!
this is cool https://how-old-is-this.house/...
That is cool! I'd love to see one for US cities.
would be easy with NYC's data, its noted but not a graphic yet as far as I know.
I’ve had to map it myself for NYC couple of years ago, merge the data spreadsheet with a GIS map, pretty fun stuff to play with though.
That is pretty cool. I know a lot of jurisdictions actually do have all the historic information. Once upon a time, I chaired the local Historic Board (south metro Denver) and part of our job was to conduct historic surveys (hire researchers to document every address in a set area). So we had original construction, architect/builder if known, and modifications as well as entire legal descriptions and historic covenants/easements and photographs on record (historic and current). It's available to the public through the local library and Historic Board liaison office. When I was in office, we had everything around our downtown and older (pre-1900's) neighborhoods. Basically, it was in part to assist us in the public education and trying to get historic designations.
Someone already did this for NYC based on open source data: http://bdon.org/building-age-nyc/. I'm waiting for them to link all of the old tax photos of buildings w/in a map, so you can just click on a property and see photos from the '40's and '80's.
looks great, but it doesn't seem to be working at all
my bad, you said it wasn't linked, I thought you could see the actual age by clicking
These stupid day long video conferences and people wonder why no one is getting anything done. Plus if you schedule a meeting anytime between 11 and 1 I’m going to be eating potato chips the whole time with my mic on and my camera off.
I have come to really appreciate people who do 30 minute video conferences with a hard stop.
I am a zoomthauritarian. Start exactly on time, no recaps for all the late fuckers, and call it "done" as soon as we stop discussing relevant items. I try to do 30 minutes but then the consultants moan it isn't enough time so I usually just schedule an hour then cut it off at 30.
I’d love to do this with municipalities. I have another probably 2-3 hour long zoom meeting with one tonight.
Y’all, the first day back in the office was a huge self esteem boost, both personally (lots of Holy shit you look great) and professionally (you’re really kicking ass lately and we’re hearing lots of praise).
You should add "kicking-ass" to your business card.
...and taking names.
Phase 1 : Kick ass
Phase 2: Take names
Phase 3: PROFFIT!
Phase 4: Prophet?
Yes but only after you make money.
And work with dictators.
Huzzah!
Knocked off one more ARE. Celebrated with some choice local craft beers. All this quarantine has been good for providing plenty of study time, so silver linings everywhere i guess? Work with what ya got.
Congrats. What is this free time thing you speak of? No kids, huh.
Accurate!
Congrats! Enjoy that free time!
Fun stuff. Cheers
Guys, over the last two weeks I've moved (downsized) from one beloved house to a new one, my work deadlines are off the charts, the fuckery of this country's political situation seriously makes me worried that a civil war is imminent, and likely deserved, I am under severe stress. But I'm checking in here today because:
It's abracadabra's birthday! The FOUNDER of TC completes another year around the sun, may we all be so lucky!
Orhan, you are the GOAT.
I just pulled my kid from public school / zoom school this morning. No more of that shitshow!
What happened?
Zoom school happened.
My wife teaches HS, and my kiddo started online preschool for an hour a day so we've reenacted this cartoon IRL. My kiddo is the second from the left, on the top row. My wife's class is mostly black rectangles though as no one turns on their camera.
(Cartoon Source)
inappropriately walked in front of the webcam again I gather?
My kid is second from the left top row too (2nd grade). But her camera is usually off. I got zoom lectured by the teacher yesterday for not making sure my kid was doing all the busy work. Then I overheard the teacher showing her tats to the kids.
https://www.oregonlive.com/education/2020/09/portland-middle-schoolers-getting-short-shrift-little-meaningful-instructional-time-parents-say.html
apparently some schools around here require the teachers to drive into the classroom and teach from there, since many just slacked off last semester. my 12 year is now actually occupied for school day hours, last semester, was done within 2 hours everyday...
Can't help but notice that my intake of Rage Against the Machine has increased exponentially over the last few months; my pessimism seems to track with the current ongoing political climate in America.
To curb the intake of RATM, can I advise some Urban Dance Squad?
Joe Cocker. Mellow enough to keep you happy with enough soul to keep you intersted.
Earth, Wind & Fire. As in the leadup to the 2008 election, and even moreso now, I find soul music by Black Americans to be the most soothing and hopeful for me.
I think you'd like this set, Donna: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGqg_ZzThDU
I think Bad Brains is the degree of separation between classic Soul Music and RATM.
Its crazy how relevant and current this still is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ga5ZbMMZ6Hk
/\ I'm learning nothing has changed since the mid 90's cultulrally in our world...20 hour day so far and still going...
4hrs to go!
yes, just did the 4hrs of sleep, based on my fit bit, I always hit 4 hours deep sleep and then the rest is light. I've always felt this way and accordingly have found all you really need is 4 hours of sleep. call it irony or just flat out denial and stupidity on my behalf, but the very philosophy I'm into lately (marc fisher, looks like this one was in a Dutchland hall (I understood 60% of intro)link) - TIME.
Over the last few years I get 4-5 hours of sleep more than half the time, and 7+ hours once a week at best. It's survivable but takes a toll. In the last ten years I've gone from looking ten years under my age to ten years over. Even light sleep is restful. I think the brain may only need a few hours to sort experiences into memory, but the body needs more time to recharge.
5hrs max, hard cap, per night, every day for me. maybe stretched to 6hr if I had a few Belgian triples the night before.
Wood Guy I think it's the opposite for me, in 4 hours of deep sleep the body is 100% and unless my brain feels warm (sometimes) its the light sleep in and out of dreams which does a good reset....NS get more sleep bruh or Belgian!
I did go out to the liquor store to score a few Belgians today...
neuce....twas my birthday week, someone got me a mini-keg! and my 70+ year old booklets of older docs on Jamestown history from like 350 years ago came in, smells musty, how did they build back then...I'm a total looser, drinking and cad'ing Colonial time wall sections!
My birthday was last week, wife got me/us a wine club subscription--we're learning to be wine snobs!
I'm glad to hear others' sleep habits, and relieved that I'm not the only one running short.
And HB, Wood Guy and D.D
I'm sorry, citizen, you know I like you but I find this hilarious. I did not hide your comment, but this is what I see when I look at the blog post.
LOL, Donna. I know you wouldn't do this-- and it is funny, you're right. And kind of sad. I never though I was prescient, but maybe I should look into this ability.
I posted to see if the apparently-very-brittle Mitch McEwen would exercise all that intellect in customary fashion. And she did not disappoint, unless you appreciate things like tolerance.
Citizen, that's awfully presumptive isn't it? What makes you think that bloggers have control over their blog posts? They don't. Not yet.
You posted that comment and when it got deleted you use it to make a sweeping statement about the blog author? That's a troll with no substance.
That's totally fair, I'll concede. I was presuming that Mitch McEwen deleted the comment in question (and a raft of others), which I don't know to be true. I based the assumption on comparative rarity of comment deletion around here, and the uproar over the practice at another particular thread.
If I'm wrong about that, I apologize to Mitch.
There seems to have been an increase in the deletion of comments that have no purpose other than to be inflammatory in Blogs and News articles.
Just here to confirm that bloggers have no moderating ability for the comments on their posts. The bloggers probably have a lot of pull in asking for comments to be moderated (I haven't tested this theory), but we can't do it ourselves.
That seems like it would disincentivise people from blogging here. Why put your ideas out there if someone can spam troll you, even if only for a few minutes before you can contact a moderator?
Cause the audience you get here is bigger and easier to access than you would likely get on your own without a fair bit of self-promotion
As I understand, it's being planned, but fires in socal.
/\ good. freedom of deletion! every blogger shall have this right.
sometimes, making a point requires not allowing others to make a point, etc...
^ sometimes, making a point, is not caring if others have a point to make.
you say something?
Hmmmm, could've sworn I heard something...;)
que? (hide this), hahaha. that is the pathetic trait of milllenials or Z's or whatever. the inability to take on challenging thought or disagreement in words without getting emotional...
DTL, it's one thing to take on challenging thought. It's another to spend time and and energy trying, for example, to figure out how many people can safely COVID-distance on a flat earth before someone falls off the edge. There's no benefit to arguing with someone whose "facts" aren't facts.
lmao, good one, well written. totally get that angle.
“apparently-very-brittle” etc. “tolerance” that actually says much more about the moderators than the authors, it’s the mods that apparently don’t allow certain comments when there is a non-white person involved. There is, in my experience, some kind of subconscious bias in that sense, being overprotective of non-whites, which is kind of degrading, people can stand up for themselves, but smothering discussions before they are even about to happen won’t allow that standing up, which are missed opportunities as even the topic or thread whatever would benefit from such on-topic discussions, in my opinion (obviously).
Very helpful to know that bloggers don't apparently do the silencing. (Again, my apologies to Mitch McEwen.)
I wonder if the selective comment deletion isn't just good, old-fashioned hospitality. They manage to snag an Ivy-affiliated blogger to post occasionally; they keep comments open, with fingers crossed for praise and agreement; then axe other comments to avoid discomfort that might scare off the author from any future posting.
It's the same principle as shutting the dog into a closed bedroom when fancy company comes over. And while annoying, certainly within bounds for a private organization. Just a theory...
citizen, I'm actually not sure why Mitch isn't at editor status. The blogs are more for students and for half-baked ideas by people like myself. I believe you've been on archinect as long as I have and you'll notice over the years it's always had this "progressive political" approach to architecture, usually failing and anyone having any success at it becomes a blogger or writer, not a bad thing, but I think this constant demand for a "progressive political" agenda is silly sometimes. also, why are the threads like this or politics central far more active than any other architecture thread (except guess the plan). its literally the same half dozen people that frequent the 'nect argueing amonst each other about essentially - bull shit....your last paragraph is correct. some of us regulars "embarass" the other regulars. some are even banned from thread central.
I consider my ideas at least two-thirds baked. Maybe even three-quarters.
I prefer my ideas medium-rare...
#notallmodsarethesame
#websiteeditorsaremodsonsteroids
That explains the ‘roid rage ;-)
.
I'm burning out. Running 13 projects at once is too much. My saving grace is that deadlines are staggered.
Still not doing much if any overtime but just one more project and I'll be forced to work 45-50 hours a week for the rest of the year.
I can't wait for my vacation in a couple of weeks.
:sigh: back to work.
I hear you. I have 15 "active" jobs, 9 open but that I don't have to do much for, and I'm currently courting 20 potential projects, many of which are likely to go to contract. They are all residential and many of them are small, but several are large renos or new homes. I work alone. Keeping track of 40+ clients and programs is proving to be too much, no surprise!
You know those machines that make and stretch saltwater taffy? I feel like that taffy. I get pulled apart in one direction and then the other, and another. And nobody even likes taffy.
What phases are your jobs in, that matters too.
Concept (4) , SD (4), , DD (2), CD (1), CA (2). I'm not counting the proposals. Everything is moving fast though so I expect at least six project Concept and SD phases to move to CD's by the end of the month.
WTF! Are you designing dog houses? That seems crazy fast!
Was that for WoodGuy or myself?
Sorry, I didn't mean to derail your thread, just commiserating. Even my smaller jobs take more than a month to go from SD to CD!
The jobs I'm referencing are smaller and tenant improvement. :(
Chad, My comment
that looks much meaner than I intended.... I’m amazed that you can get anyone to commit to a design so quickly
Stupid phone comment system!
Oh I just sit on the clients until they agree. One of the few benefits of being a large man (265 pounds). :)
think I’ll be buying another orchid tomorrow. I dare say they have become my favourite indoor plant.
I think I'm too old for this profession anymore. Another old person in my office and I had a serious dispute with two younger staff over how an RCP is supposed to look because apparently Revit doesn't show the underside of stairs?!?
We couldn't understand how the stairs and ceiling planes were resolving. I still don't know if the Revit wizards know how it resolves, even though it doesn't show, or if that connection just doesn't exist as something that needs to be designed. I suspect the latter.
OMG update: we can't put a door where we want one because the wall isn't included in the design option. Revit is a fucking nightmare. Using it is like someone driving into a lake because their map program said "Turn left now".
Donna, while design options are a mess in revit (and honestly should not really be used to make CD... but that's another story), you can turn on whatever you want in whatever view, just like in regular old CAD, if your junior staff knows how to work the graphic controls. Turning on the u/s of stairs is a single click.
edit. also, making a axo 3d view showing the ceiling to u/s stair is like 3 clicks. I'd say you need better junior staff but even the staff in my office will struggle with these commands. It's just not intuitive if all you do is rely on revit to do the "thinking".
Donna dont blame revit for the lack of ability of your junior staff.
Totally second what NS is saying above.
Would you rather go back to a paper atlas because some idiots can't make smart decisions when using a GPS? My biggest peeve with Revit is when the users throw their hands up and say "but Revit won't let me do that." What would you do back in CAD days? Draw the damn door in with lines. Why don't they do that now? Who knows.
Or firm leadership complaining about Revit and how it isn't as beautiful as a CAD (or god-forbid, hand) drawing, or the kids don't know how to use it. Please, if you want to go back to CAD so badly, double the staff on each project and try to find fee to pay for it. Oh and double your insurance too for the inevitable coordination issues that will pop up. (or moreso than projects using BIM correctly)
"design options ... should not ... be used to make CD" Amen. AMEN. I've heard nigtmares about people using them for multiple sets within a model. NO. Options, by their very definition, do NOT belong in a model being used for CDs.
I started my post with "I'm too old for this" because the kids use Revit in brilliant ways that are just speaking a language I don't know and don't want to take time to learn at this point in my life and career. I'm fine for them to take over; if using Revit to communicate my intentions is what's required every day to be an architect I'm fine to leave the profession to others. What's challenging, and pointless, is trying to PM between junior staff and senior designers while I'm speaking an archaic language in which you draw what you want to see, not just look at what the software shows you, and designers are trying to see what they have been accustomed to seeing for 5 decades, and the whole time I'm trying to moderate between the two the owner is constantly screaming in the background that they can't afford anything so everything we draw will be dumbed down anyway. I've said it before, and I'll say it over and over: give me a good residential kitchen remodel and I'm happy.
(Specific to archanonymous: my junior staff absolutely FORBID me from using lines. I could totally make the printed (pdf) sheet look exactly like I want it to if I was allowed to use lines. But they won't let me.)
"you draw what you want to see, not just look at what the software shows you"
I'm a well-known Revit devotee and I 100% agree with this statement. If the software isn't showing you what you want to see, that's on you (*the Architect, not "you" Donna) to fix. My job isn't to create a picture perfect Revit file, it's to communicate a design to a contractor. Whatever it takes to get there.
I'm a weird age where I learned CAD in the late 90's, was forced to hand draw (for which I'm thankful) in Undergrad, and watched the Revit shift in real time during the first five-ish years of my career. So I see both sides, but also I disagree frequently with the older AND the younger folks.
Call it middle-school. Neither old nor new.
Donna, revit does not give instant satisfaction like cad or sketchup does. It's more like "tell me what you want and come back in an hour".
I hear you, Donna. Couldn't decide whether to thumbs-up or thumbs-down Jr. staff not letting you use detail lines. :(
^I strongly discourage the use of detail lines in every situation unless it's a 1:5 scale drawing and we've got to show membrane tie-ins and what not... or mild graphic fixes. Never in lieu of families but... they are very useful in a pinch when you don't have time to draft it correctly or your staff is lazy.
NS - I agree and discourage it on my projects also, but if a junior shows me a drawing that is missing something and I ask why and the answer is "because revit" I'm going to lose my fuckin mind.
If they show me a drawing, we review it for actual design content, and then they say "oh btw, I couldn't get this door in in Revit so I drew it with detail lines - can you help me figure it out." I'll be happy as a stoned clam.
My fervent wish at this moment is to be a stoned clam. That sounds delightful.
The most frustrating thing about this, is the fact that most of the model components are easily manipulated, either through visibility settings, or through simple tricks, that have zero to with "dumb drafting lines".
What frustrates me is that I'm not a Revit user but I have worked with enough power users to have a pretty good Idea of what Revit can actually do.
Junior Staff: "Revit can't do that."
Me::"Yes, it can."
JS: "How?"
Me:...
With you on that one atelier nobody.
I typically keep my cool at the office but I recently lost it with a senior partner after I was told to check one particular revit project because "it was a good example of details". It was not. Not even close. Everything (and I'm not exaggerating) was a detail line with 99% of the model hidden.
People in my office find it completely acceptable to use generic walls for existing buildings, never thinking of course that there might be ducts penetrating them, or that structural may want to know the construction so they can determine if the joists, or new lintels will work...fuck! Oh, and let's draw exterior walls, of a multi-story building, on each level.....FFS.
I'm honestly pretty forgiving of alot of this stuff... as long as the work gets done. People have to come to the realization themselves that the fastest way to get it done... is to do it the right way (or the Revit way) they can't just be told that.
I'm also so freakin far off piste from what Revit is good at geometry-wise, that it takes a great deal of fuckery to get the projects done, at least for me. I'm no ZHA-level Revit user though either.
My other problem is that I wear two hats. When I'm wearing my QC hat, I couldn't care less how they get it done as long as the final PDF is right, but when I'm trying to integrate specifications and QTO with Revit, it matters A LOT that the model and details are done correctly.
Just tell junior staff to hit "F1" and "figure it out". I find everyone wants a youtube video or their hands held these days. It's software written by people, not rocket science. Like literally search what you want to do, eventually you'll learn the language. Software can conform to anything you want. With that said, sometimes I make $200+ hr hand sketching, sometimes I make that in CAD, sometimes in 3d modeling software, and rarely in Revit (doesn't make sense for most project we do)...whatever works.....
most brilliant moment I ever saw from an old fart -
"I can't do that in this software". - me
grabs sharpie, draws on screen says "that's what I want."- old fart
as an example. I was certified in Revit 12 years ago. 4 years later an Engineer wanted me to make a Revit file act and look AutoDesk's boiler plant software, not even sure that exists anymore.
Some manuf. had families that did what amounts to "4D" for simulation software..Taco or something...hit F1 a few times, a bit of googling, figured out we really needed the Plant Software (was like $10k) but faked it. he got the job, bing bang boom, installed the MEP crap. So Donna, just tell the junior staff to use F1 if they consider themselves intelligent ;)
Even an architect can fake MEP Bioler Plant design using F1...
the essential problem is junior employees who don't recognize what needs to be shown and take no initiative to figure it out. this problem is endemic and platform agnostic. it's the the product of laziness and ignorance, tempered by an unearned sense of self-satisfaction.
your problem Donna is simply not having enough confidence in the process to call out bullshit when someone presents it to you. Revit has some weird behavior in automatically hiding some elements in RCP views and the modeler should look up how that works and figure out a reasonable workaround.
Donna - I'd just tell your junior staff that it's not impossible in Revit, just difficult and the sooner they figure it out the better future projects will work. AKA - call them out on their BS and lack of understanding in Revit.
I hear you Chad, but also as a counterpoint: The problem isn't that junior staff don't know Revit. It's that they don't know how 55+yo architects are accustomed to reading/writing the language of drawings. That's not a failure on their part. Either it's my job to teach them how to draw it MY way, or it's MY job to learn how to speak their language, or it's just time for me to let things move along without me (which is, given the state of the world, preferable to me right now).
I'm very lucky at my current company to have junior staff who actually want to learn how we used to do it with pencils and 2D CAD, and to understand the details I sketch them instead of just copying them (and y'all better not be thinking of poaching any of them - I will fight you), but I still run up against "Revit can't do that."
...or counter-point to your counter-point, it's up to the revit users to learn how to bend BIM models to meet both expected graphic standards and maintain BIM flexibility.
Pro-tip, when someone says "Revit can't do that", 99% of the time, they are speaking from ignorance... unless you're asking your central model to make you a cup of coffee... if that's the case and your staff has figured it out, drop me line because I'm still brewing mine the old fashion way.
A variation on "Revit can't do that" is "I don't have time to figure out how to make Revit do that and still meet the deadline," which I at least have some sympathy for.
What Non said.
Donna, feel free to send me a PM if you have any questions about what Revit can do. If I can help I will. You got this!
Oh, I am one for; STOP FUCKING AROUND WITH THE 3D, WE HAVE CD's DUE - #TOFUCKINGMORROW!
people at my office are starting to draw site plans in Revit and coordinating that model with civil. It's horrible, but I get that it's on me to adapt rather forcing my opinions on them. As a side note, there are a handful of comments older people say to those producing the drawings that just make them look old. Like, complaining about line weights while completely missing the really stupid shit that makes the project unbuildable. I'm thinking of making bingo cards, but I'm scared to find out if I'm one of the old people or young people.
lineweights is a lost cause. i remember being exasperated by the inevitable diversion during crits to listen to some crank talking about lineweights in near mystical reverence for their ability to communicate an essence we were failing to express。while even then publications like detail or el croquis present everything in flat black and white without much differentiation of lineweights.
curt, I'm not old but I will crucify someone on improper line weights without a second's thought. Good drawing habits show that the staff cares about the quality of their work and makes me feel more confident that because of this care, there is "less" unbuildable shit peppered everywhere in the drawing set. Side note, we still have not coordinate a site plan with civil. So far it's been CAD import to detail lines because who needs a civil headache when I have line weights to slaughter.
Lineweights are important, but spending 90% of a QA review on lineweights while overlooking obvious code violations is a problem. I may or may not be speaking from experience.
tduds, code stuff and other important bits are not overlooked... at least in my case, since I hammer those out early in the CD process. Near the end, what is left is cleaning up the drawings to meet standards and legibility, at least on projects that I'm on. Don't know what the B and C teams are up to tho.
I'm all for a good set of drawings, but if your schedule is fucked and you don't have adequate staff something has to give. My point is "lineweights" becomes a crutch for people who clearly have no idea what they're doing, but they need to say something so it looks like they're still relevant. There are things in a set of documents that are more important. Figure that stuff out first. Like make sure the specs are coordinated with the drawings, then you can talk about lineweights.
Bingo, curt. That was the essence of my snarky comment above.
Look at you with all your QA time and staff pool consisting of more people than just yourselves.
Eddie van Halen is dead. I'm sad.
My mom texted me this information before the news broke. Gee mom how did you know?
Enough already, 2020--you win. 'Eruption' came out 1978. Eddie was a master.
2020 is a year that will be taught in history class, for sure. RIP Eddie.
Only 65, a damn shame.
Sad face.
Now, the 1980s are officially over. VH was a big part of the soundtrack in studio all those late nights.
Goddamnit Edward!
fuckin' Dutch!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9r-NxuYszg
DTL.DWG: isn't that a position in the Kama Sutra? Or maybe the Joy of Sex... I can't remember.
he also played his guitar intentionally out of tune.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Best movie theme of the decade.
except he didn't write that....
I feel like at least 30% of my TC posts are me kvetching about my job while simultaneously extolling the virtues of working for a "top office" as only someone who truly has Stockholm syndrome can.
Got 3 interviews lined up this week, and really hoping that at least one works out and at the last minute I don't trot out the "thanks, but I don't think I'd be a great fit at your firm" line that torpedoed my last round of interviews. Realizing it is just so hard for me to break out of the routine, the safety I know (even if it is slowly killing me from stress), and the perceived "importance" of working at a "top office."
i was in a similar position- the fear will evaporate quickly, and you'll realize exactly how miserable you were once you're surrounded by sane, normal people. quality of life will go way up, and you'll never look back. as you say, that importance is only perceived.
Ditto to the above. No job, office, position is so important that you need to sacrifice yourself for.
Ditto, ditto. I was in a position like yours AA. The only think was I wasn't brave enough to leave - it took the 2008 recession and my layoff to realize it wasn't worth it. Now I work to live and balance my life much better. I've had interviews and discussions with firms that wonder why I'm not at a bigger firm in a bigger city doing bigger, better projects. I tell them there is more to my life than architecture.
Having my first real deadline coming up at my new job of one month...stress levels are rising and sleep decreasing, God I hate this part of the job.
beer.
always jealous of my friends (basically everyone else) who don't operate in such a neurotic deadline schedule.
I have a story from my early career that might help you feel a little better - but I am too damn busy with my own deadlines to type it out.
First deadline passed rather well, don’t know why I always get so worked up about it, I tell myself afterwards...but with the next deadline approaching I will probably forget that realisation coming Monday. For now it’s weekend and celebrating the 1st birthday of my kiddo!
Just finished a few concept images for a proposal meeting today with a client. Had an 11 hour day yesterday (for me that's a long day) finishing up the drawings.
Hopefully we get the work. If not I wasted 18 hours of my time.
Well the perspective clients ghosted us. We had a meeting set up but they were a no show.
Wow, Chad, that's awful. No contact at all? I can't fathom doing that to someone.
They came in three weeks ago and wanted to see some conceptual stuff next time they where in town. I started the conceptual design stuff then stopped after they never got back to the partner they where in contact with about when they would be back in town. A week ago they finally got back to us and set the meeting up for today. On Monday they called to see we could do a zoom meeting yesterday. We where all already booked.. Partner contacted them right away (voicemail and email) and told them we where already booked but provided alternative times and days for a zoom meeting. Partner kept calling and emailing to verify they where still coming today. Never heard a a thing.
.
Made so much more egregious by the frequent contact beforehand, and willingness to accommodate them. Now where's my ball peen hammer...?
Did anyone do the legwork to sniff out whether they were legit to begin with?
The partner did, yes. I was leery as it's a developer and contractor partnership. The clients where also in the news for just buying land for the development (around 11 acers) from the city.
Maybe they will still show eventually, too busy buying land?
No idea. The land purchase was finalized within a week of our first meeting. Personally I don't care if they come back. Unless they have a good reason for the ghosting I wouldn't want to work with people who are this irresponsible and non responsive. I've told the partners so.
Happy crazy canuck Thanksgiving!
blame canada!
Hear, hear! How many kilos is that turkey this year?
Canadians have thanksgiving? I thought you where all a bunch of socialist heathens with great health care and exquisite manners?
Chad, the only logical reason I have to take up arms (as permitted under the canadian firearms act) is to protect my birth right to stuff my face full of pumpkin pie on the 2nd weekend of october. Insert Braveheart style war cry.
They may take our lives, but they'll never take our PIE!
Architecture in the limelight it seems.
Yikes that's so gross. Ugh.
That's reprehensible and despicable.
must be a profitable enterprise https://archinect.com/news/art...
‘It’s a write off!’ https://youtu.be/XEL65gywwHQ
Long profile of Zumthor & the LACMA debacle in this week's New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/maga...
It's always enjoyable to read good writing about architecture in non-architectural publications. Refreshing to get outside the design bubble and listen to how normal folks interpret our lives & livelihood.
I have to say, this actually made me think a bit less of Zumthor.
great article thanks. totally fascinating and gives me a better understanding why he does what he does. why does it degrade your view of zumthor? he sounds exactly as obdurate and willful as i imagined. like jorn utzon, willing to go out fighting. and probably in the end right on the big ideas.
Ugh, SO MANY thoughts on that tduds.
Zumthor certainly sounds traumatized by his childhood but then also hasn't grown past it at all?
I kept going back and forth, cheering this: "His starchitect colleagues were faxing it in from nine time zones away. So much for regionalism." then rolling my eyes hard at this “ 'My colleagues are so conceited, they don’t ask me, ‘What do you think? This is your bath.’ ” Like jeez man talk about conceited?!
Images of Kolumba make me weepy with joy. Bruder Klaus hits me SO HARD in its making, but then you hear him say his first girlfriend's pickup line on him was "You look alienated" and ugh I want to vomit.
I feel like I'm sick to death of old men making "masterpieces". Then I think of Scarpa's Castelvecchio and Saarinen's MIT Chapel and so many other deeply moving, beautiful places - buildings - and I don't want to live in a world without them.
.
"TODAY'S SPECIAL: Brad Pitt, $6.99/lb."
That’s pretty cheap for Brad Pitt. Must be running out of work.
That's why it's a special, Josh.
I dunno, at 160 lbs. it's still a steep price.
How much per inch? Hey-oh.
This is a family show, NS.
real people are complex, messy, and often frustrating. doesn't invalidate their lives or work.
This is true, midlander. I guess I’m not saying I’m tired of Zumthor’s work, but I am tired of fawning articles about “iconoclastic” old white men. They have their successes, and should bask in them, but, let’s look at younger people and possibilities more.
Donna’s Friendly Store is usually very well stocked but some days doesn’t have any fucks to either sell or give.
Doubtful anyone here picked up the location of the shop (OLG is a clue) but it's actually a few blocks north of my office. I saw the pic on social a while back and saved it for a rainy monday.
but is it the French version of OLG! (L'GdLd'O ?)
All I saw when reading that article was Zumthor faxing his LACMA revisions from 9 time zones away!
“Is that dark blotch really it?”
According to that sign, Donna, you look amazing for your age! What's your secret? ;o]
this was kind of fun. Like, when Doom scrolling was less doom
Adorable.
For someone with no formal education on the subject, her observations are quite good.
Little one woke up all feverish... going for testing this morning. Surprised we lasted this long without the need for testing.
hope it's just a cold or something benign, hang in there!
Best of luck with the test
Aw, hang in there Non, I hope it's all okay.
Ah crap Non, fingers crossed for a negative result! Here’s some Pearl Jam: https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=satY_ofTNo4
my kid got a cold in college, tested negative, good luck.
Thanks gang. Liltle one's been asleep since he came back from test centre. Less than 1.5hr round trip + wait. Results in 24-48hr.
Hoping for the best for Little Sequitur.
Omni Sequitur
Test results came back negative (email at 4am). Still waiting on wife's. I'm still in tip-top shape tho... but that's probably because I'm almost entirely built of day-old cold black coffee.
and belgium beer. it's sure proof.
Good news so far, NS. Fingers crossed for the second result. And, correct: never underestimate the awesome power of old coffee and skepticism infused with middle-aged weariness. It's like Superman's underwear.
We’re all in the clear now and for the record, I’m not middle age. Arg. I’ll have a Belgian double to celebrate.
is Arg - Argentinian! fuck you! man. I liked you. Maradona is bullshit. Tony Schumacher and Lothar Matthäus kicked your arse...I'm glad you're family is OK, but we can not have a civil conversation. You're fuckin' Argintenian bullshit...Brazil doesn't even like you and between the motherland and Brazil we have real futball players.....oh wait, that was an arghhhh...in English bruh, I realize you Canadians are backwoods English with perverse French influences, but like the downplayed I'm cranky arg is arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.......where shall I send the case of Belgium Peace Beer?
Yes, please send me that Belgian beer case. I’ll hold off my attack beavers for now. Arghhhhhhhh.
so you're a true Canuck. PM me bruh, seriously I'll send you a beer (kids are intense man when shit comes up). I'm hoping to score the anti-New England Patriots pack from the source....but what about the badgers?
OMFG Revit makes my professional life miserable. I don't ever want to have to use it again.
For the right price, I'll use it for you.
I'd have quit architecture by now without it.
Donna, it’s because you have not installed the bourbon plugin.
it's a bit like school again, an extended period of frustration and anger, followed by resigned acceptance. in 2 years you won't understand why anyone complains about it.
but secretly and never ever around a bim manager you will wonder if there could be a better way...
i'm quite confident there's a better way. just waiting on those robots..
What does one have to do to get deleted around here?!?!
Just going to rant before I get deleted (please). I want to be e·phem·er·al, like as per Rem Koolhass the project that mies van der rohe
The House That Made Mies
Did you ever get a tatooo? I never did, I knew I would hate it in three (3) weeks!
hic et nunc
hic et nunc
You're the currency in the real.
Architecture is NOW ephermeral. Maybe you wanted to be an architect to do something solid, something timely, you know something meaningful and permanent like a Pyramid...nah...it's just currency man, currency.
Rant: My teenage daughter doesn't believe me that she has a cyber perv old man stalker. I show her the weird coincidences between my websites and hers and then out of nowhere, she has an account on soundcloud. she's surprised I have one. of course I have one, that's where music was cool for a bit or maybe it is again now that teenagers are liking music they don't want their parents to see.
I see her likes - Insane Clown Posse and some bad rap music pervert subjagating wimmin shit, yada yada...she's in deep shit with me.
Here's the difference!
.. when I was sneaking around Ice-T's OG tape in my walkman (i've linked it for the kids) it was just me and Ice-T. It was me and my world and some shit that had an opinion on it. It was not some dude (and I'm certain an old man) 1.5 hours away (yes we can trace people on the internet) or maybe its foreign agents given her Edgy Russian music selection - icepeak.
When I was a kid and had issues with society and my parents and I rebelled there weren't any weird random perverts offering helping hands, it was me and then I would go to my parents and say - I hate all your fundamentalist religious bullshit and we'd talk. No different here for the most part (my daughter is a mini me) but there wasn't some perv who likes my little pony along for the ride (and I'll find you!)...these fucking peeps exist -wormhole
Rant over.
Now delete me or just email me these guy's addresses.
- toodles
ha, I forgot the point - Modernism is fleeting (ephemeral). hence post - modernism. Most humans aren't modern....see works by Albert Camus, and a timely one
Had Ice-T’s OG on tape too! Ah the memories, all the depressed kids walking around impersonating Kurt Cobain, me pretending to be a gangster...good times!
“ What does one have to do to get deleted around here?!?!”
Are you contemplating forum suicide by moderator? You could also just autodelete and spare them a lifelong trauma!
No UDS reference? I’m confused. Also, I’ll put my teenage bleached hair, baggy jeans, plaid jacket and wallet chain up against your IceT any day.
ranomized, i think it's a moon cycle thing. he just likes to get deleted every few months.
Haha, I’m sure there’s an UDS song for that Non...my musical upbringing was quite different though, from MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice straight to Tim Dog and Ice-T, from there onto Bodycount back to Jimi Hendrix and forward to Suicide in Seattle with a side of Britpop and experimental Radiohead to electronic music and big beat back to Jacques Brel, post-punk and post-colonial African stuff. Very eclectic and random, some would say all over the place, basically how I drink my coffee or eat my eggs and connected to life events and experiences that inform my musical preferences...
Had both Brel and Pearljam at my wedding ceremony. Check-mate.
Bet you got married wearing a flannel shirt and a turtleneck then!
more observations on reality.
someone at Mutual Liberty Insurance liked this movie
Let's get tacos vs. Let's go get a taco.
I dreamed I was back in arch studio last night. They sent me to "detention" for being oppositional. hahaha
Awesome! Was it like The Breakfast Club? If so, which one were you? (Anthony Michael Hall here.)
uhh Bender.
It's funny, tintt, because that's one of my recurring stress dreams: finally showing up to studio in the 4th week, once everyone else is busy and well underway on projects. No detention, just the anxiety of being so far behind. I dream this several times a year.
Detention in my dream was more like a therapist's office. They told me I was "OK" and to not listen to the oppressors. I was like, I'm NOT Ok (oppositional) and refused to go back to studio.
citizen I have the same dream several times a year. Every time everyone else is so far along and I'm screaming at myself "Why did you fuck around the whole semester and not work on this?!?!"
My recurring nightmare is that I get to graduation week and they are like "ohhh, you didn't satisfy your math requirements, you'll have to stay another year to take calculus."
me too! which is particularly inexplicable because I was an excellent student in math.
My usual dream is: it's finals week and I suddenly remember a class I haven't actually been to since the first week of the semester. I actually had something sort of like this happen in real life. I didn't forget I had the class, but I was drinking a LOT that quarter and it was an 8:00 AM class, so I basically blew it off, but couldn't quite shake my Presbyterian roots so I showed up for the review week and the final...it was the only time I ever got an honest-to-Pete "F" in any class.
sorta had something very similar while still in school. I audited many elective classes and signed up for some but on occasion, dropped them when I realized the final req (like a giant research essay) would conflict with my arch degree deadlines. I did not need the elective credits but still took one or 2 per semester just because. Anyways, recurring dream during my undergrad was always panic when I realized I had a day or so to finish that paper from a long-dropped class. Studio habits at the the time certainly did not help.
I routinely had dreams where I forgot to attend a physics class until the middle of the semester when I saw my grade was an F. Backstory is that I had signed up for the class IRL but dropped it pretty quickly because it wasn't going to work with my schedule that semester ... but for some reason it stuck in my mind as a responsibility I wasn't fulfilling to haunt my dreams. Even in later years when I had completed the science requirement with another course, I'd still have the dream that I had forgotten to attend this physics class.
I have the recurring dream about forgetting to go to physics class too.
I actually didn't go to physics class. I guess that means I lived your dream.
Gaaah! Physics class in 1st year... so dull. And difficult, for me. It was the first time I realized in my entire schooling that I didn't have to go to class, and nobody would care or say anything. So I rarely went. What freedom! Then came the D, and I was mortified. I humiliated myself in the instructor's office trying to explain something (acceleration, maybe?) in a feeble attempt to save my grade. No dice.
Fast forward about 15 years and I'm back on campus in the same building. (The firm had been hired for renovations.) I walk by and see him sitting in that same office. Rather than stroll down memory lane, I just smiled and kept moving.
My dad was a physics teacher so I think I had some inert ability cause somehow I felt confused all those semesters but ended up ok. Glad I studied it unlike that slacker curtkram. :)
(edit to add, Freudian slip was not intended)
My new realization is that I can't be bothered with staff who honestly don't give a fuck about how construction works. Having spent a few frustrating days trying, and failing, to convince one of the "designers" that you can't just make up shit on working drawings. Double the frustration level when those drawings are super duper basic like stud size and location of grade or structural levels. No, I'm not asking the client to demo half that existing block wall + lintel just because your arbitrary magical window trim feature won't fit.
Give me one hour in the evening and a well chosen craft beer and I'll do what you tried to do over 2 days. /rant
apparently you can be bothered about that
perhaps poor choice of words. should have written "have no patience for".
We had one of those types. She no longer works here.
I agree with your larger point, but simultaneously think all the fun in doing CD's is making shit up on working drawings!
At least assuming you are making up fun details that there isn't a ton of precedent or standardization for.
I couldn't be a teacher. I don't have the temperament. I have had to have that 'talk' with some that I'm actually paying for their ability to think instead of just their time.
exactly archanonymous, we are not just picking things from a catalogue of existing solutions and products, where's the fun in that, don't need to study very long to do that...
My last firm had a designer like that. They fired the Nonsequiter of the office when those problems kept arising in CA. I left shortly after. Let me know real fast management was just as clueless.
side note, It's actually one of my responsibilities to train staff in all sorts of things since I'm A. the youngest in the management circle, 2. the most well-rounded in terms of graphics, CD, CA and software knowledge, and iii. the most disciplined and consistent. So I've changed my focus on this one person and broke tasks down into simpler steps with plenty of examples/explanations.
I see what you did there...... A. 2. iii. Very disciplined and consistent.... :P
Good going, NS. Frustrating at times, I'm sure. But if it's part of the job description, so be it. And if the youngster holds up their end of the bargain, could be a satisfying (if not quick) outcome.
Citizen, this person is 4 years older than me.
I've been in a similar situation a couple years ago.... Me: late 30s, climbing into management. Tech: Early 50s, never made any career advancement but refused to put in the work (or even ASK) to be given more responsibility. Got frustrated at having to take orders from somebody with two decades less experience. He started fucking the dog so we let him go. Nice guy but it's a team effort, and if you don't want to play the game, get off the field.
Got it, NS. And bummer, yes.
This is extra-curricular, but I wonder if a visit to a job site would help. I'll never forget the first time I walked a project in framing that I had done the CDs for. It literally opened a new world of understanding-- as it did/does for most of us, I'd imagine. If someone's never actually seen an actual control joint, or a double top plate, or a joist hanger, or a jamb shimmed into an opening, etc, all those funny lines remain completely abstract.
Access to site is a big plus. Few get any CA experience and too many never leave the comfort of their expensive office chair.
OR continuing ed reqt got halved to 12hrs due to the pandemic -- that ought to ease the year end scramble for HSW's :)
My deadline was extend 6 months and they removed the carry over cap. I’ve already filled in enough to complete the next 2y cycle.
They extended ours by 6 months as well, but the start date of the next window wasn't changed, so now there's 6 months of having to choose which courses go where. And I don't think most people have figured that out yet, and are in for a big surprise in a couple years.
That was a response to NS and proto. Something fucked up, posting from my phone
Today I learn how to use Design Options in Revit. Kill me now. Or at least give me bourbon to get going early.
I'll wait for the rant in about 45min.
10 years of revit under my belt. Never once used design options. Better to start a seperate file .
I've used design options once, it was a waste of time.
Much better to overlay a bunch of detail lines on a base plan, then sketch the design options, then draw what you want in Revit once.
Options are great if you use them in a very specific way, and an absolute nightmare if you don't. Most people I've encountered who use Options don't use them in that specific way.
Design Options are a tool meant for use during SD and then jettisoned during DD. They don't play well with CDs, and they don't play well with people who don't organize their model well.
I hate filing drawers, because when I put everything in one folder in the back, I can't get to my stuff without removing the drawer, and what are all of these other folders for, anyhow?!
Almosthip, don't take that personally, the thumbs down is for the sentiment, not the poster. The moment anyone starts creating multiple models for a workshared project the wheels start to come off.
why are we worksharing in DD stage? Once a concept is decided on there would only be one file, with worksets for all.
wwwwhat?
Worksharing allows multiple staff members within an office to work simultaneously in one central file without conflict. Without this it would limit work to one user per file.
Any time you create orphan files with options in them, someone has to manually cut and paste them together, leading to unnecessary rework and updating.
Design Options are fine, as long as you follow some simple guidelines.
If you are forcing views to show a specific (non-primary) option, you're probably making things complicated, either because the person above you on the totem pole doesn't know (or care) about how the process works (Revit or not, running multiple competing ideas in the design for longer than it takes to choose one is a terrible idea) or you don't.
If you leave DOs in the file after a decision has been made, you're making it harder on yourself.
If you try to use multiple sets of options within the same area, you're setting yourself up for failure, as elements can't be divided between option sets.
Etc.
It's just like ANY tool, it has its use, and the old "when all you're used to using is a hammer, all you see are nails" adage applies.
Oh, and before anyone accuses me of being some Revit apologist, I hate it, I just hate it less than all of the other options. When I work with people who cannot figure out Design Options after a few days I shudder to think how bad their work would likely be in CAD, where they would have to remember to coordinate between drawings and update their xrefs etc etc etc.
Donna, this isn't aimed at you, I would bet much money that youll pick it up in no time. You'll probably still hate it, but you'll get it.
IDK, I just must work in a very small office but we only need one person to do design development of a model. Multiple hands don't touch our models till they go to CD. Central models are not created until the floor plan and elevations are set.
My first step is to set up a central model and worksets. Nothing gets drawn, modeled, summoned, killed, unless it's got a workset ready.
Sounds like you work in a very small office, indeed. Even if I was a sole prop, I'd use worksharing if I had even a single staff member.
My two hours of Design Options went well, and I dutifully accepted the primary and deleted the option as soon as the discussion was through. I have a rockstar younger person in the office who walked me through doing it properly. I'm able to see the value in Revit, just get so frustrated by it daily. Hourly, even. But I AM enjoying little bits of its utility. That said....I still don't really understand WTF a workset is.
Donna - think of it like a layer. Or, I guess, a layer group. We use different Worksets for different scopes - Envelope, Core, Structure, Interior, M/E/P, etc. each has a workset. It makes whole scopes easy to toggle on & off, and it's easier for people to simultaneously own different pieces of the project - skin, core, unit layouts, and so on, without stepping on each other's toes.
As a background, back in the day there was no way multiple people could work in one file without issue. Worksets were created so you could "borrow" the workset and the software would know it was yours, not letting anyone else change the elements on it to avoid errors. This was set up manually, and had to be kept manually. Eventually they created the tech to do element based ad hoc worksharing, which made the NEED for worksets moot. At this point many large firms had instituted worksharing into their workflows and so it was left in. Now folks use it to lower PC resource utilization (by unloading heavy worksets), to subdivide linked portions, and (against best practice advice) for visibility control.
Worksets come in handy when you're doing hospitals, or heavy multi-disciplinary stuff. Medical; gas, sharps, kitchen, MEP.....are terribly burdensome.
just because revit is the best we have now, doesn't mean it's the best possible solution, or that it's a particularity enjoyable piece of software to use. in other words it's both possible to recognize that revit does some pretty great things, but that also it's not intuitive or user-friendly, which is a problem. the amount of technological bullshit one has to wade through to make a drawing, compared to the old days, is mind-numbing. there has to be a better way eventually.
it's apples to oranges, but i still think rhino is the best architecture software.. i still enjoy time spent on it, and it feels more appropriate for a field that is so dependent on the visual.
You can all give me a thumbs down but Im literally the only person in my department. The lone A in a land of engineers, until I need SME I really don't see a need to have a central file.
I'm not trying to tell you how to work.
You don’t have to tell me twice to give you a thumbs down.
Some form of tractor racing today between Carsington Reservoir and Turnditch. Clocked them at 55mph, which is impressive as the both had tipper trailers filled with rubble and slick tyres in the wet.
I’ve lost 80 lbs from my highest weight so far.
Decent way to start off a Monday
Good job!
whadya do Josh, cut off a leg?
I kid, i kid. Congratulations!
Take my thumbs up.
Replaced all my bones with carbon fiber. Skin is now a 60 mil vapor barrier.
careful with the Carbon-er
"Get Mings in here! We need some abs at that site meeting, pronto!"
I posthumously award you 'winner of the internet' for yesterday.
RIP Chad.
Welp, two of my three interviews went really well, but when it came time to hammer out the other bits, both offers fell apart.
You want me to have 10+ years experience, a license, have led large projects, Revit proficient, rendering and modeling proficient, know how to do specs, ca, project management, and more, and you're going to pay me all of $75k a year? Fuck right off.
this profession is broken.
curious- what location/market were you looking in?
a large midwestern US city.
I’ve heard this from others lately too. Firms are using the pandemic to really lowball offers at the moment. Such a race to the bottom mentality that only succeeds in driving people from the profession.
Midwest is a rather large area . . . care to be more specific?
That skill set you can go to a GC or owner and make a lot more money. I feel like a lot of firms fail to grasp that they aren’t competing with other firms for people with that skill set. My last office lost a whole bunch of our junior and middle management revit gurus to GCs because they refused to pay them a decent salary.
Yeah... I tried once to go to an owner, someone I had worked with on a past project. It was kind of sad but also reaffirming they said "Archanonymous, I would love to hire you, but I would hate for you to stop being an architect. The project that we did together was one of the best I've ever been involved in, so for that reason, I'm not considering your application." Maybe he was blowing smoke, but also probably correctly perceiving that I don't really want to stop being an architect, just want to be paid better.
I keep getting a PA/PM job posting on linkedin for a local firm. There are several minor red flags, but the big one is they say this person is responsible for stamping drawings, but they are somehow also reporting to a manager. If I’m stamping drawings then I have an ownership stake in the firm.
I've received messages like that before and I'll typically reply that the arrangement they are proposing is not permitted as per our architect's act and professional association. They never reply, but then I don't hear from that particular recruiter anymore, so... win win?
Not enough snark from you. Next time reply it sounds like they are applying to work for you in the given scenario and you'd be happy to review their portfolio?
Bench, I try to keep the snark to a minimum on Linkedin but once I could not contain myself when a local contractor contacted me for a license arch/sketch up modeler. I do not believe they appreciated my comments regarding their visible neck tatts on their profiles.
Neck tats are so 5 years ago. Down here its all about face tats now! (Really)
What's wrong with neck tats (or face tats)? Asking for a friend...
Rando, I personally don't care what others consciously decide to do with their bodies. My neck tatt comment was in the context of a snarky LinkedIn response to a wanker contractor.
I don’t care either, was only kidding. Will tell my friend the full face tat will look badass and will get him all the ass (f/m/x) he’d ever want...
Roof leaking over back bedroom and front bedroom. Lovely 60 year old damp plaster, wallpaper coming away. Carpet is even wet in back bedroom, and the loft is very damp.
The property needs re-roofing. It has concrete tiles that have become porous and have moss growing inside as well as on the outer face. You can easily break bits off.
Informed agency so will have someone coming out. However, the landlord has said they might sell.
Ironically, since the ban of no DSS tenants (we’re not on any benefits) agencies now require 3x rent as net income for affordability checks. We don’t make that, based on local rent prices.
Jeez, you can't even rent a place as an architect based on two incomes...that's fucked up!
Wife is full time student atm, so just my wage. Mind you I’m not qualified yet, but I’m on a good salary thankfully.
Ah okay, I misinterpreted the "we", still sucks though. We wouldn't be able to rent our current apartment (edge of centre of Amsterdam) according to those rules either on just one salary and can't buy anything in the city either even with both our salaries.
Roofer will be here this afternoon. Better half has started to strip away some more paper to see what the walls are like under - It's awful, and that's just the orange and green paint! Water streak marks all the way down the wall from ceiling.
Prices are ridiculous, I hear everywhere is seeing large price jumps to rent. I pity gen z, they're never going to own a home.
Jae, where is this? I am assuming in the UK if my memory is half-decent. 3x net income is rough... my mortgage costs + utilities + taxes don't even add up to 3x my household net.
Think you may have miss-read NS, net income needs to be 3x rent to pass affordability checks, although the avg rent is apparently 1100pcm and avg wage is 1600pcm gross according to ONS.
There needs to be a Shitty Clients of Architecture list.
It’s been a week.
Oh I hear you on that!
What's up with all the necro-posting today? Even more regular users are bringing up old posts it seems.
I think it's more likely that spammers necro, and regulars respond, then the spammers get their posts deleted.
Limiting my postings today in respect for Our Lord, the great sir Sean Connery. Also, but unrelated, I'm refinishing my kitchen cabinets outside... but still.
I'm a fan of his, and sorry to hear of his passing. But seriously, without that damned James Bond, what are the chances any of us would've ever heard of him? (This is part of my beef with people who enjoy tremendous fame then claim to hate the reason they're famous.)
shaken not stirred, but he's
his greatest role.... https://youtu.be/BBSePg2HBQk
I really enjoyed him in the third Indiana Jones movie.
The Last Word
https://youtu.be/mzXkbJwrN38
I don't mean to be all negative, but it's anybody else really struggling lately in dealing with just how stupid the average person seems to be? I'm not the smartest guy in any room I walk into, but my sense is that the average person has never heard of the concept of "critical thinking," let alone practices it. I feel really frustrated that so much of my health and wealth are in the hands of morons I wouldn't trust to pump my gas.
Sorry, just very frustrated today. Time to take a breath and relax....
I share that lament. Thinking critically, challenging long-held assumptions, rejecting popular opinions... it's hard work. Many people aren't up for it, I believe.
This is true, and sad. Here is something that scares me: my husband spent some time working in an autobody shop many years ago, learning car body techniques. Granted, this wasn't mechanical repair, it was body work, but nevertheless: he said pretty much every person in the shop was high (on various things) *the entire workday* as they worked on cars. So you've got people taking cars apart, reassembling them, and sending you off to drive into traffic with a vehicle that had been pieced together (including things like door locks and fender mounts) by people who are so hopeless in their lives that they just get wasted all day long. It's both lack of education AND lack of hope, and it sucks. But it's the majority of people: if you have a masters degree you're in an 8% minority of USians.
I'd submit that education is no indicator of tendency toward critical thinking, much as we wish it were. Some of the most rigid, lazy minds I know hold lots of degrees. I think levels of curiosity and humility are better markers.
I disagree, citizen, for the simple reason that higher education leads to encountering different viewpoints, as well as having actual classes about this and similar subjects. I'm not suggesting that the uneducated are any more or less intelligent than anybody else, but the likelihood of being exposed to new / different ideas is absolutely higher for those with advanced schooling.
Sorry, I'm only speaking to your first sentence. I agree with the rest.
No problem! Plenty of room for disagreement on this. And I'd agree that the capacity (skillset) is probably higher for educated folks, but that the tendency is probably more related to personality.
I think the word lazy is much maligned. An intelligent laziness is efficient as fuck.
Citizen, I tend to find those who have pursued more education also often correlate to having both a broader curiosity and humility about the world ... much like what BB said.
Below-average amount of critical thinking is the only reliable universal constant I can rely on. More so than gravity, esp these days.
There's plenty of canuckistanis here, so I guess it isn't a USA-centric problem, but I can never decide whether to be frustrated with people who lack critical thinking skills, or the politicians, voters, and society that saw fit to systematically defund education to pre-emptively kneecap the populace's critical thinking skills so they are more susceptible to paranoia, propaganda, and agitation.
^Arch, you've described the entirety of human civilization.
...and this is why I want to go live in a van down by the river where no one can find me.
Idiocracy was set in the year 2505. How optimistic was THAT?!?
We should have warning labels on people like we do on food. Contains high levels of fooldum. And we should have basic vocabulary test to have to pass in order to have money and vote. And laminated pocket reference guides to logical fallacies.
It does make me glad I'm educated and capable of following a train of thought, able to foresee the outcome of events, analyze language, and make accurate observations and comparisons and speak about them.
Tintt, like scout merit badges + sash? Like, once you're crossed too deep into one dumb-ass area, you get dinged and have to add another critical thinking fail badge for all to see.
Agree with the warning labels. Disagree with the vocabulary test. Agree with the fallacy pocket guide.
All in favor of funding education to have an educated populace.
Education is important, clearly. My resistance is to the notion that the more of it you have, the better thinker you are, automatically.
sad face, because he died earlier this week.
I'm sure there is a point of diminishing returns ... so let's focus on bringing up the lowest levels where the return is likely to be greater.
where's that carlin clip?
“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”
Less cynically, but no less devastating: NPR had a sociologist on about a week ago that stated that humans despite being able to process logically were social creatures and inevitably are influenced by their social groups, often overwhelming their educational or intellectual training in support of emotionally satisfying decisions. We are all kind of dumb that way...
Unrelated to anything (but slightly tangential to design), we bought a truck!
Gonna spend the winter DIY'ing a minimalist camper in the back, and once those forest roads are clear... well I'll be posting a whole lot less that's for sure.
TACO MACHINE! Man, you must have gotten a sweet deal or saved up.
Dibs on riding back in the bed! With a dog!
Already got the dog I'm sure he'd love company.
Pete: My wife is getting into the family real estate business and we had a good sale.
(& also got a pretty sweet deal)
2006? Lifted? Looks like it's in great shape. That model of Tundra was an excellent vehicle, as long as the frame held up or was replaced.
I sold my F150 a few months ago; it was a money pit, and I can use my MIL's Tacoma TRD when I need to do trucky things.
those run like 1l gas per 7km though, don't let Greta know...
It's not a daily commuter, obv. Backcountry only. We're looking into getting a fully electric sedan for the city.
I'm enjoying my new place in the very very small center of the venn diagram of truck owners and anti-car activists.
All I want is a truck for dirt roads and also to make it illegal to drive that truck in 90% of the city. Also no trucks should be bigger than this one. Nobody needs a truck that big unless its for industry, & then they can get a special license.
If you care about mileage with a pickup you picked the wrong one. Toyotas are great but their regular engines guzzle gas. A newer full-size F150 or Ram gets well over 20 mpg, while you'll do well to get 15. In this case, size does not matter.
Getting over the big rocks and through the big puddles is important, though.
I care more about size than MPG. Most F150s younger than I am are butt-ugly & oversized, and I just cringe at Dodge's recent tilt into what I see as fragile masculinity avatars. Not to mention the uptick in pedestrian deaths as truck hoods get stupidly aggressive...
You know how there's that fancy thing you always wish you could do, but no project ever has the budget?
I'm getting to detail a 20 gauge, 316 stainless steel, standing seam cladding on an onion-shaped structure.
It's for a sewage treatment plant.
Sigh.
One can dream.. https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/high-tech-wastewater-treatment-plant
Sounds like the one over here!
http://www.ennead.com/work/new...
I'm jelly! Would love to work on a cool infrastructure project like that...
^agreed, I'd love to work on a waste treatment plant.
Not actually a treatment *plant*, but close, and gorgeous: https://skylabarchitecture.com/work/columbia/
Agreed - that Skylab project is quite good.
In a similar vein, there was that Dattner salt shed in NY a few years back... love when these humble, necessary buildings are turned into exciting urban moments by good architects.
I've worked on some infrastructure projects and it's always funny that things that would be immediately dismissed as too expensive (like stainless steel, type 316 especially) are such a small blip on the budget compared to the other equipment/construction that no one even thinks twice about them. *In a lot of cases the 316 stainless is actually needed though because of corrosive environment, etc.
I remember one project in particular where I had a bit of a disagreement with the lead designer that type 316 was "needed" ... it's not in the particular project location and there are lots of buildings without it ... but he got it anyway because it increased the cost by fractions of a fraction of a percentage point that it didn't really matter and nobody but me actually questioned it.
Yep, EA, ours is in a marine environment (in addition to the potential releases from the plant process itself), so it was between 316 and PVDF. The 50-year LCCA showed close to a wash between the 2, so we got the stainless. We were actually pushing for copper, but the City didn't like the idea of green patina over time - they thought people would mistake the patina for leaking sewage.
Copper is a material on my bucket list. I've done one project with some very minimal roof repairs that needed copper flashing, and one or two with some interior elements that were made from copper (portion of a countertop, IIRC) ... but not one with a significant amount of copper yet.
It's saved you from the frustrating hell that is galvanic corrosion.
I fondly recall a lunch and learn where the Revere rep told us how copper these days wasn't patinating as quickly as it had in the old coal and steel mill days.
I did a remodel to one once... Yep, lab quality materials/finishes and some interesting high tech spaces and consultants just for the monitoring of the city sewers. Even weird stuff like injectors to encapsulate the gas in the sewage throughout the infrastructure. No idea how complex the system was and the monitoring before this project. That's also when I met the guy with the worst job ever; He was a diver and 'cleared stoppages' in the tanks as well as emergency response if someone fell in. Probably not what he had in mind getting his diving certificate...
EA - I've done one building with a copper roof, a senior living for retired Catholic clergy. If anyone hasn't yet had the privilege, the Catholic Church has very deep pockets (or at least did before the sex abuse settlements).
mightyaa - We're just doing cladding and insulation replacement (original is all ACM) on the first egg-shaped digesters ever built in North America. We're doing another existing digester project where we're adding new piping - on that one, my only role as architect is to help the engineers route the new piping through the already crowded tunnels.
Sneaky - Even if we'd gotten the copper cladding, the armature would've all been 316 stainless.
EA - I've done one building with a copper roof, a senior living for retired Catholic clergy. If anyone hasn't yet had the privilege, the Catholic Church has very deep pockets (or at least did before the sex abuse settlements).
they still have deep pockets... hopefully deep enough to pay all the remaining millions of settlements.
found this on twitter
I feel like this has been my unofficial job for the last week.
there are not enough canadians available for the demand. I'll sell my services to the highest bidder.
As Americans, we just take what we want, it's not up to you ;-)
NS is already my ESC so you all can back the F off!
I give "good" back rubs.
But what about a foot massage?
Im too far north to offer support to anyone, in fact I should get my own emotional americain support and it should be someone from Hawaii. I think they need me to do a site visit there. Its going to be -18C tonight here and I dont have the plastic on my windows yet!
It's going to be -13C here, let's do that site visit in hawaii soon.
Pfft. Don't complain about the weather until you hit -40c / -40f you big wimp. :P
Chad... no worries it will be -40C here in about a month if you want to come visit
Stop it now. Stop. I don't need -40f, ever again.
It went from +19c yesterday to -7c today. I'm okay with all of it, even down to -50 as long as I'm dressed properly. In fact, since moving to Hoth, I probably spend more time outdoors in the winter than summer.
Love being outdoors in winter so much more than in summer, you can easily dress for the cold but dressing/undressing for the heat just doesn’t seem to work for me...
I winter backpack quite a bit. I've been out backpacking in -40F several times. A nice snow shelter and everything was great!
You can always put on more layers to warm up. You can only take off so many layers to cool down.
I love the cold. We sleep with the windows open every night.
Well, I had 40mm of snow last tuesday... got the winter tires on and everything (app was previously scheduled, so just coincidence)... and now we've been in a 5 day stretch of +20c temp. Come on winter!
@Chad I hope you were on a SAR training/mission to be out backpacking in -40F (really?!?)
My sister sent us a photo of my nephews and niece in what appears to be around 2.5 feet of snow as they were helping to dig out their grandparents' home.
**Correction: What appears to be around 750 mm of snow. It's Canadian snow in Alberta.
As for me, it warmed up from the high 30F range into the low to mid 40F range overnight as some cloud cover rolled in and it started raining.
Everyday Architect - I live about 9-10 hours northwest of your sister and grandparents.
proto - no I was out for fun. When you know what you're doing and have enough snow cover you can manage quite well. For winter backpacking the hard thing is moisture management. The idea that you can just put on more clothing to keep warm isn't true.
...sure, after a point. I was just making a comparison to too cold v. too hot.
Jesus! There's north, 9-10 hours, of Alberta!?
9-10 hours north of southern Alberta would be northern Alberta
^ ^ Or what was colloquially referred to as "down south" when I did my co-op in the territories ... it's all shades of perspective!
you're in one of those "forts'?
Wrong side of the province for me
I'm (fortunately for weather and unfortunately for visiting) further than 9-10 hours from her and her husband's family, obviously on the southern side of the border. Where I grew up and my parents still live is closer. Ironically, even though she lives in a different country, she is one of the closest of my siblings to where we all grew up.
I knew a guy in my arch program at school from Edmonton, but that's not quite as far north as where you're at Almosthip, right?
My takeaway from this thread is that Canada is too big.
About 4.5 hours farther north west
Canada 9,984,670 sq.km vs USA 9,833,517 sq.km. Pretty S imilar
tduds, big enough for a Libertarian Commune?
Hip, those USA area figures from wiki include coastal/territorial waters while the Canadian ones does not. This note from the wiki is very interesting regarding the Brisitsh estimate of 9,525,067km2 and USA estimate of 9,833,517km2 :
3:The following two primary sources (non-mirrored) represent the range (min./max.) of estimates of China's and the United States' total areas. Both sources (1) exclude Taiwan from the area of China; (2) exclude China's coastal and territorial waters. However, the CIA World Factbook includes the United States coastal and territorial waters, while Encyclopædia Britannica excludes the United States coastal and territorial waters.
Notably, Encyclopædia Britannica specifies the United States' area (excluding coastal and territorial waters) as 9,525,067 km2, which is less than either source's figure given for China's area.[7] Therefore, while it can be determined that China has a larger area excluding coastal and territorial waters, it is unclear which country has a larger area including coastal and territorial waters.
So yes, Canada is much bigger... and with much more empty space. Let's keep that space empty tho, it's nicer here without hoards of M'ericans messing it up.
You forgot to count the area of Greenland with the United States, or did Trump's check to Denmark bounce?
I had suspicions that I was being too helpful but suspicions confirmed when after reviewing (not responding to) this weekends email onslaught, a lot of sub's PMs are starting to introduce me to their foreman as the superintendent. I really need to learn how to say "do your job" without feeling guilty.
Does it help to begin every conversation and email with, "As it shows in the drawings..."?
Sometimes architectural product ads just totally knock it out of the park.
We do important work, ya'll.
I'm doing exterior retail shell and interior MOB projects so my work 'aint important.
Even the ancient garbage dumps have historical meaning Chad. Future archeologists will look at your retail shell projects and understand a lot about us and what we place value on.
^ They will wonder with curiosity and solemnity: "Why all the medium-dash stucco and bronze anodized aluminum? Were they still animals back then?"
More brick veneer, weathered metal panels, and clear anodized aluminum. No stucco.
To be clear: important was intended sarcastically up there.
We used to have fun going through Sweet's catalog and mocking the worst ads, similar to that great Filehenge item Donna posted. That is a keeper.
i swear to god i saw a thing on tv that said gold finish bronze was the "in" thing now. like we're going back to that for real. i'm sure it was some sort of one-off life in the midwest thing that isn't a thing, but a little bit of me died inside.
Counterpoint: gold finish bronze is already over. It’s aluminum everything next.
I could get behind that, Donna! But in the Art Deco manner where the aluminum was cast and unadorned or finished just like "holy shit, look at this amazing new metal we just invented, let's use it everywhere."
I used a bronze rail here in 1992. It wasn't popular when stainless steel and rusted metals were the kings. It was the client's choice but I really liked it at the time and today. It's still installed and wearing its age very well. thttps://www.flickr.com/photos/87051047@N00/26086608695/in/album-72157606676345332/
https://flic.kr/p/FKbFVr
Wearing a poppy today. Happy Veterans Day, Remembrance Day, or Armistice Day (depending on where you live).
In Flanders Fields
Today is the first time in 12years that I did not go downtown to the National War Memorial (Ottawa).