Software companies don’t usually go around buying architecture and design firms, but The Living isn’t your typical beards-and-Blue-Bottle band of architects. The 7-person shop in the Brooklyn Navy Yard was acquired earlier this year for a small, undisclosed price by design and engineering software maker Autodesk. The reason: The Living’s expertise in blending all that’s new in materials, 3-D printing and more arcane new fields such as biological manufacturing and algorithmic design. — forbes.com
13 Comments
what's a blue bottle?
Ha! I was wondering the same thing Evan. I assume it's a strange way of saying they're not hipsters? "Blue Bottle" being the coffee upstart that that tends to attract a lot of bearded customers.
Ah, that makes some sense. I was thinking "what color were ink bottles, back in the old days?"
The acquisition isn't that surprising if you follow what Autodesk's been up to. From Autodesk Research:
"Six months ago, Autodesk (ADSK) opened a skunk works on Pier 9 in San Francisco. The two-story waterfront space—a TechShop on steroids—houses top-of-the-line 3D printers, a precision water jet cutter, wood and metal shops, an industrial kitchen, and pretty much any other tool an inventor could possibly want."
Further:
".... a team of designers, programmers, and scientists are working on what is perhaps Autodesk’s most ambitious project: building software and hardware that will simplify the task of designing and fabricating living things, including viruses, bacteria, and even human organs."
0_0
Pretty cool and promising. Around a year ago 3d prototyping was used to make a model of a Neuron at Yale I think. If I ever had time I was going to model Neurons with Parameters to behave in a way described by Jeff Hawkins..... At some point in grad school I was studying as an architect would Cellular Mechanics as in Biological. Based on what I was reading from fungi to molecules the geometries were very abstract and simple and trying to derive inspiration from this made me realize I was only reviewing a biologists geometric mind and not the reality. To Evan's last qoute - and Paul's recent interview - there may be something to architectural creative thought process that could seriously help expand the sciences not just of building but science in general. Even Wolfram 3d models are not as exciting or interesting as first year architects in school.
Everyone knows tech has a new fetish for design hipsters.
Further, the fetish for biology in design is strange considering we are already biological creatures therefore our processes of building are already biological.
It's more of a stylistic trend than anything...
not really darkman.
Does anyone have any idea what the actual price was?
Didn't anybody read Frankenstein? Yes, can't wait for some cool new designer viruses.
Geez we are reaching new levels of gimmicky nonsense... Architects are needed to build buildings, but we seem to have lost a value for ethics.
Autodesk will be the death of architecture. Any time someone starts to do something that is innovative and will help the industry. Autodesk byes it and kills it so they are the only one. It would be nice if they would work on there product instead of buying out the competition so they can still charge too much for a glitchy and outdated product.
If Autodesk is like Microsoft or Samsung and these little companies are like Apple...then it all works out in the end.
But not if Microsoft buys Apple every time they start to innovate.
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