Sketchup at AA

CAntonis

Hello everybody!
Looks like this guy didn't spend a full minute to even try SU. And as far as I know he could not only be a user of another software but someone from another software company as well (either way, what he did was tragic!!!). What he tried to do was to make us talk about it all day while he was was on his pityful corner trying to understand why he lacked of intuition and creativity.
SU is far from perfect and needs some addons as you all power users already posted on previous posts but it is the most intuitive program I have ever seen, till now.

CAntonis

mitcorb

@Brodie:
Maybe you know- in what year did they stop having the "piano shaped" rooms?

Edit: sorry, couldn't resist. But you're right. I am aiding and abetting this hijack. I will refrain.

brodie

Probably early 80's I guess. I think early on he was really modular, I'm not sure when he started tacking on the amorphous piano shapes. Wall House 2 was designed somewhere in the 70's and then by the late 80's he seems to have gone back to strong angulars. Off-hand, I'd guess the blobs were just a drug induced 70's phase, but I suspect Bacus, being a fan, may disagree

-Brodie

Ecuadorian

@dale said:

Sam Jacob is a founding director of FAT, architect, writer and critic. He has most recently been the partner in charge of the Hoogvliet Heerlijkheid project in Holland a park, cultural centre and community facilities completed in October '08 and developed in collaboration with WiMBY! The project explores ideas of Pop, populism and participation which form the basis of an architectural approach intended to explore the role of architecture as communicative device, programmatic agglomeration and social condenser.

Dale, I swear I thought you were making this CV up just for laughs until I checked it myself. The names and the ideas just sound too odd to be real.

Edson

I read the article and could not really understand it fully but I got the impression that he was being negative about sketchup without really knowing it. I know exactly the kind of argument that states that sketchup drawings are "ugly" and that the app is not for precision work because I have heard it a few times at my own school.

thus I decided to drop dear sam a note:

@unknownuser said:

I came across your text on sketchup just by chance and a number of reasons put in the mood to write to you.

firstly, i am an AA graduate myself, an ancient one at that since I got my diploma in 1980! secondly, I am a sketchup enthusiast, a daily user and a moderator in the main sketchup forum.

my comment to what you wrote is somewhat tangential. I just felt it could interest you to hear the opinion of a hardened user.

the models people put in google earth do not represent the real power of sketchup. they are just skin deep models unrelated to design and construction. the view many people have of sketchup as being an app for amateurs is totally wrong. the fact that mateurs can use it for their own ends should obscure its enourmous value for architects.

I use sketchup in class and in practice as design tool as it allows one to construct forms rather than to represent them (of course, the same could be said about many other apps).

with sketchup I recovered the pleasure of drawing that I experimented in the old times of pencil and paper.

some of the main points in favor of sketchup are its short learning curve, the enormous amount of resources to be found on the internet, and the fact that hardly a week goes by without a new plugin being created for it, most of them free.

today you can model virtually anything with sketchup, thanks to some incredible plugins.

my focus is design, not archviz. sketchup allows me to concentrate on that.

best regards.

being an AA graduate I can say it does not surprise me in the least to find such a criticism coming from there. it used to be an important place as far as architectural discussion is concerned. during my time there some of the tutors were, just to name a few, rem koolhaas, bernard tschumi, peter cook, zaha hadid, rodrigo perez de arce, among others of the same caliber. however, in the last two decades it became an inconsequential and snobbish place with very slim ties to reality, where simplicity is berated and complication is mixed up with complexity.

of course, for people who think like that sketchup is too simple, it lacks the glamour connected with more expensive and fashionable software.

bocomofo

It's worth re-reading the original quotation.

I dont think he is being negative about Sketch-up...

@unknownuser said:

This has caused much snooty tutting from the massed Grasshopper and Maya ranks that make up majority of the school

The users of Maya and Grasshopper are negative towards it.

@unknownuser said:

These are on the whole amateur products

I wouldnt disagree with him that the bulk of the contents on the 3D warehouse are just that.

@unknownuser said:

And when we start to look closely, isn’t there some kind of strange sublime operating in the SketchUp landscape?

@unknownuser said:

What if we just looked into this landscape. What would we see? What would we learn?

Is this not the crux of the article...What can we learn, understand, gain from Sketchup? Is there a use for it beyond producing an image of a model we have crafted?

bocomofo

just read the comments on the article.

if you havent already you should check back and see the second to last comment.

@unknownuser said:

Just to clarify, the post wasn’t a criticism of SketchUp in any way!

In fact, it’s a fantastic tool...

dale

bocomofo
You may be at the heart if the matter. Although there could be debate as to whether or not the article is ,or is not rapping the SketchUp knuckle, the tone , and dramatic overuse of metonymy and hyperbole (sorry , couldn't resist)....
What I mean is, the article says nothing, all the time insinuating that the writer has an almost Shakespeare like brilliance.

It seems to be catchy at the old AA. Below is the abstract form a dissertation by one of it's students. (with apologies to Mr Shah for singling him out.) Sound familiar?

the full dissertation can be read at.. http://www.generativeart.com/on/cic/papers2005/30.MahnazShah.htm

The Modular: An Analysis into Generative Architecture

Mahnaz Shah

PhD Candidate, Architectural Association, School of Architecture London

Abstract

Le Corbusier’s city grids, domestic layouts and the Modular are generally considered to be expressive of the spatial innovations of the new sciences, thus providing an homogenous, quantitative, infinitely extensible continuum.
Jack H. Williamson [1986] reads this into the alleged ‘dematerialization’ of Le Corbusier’s interiors and christens it the ‘anti-object paradigm’. He considers this spatial development to be parallel to the loss of autonomous individuality under the new collectivist and determinist social and psychological sciences.
Andrew McNamara [1992] similarly reads Le Corbusier’s grid as an evidence of a desire to collapse all boundaries – natural, spatial, social and aesthetic – into an undifferentiated field. Le Corbusier is apparently committed to imposing this field at all levels, ‘to transform it into a broad social vision encompassing every aspect of life’.
According to Richards[2003]; although these readings maybe applicable to other modernists grids, they are not applicable to Le Corbusier.
This Paper proposes to challenge Richards[2003] assumptions and tries to prove that, through Le Corbusier’s final project; the Venice Hospital 1964-65, the Modular formulated a code that is capable of articulating dynamic, generative architecture.

PS. Is this why it is called an "Abstract"

brodie

Sounds like someone was having a bet with their buddies to see who could cram the most architectural buzzwords into their paper. My guess is that this guy won.

-Brodie

Ecuadorian

Reminds me of the "Mission Statement Generator":
http://www.laughing-buddha.net/toys/mission

dale

@ecuadorian said:

Reminds me of the "Mission Statement Generator":
http://www.laughing-buddha.net/toys/mission

Screen shot 2010-11-24 at 10.38.06 AM.png

Edson

many so-called theory books nowadays are like that.

tfdesign

I must say, there is SketchUp horror out there too!

http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=237064a5ed8725626790da1246b6161d&prevstart=144

johnsenior1973

@tfdesign said:

I must say, there is SketchUp horror out there too!

http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=237064a5ed8725626790da1246b6161d&prevstart=144

"Made with Building Maker

This model was made using Building Maker, an online 3D modeling tool from Google."

penumbradesign

@tfdesign said:

I must say, there is SketchUp horror out there too!

http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=237064a5ed8725626790da1246b6161d&prevstart=144

This one is a keeper!

mitcorb

Wasn't it "Le Modulor"? Maybe my old synapses are fried.

tfdesign

@johnsenior1973 said:

@tfdesign said:

I must say, there is SketchUp horror out there too!

http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=237064a5ed8725626790da1246b6161d&prevstart=144

"Made with Building Maker

This model was made using Building Maker, an online 3D modeling tool from Google."

Perhaps it should be renamed "box maker"?

bocomofo

@tfdesign said:

I must say, there is SketchUp horror out there too!

http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=237064a5ed8725626790da1246b6161d&prevstart=144

Eeek!

Perhaps it was a theoretical model!!!!

johnsenior1973

@tfdesign said:

@johnsenior1973 said:

@tfdesign said:

I must say, there is SketchUp horror out there too!

http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=237064a5ed8725626790da1246b6161d&prevstart=144

"Made with Building Maker

This model was made using Building Maker, an online 3D modeling tool from Google."

Perhaps it should be renamed "box maker"?

Aren't you just being as ignorant towards BM as many people are towards SU?

I personally feel there's just as much ignorance shown towards BM and 3DW from Sketchucationers as there is of SU by outsiders.

bocomofo

I'm pretty sure that building maker is a useful tool in the right hands.
But a model like this doesn't exactly scream 'QUALITY' to me!

I dont think that is ignorance.