Building on the green agenda: Sir Norman Foster on TED.com

Architect Norman Foster discusses his own work to show how computers can help architects design buildings that are green, beautiful and "basically pollution-free." He shares projects from throughout his career, from the pioneering roof-gardened Willis Building (1975) to the London Gherkin (2004). He also comments on two upcoming megaprojects: a pipe to bring water from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea, and Beijing airport's brand-new and groundbreaking Terminal 3, which becomes fully operational this week, March 26.

the future in dubai - dubai architecture: new buildings in the united arab emirates

Checkout this post by CGArchitect on facts about Dubai and its upcoming architecture.

Charlie Rose - FRANK GEHRY

Frank Gehry talking to Charlie Rose about his work..

The Most Beautiful Stairs or a Dizzying Experience?

This beautiful merging of art and architecture is a 9 meter-high walk-double spiral of steel in the entrance of the KPMG ( a global accounting firm ) office building in Munich, Germany. A really amazing piece of architecture designed by Olafur Eliasson





Via freshome

Eiffel Tower's Massive New Observation Deck to be Made of Kevlar Webbing

The Eiffel Tower is possibly getting a new extension. Builders will be attaching a temporary, carbon Kevlar observation deck. French architecture firm Serero will help Paris celebrate the 120th birthday of the tower by more than doubling the floor space at its top. The observation deck will simply be bolted in place.







Click here to read more

Via i09 Also read the post on dwell for further details

To view the Eiffel Tower Process click here. This includes collection of images - both the construction drawings for the tower, and photos of it being erected in 1889.

Autodesk University - Screencasts

Click here to watch screen casts of the Autodesk Unversity 2007 conference in Las Vegas. It's just like attending AU, only you can stop it to take a break!! You can watch it again and again. Download the class handouts and watch the screen cast! I recommend checking out the site. You will have to register first to view the screen casts.

There are over 500 hours of training available to watch with over 1000 classes!!

Modelling using the Greeble plugin in 3dsMAX

Great tutorial by Digital Urban on constructing a cityscape and a skyscraper using a plugin called Greeble.

According to wikipedia: A greeble is a small piece of detailing added to break up the surface of an object to add visual interest to a surface or object, particularly in movie special effects. They serve no real purpose other than to add complexity to the object, and cause the flow of the eye over the surface of the object to be interrupted, usually giving the impression of increased size. It is essentially the small detailed technical part of a larger object. The detail can be made from geometric primitives, including cylinders, cubes, and rectangles, combined to create intricate, but meaningless, surface detail. Greebles are commonly found on models or drawings of fictional spacecraft in science fiction.

Stunning Futuristic Design for Madrid Civil Court Unveiled

Bold, brave, often controversial - her ambitious experiments in form always seem to stir discourse and debate. Hadid’s design for the new civil courts building in Madrid is no exception. Planned as part of the new Campus de la Justicia at Valdebebas in Madrid, the Civil Court is expected to become a focal point in the city.
read more

ADrive Adds Interactivity to Free File Storage

ADrive, a file storage provides 50GB of free data storage for its users, and is hoping to further entice users. ADrive is hoping to provide a few peripheral features that enable users to better interact with the files stored through it, as well as offering a solution for collaborative file-sharing processes.

Further info visit post on Mashable

Using Blogging as a Research Tool

Check out this great post on Stress Free on using blogging as a research tool. It shows how to get started and other various web 2.0 services which could be useful for research purposes.

View Google Sky Through Your Web Browser!

Google unveiled a browser version of its Google Sky application for people who don't want to download the Google Earth software. The browser version allows you to zoom in and out and pan around the celestial bodies, search for planets and galaxies and view the sky!

Forget Powerpoint: 13 Online Presentation Apps

Click here to view 13 online presentation Applications which Mashable has gathered.

Wonderful Tensegrity Structures

Tensegrity structures are visually stunning and their combination with computer enhanced structures is creating renewed interest for architectural applications. Buckminster Fuller coined the term tensegrity when he saw sculptures by Kenneth Snelson and realized that rigid component geodesics were a special case of perfectly balanced compression...

read more | digg story

Autodesk Impression

Autodesk Impression is a new product from autodesk which creates ready presentation styles directly from your DWG and DWF files. It's similar to photoshop however, it creates various presentation styles using your CAD files. The techniques are similar to SketchUP as well.

Below is a video showing the features of the product in use:

Use SketchUp models with iClone

iClone is an animation software that lets you compose, animate, light and "shoot" scenes digitally. People use iClone to do pre-visualization for live action work and as a standalone animation package. With the new iClone 3DXchange conversion utility, you can combine iClone with SketchUp models -- now everything in the 3D Warehouse available to anyone who needs 3D content.

The video below represents the new utility in action:

How To Hide Important Files inside a Picture

You can easily hide important files inside a picture such that the file becomes totally impossible to trace. This Windows trick is not a new one and probably most of you would already know about it but for those who don’t, it can come of great use anytime.

read more | digg story

More SketchUP Tutorials

Go 2 School provide sketchUp tutorials via podcasting and also through YouTube.

They have 70 videos so far on their YouTube channel which is well worth a look if your're a SketchUp user.

If your new to Google SketchUp you can download it for free from http://www.sketchup.com/.

Below is a tutorial on Photo Match and Compositing:

Frank Gehry: Nice building. Then what?

Frank Gehry wanted to be a scientist when he grew up. But after blowing up a part of his house, at age 14, he decided against it. He's gone on to create some mindblowing buildings, including the Guggenheim at Bilbao and LA's Walt Disney Concert Hall. This wildly entertaining conversation with Richard Saul Wurman (then host of TED) touches on many topics, including the power of failure, the importance of collaboration, and the need for architects to bring personal expression to the table.

A Chapel Converted Into a Modern Apartment

The talented people from ZECC Architects turned transformed an old chapel into a spacious modern apartment, carefully respecting and enhancing the character of the original building. And I can say that this apartment looks very good.

The church before ZECC Architects started the work:



This is how the church looks now …









For further info visit freshome blogpost

How To Burn or Write ISO Files to CD

Click here to visit a blog post which shows how to burn or write ISO files to CD.

Click here to download the utility tool which allows you to burn or write ISO files to CD.

Top 100 of the Most Viewed Architectures of 2007

Top 100 of the most viewed architectures of 2007- check it out on World Architecture to see if you can get inspired and amazed !

Cool Bridge and Bar Design

Located on Aiola Island, right in the center of the Mur river in Graz, Austria.

read more | digg story

Make your own custom styles with Style Builder

There's a new plug in for SketchUp which allows you to create your own sketchy-edge Style that you can use to make your SketchUp models look hand-drawn. The plug-in is called Style Builder (Beta) and is for SketchUp pro 6.

Below is a video showing the STyle Builder in action:



Further info visit Google SketchUp blogpost

Photoshop gets HD Photo support from Microsoft

Microsoft has released a Beta version of a plugin to let Photoshop read and write files in the HD photo fomat.

The plug-in is available for free to download for Windows and Mac OS X systems. The plug-in works on Windows XP, Vista, Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.5 and Photoshop CS2 and CS3.

Further info visit Webware blogpost

Files Tube - Searchable Files

Files Tube is a new search engine which enables us to search files uploaded to various file hosting sites.

For further info visit Webware blogpost.