for being elevated to the 2012 College of Fellows of the American Institute of Architects.
Steven Spurlock is a partner with the firm WNUK SPURLOCK Architecture PLLC in Washington DC. Ross Chapin is the founding Principal of Ross Chapin Architects in Langley, WA, Paul Endres’s firm EndresStudio is in San Francisco. Ed Shriver’s firm Strada is in Pittsburgh, PA and Andrew Wellls’ firm Dake Wells Architecture Studio is in Springfield, MO. All five firms have been using ArchiOffice for many years and I’ve personally visited Wnuk Spurlock and Ross Chapin in their offices. In fact, I was so impressed with Ross Chapin after my visit that I wrote about him in an earlier blog entitled Gentle on the Earth.
According to the AIA, Steven was elevated based on his “Service to Society”. We can’t think of a more noble category to be recognized for achievement. Both Ross Chapin and Paul Endres were elevated under the category of “Practice”. I’ve seen first hand how impressive Chapin’s practice is as well as his contributions to architecture with his Pocket Park developments. Ed Shriver Jr, was elevated based on his activities leading the Institute and Andrew Wells was elevated based on his contributions to Design.
Mr. Spurlock’s firm, Wnuk Spurlock, is an architecture and design firm that is attentive to both the practical and fanciful dreams of the client. Though modernist in sensibilities, their location in Washington, D.C. has allowed them to explore traditional proportions and detailing, and discover unique design solutions that are appreciative of both. Furthermore, Wnuk Spurlock is supportive of the building industry’s trend toward sustainable products and use them appropriately.
Mr. Chapin’s firm, Ross Chapin Architects is an award-winning firm known for designing wonderfully scaled and richly detailed buildings and gardens. They take joy in designing places for people that are both functional and beautiful. Their work shows that neighborhoods, buildings and outdoor spaces can be alive and vibrant, authentic and soulful. They strive to create places that nourish the individual, support positive family relationships, and foster a strong sense of community.
Mr. Endres’ firm, EndresStudio transcends the traditional boundaries between architecture and engineering, designing buildings whose craft and detail spring from an intimate understanding of materials and fabrication. The architecture they create conveys a sense of place, and a deep connection between structure and space.
Mr. Shriver’s firm, Strada has an interesting twist on how they named their firm. Rather than naming it after the partnership, they named it based on the Italian word for “street.” Streets matter to them. They’re the connections between buildings, people, and public spaces. They’re the fundamental infrastructure of our communities and the core of our civic lives. This is why their firm is so passionate about them.
Mr. Wells’ firm, Dake Wells Architecture, is a design-centered practice of architecture, interiors and graphics, with an emphasis on progressive and sustainable design solutions. The firm was founded in 2004 by Brandon Dake, AIA, LEED AP and Andrew Wells, FAIA, LEED AP, and has grown to serve a variety of public and private clients. Located in downtown Springfield, Missouri, Dake Wells Architecture’s reputation is growing as the leader in intelligent design solutions for progressive clients and the firm is committed to raising the level of architectural design excellence in the Ozarks region of the United States.
Keep up the great work Mr. Spurlock FAIA, Mr. Chapin, FAIA, Mr. Endres, FAIA, Mr. Shriver, FAIA and Mr. Wells, FAIA!
While one would think reports of high unemployment would drive prospective Arch applicants to other professions; that isn’t the case for those with a passion for architecture and a strong desire to work in that field.
Aside from having a passion for the art, according to an article in Yale Daily News, applicants also believe that, despite the current economic situation, the school’s reputation will increase the odds of their finding employment upon graduation.
]]>Templates can get you off to a quick start on your projects. Because of their scalability, you can create templates for small or large projects. Templates can increase consistency and reduce time lost correcting errors. In addition, they can free up your time and resources, reduce time spent on non-billable tasks, and get you working on the actual project - billable time - faster.
When starting a new project in ArchiOffice from a template, it will inherit the following information:
Your time is money and project template’s scalable and time-saving features make them a valuable tool that should be part of your firm’s practice management best practices.
]]>Check out the article and see how some architects are juggling office management tasks along with doing their real job - designing buildings.
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As of January 3, 2012, BQE support is available one hour earlier.
Any BQE customer with an active support plan can call 10am-6pm ET / 7am-3pm PT Monday to Friday. This change further ensures that our customers are provided with the timely support required to successfully run their firm.
Architectural firms, like all businesses, can’t afford to stick with their current technology just because it works – not for too long. When you do this, you risk losing your competitive edge.
These days technology is integral in helping a successful Architect firm manage projects and increase profitability (e.g., ArchiOffice), build better buildings (e.g., Business Information Modeling or BIM), and interact with clients – locally or globally - in real-time (e.g., cloud technology).
Marty Doscher, Assoc. AIA, a former technology director, recently addressed how Architect firms need to get over their fears of change and technology or risk losing their competitive edge.
Check out his article in Architect Magazine to learn how to overcome your fear of upgrading, stay on the cutting edge and become a leading company that’s more than capable of meeting its customer’s needs.
]]>At one point, before his career took off with the rap group N.W.A, Ice Cube studied architectural drafting. His interest in the art of architecture is exhibited in a promotion for the Pacific Standard Times exhibition of the designs of the famous husband and wife team, Charles and Ray Eames.
In this promotional video Ice Cube comments on the good and bad of Los Angeles’ architecture and its freeways - calling the infamous 405 “bougie” and the 101 the “Gangsta Highway”. In addition to the video, Ice Cube also recreated a classic photograph of Charles Eames.
The chair in the photo, along with other Eames designs, can be seen at the Collecting Eams The JF Chen Collection until January 14, 2012.
]]>If your ArchiOffice installation appears to be running slow, here are four tips you can use to help insure optimum performance from your ArchiOffice installation.
Disable any non-essential applications or services that are running in the background. Avoid running programs that use significant amounts of processor or memory resources. Common culprits are disk intensive tasks such as antivirus and disk defragment applications and file services. If you cannot disable these programs, schedule them to run during off-peak hours (e.g., Midnight).
ArchiOffice is a robust feature-rich application that requires considerable resources to run its best. The application will run sufficiently with 2GB of RAM but for optimum performance for a small office with 5 or less users, 4GB of RAM is recommended. For a larger operation with 10+ users simultaneously connecting to ArchiOffice, 8-16GB of memory is recommended.
It may be tempting to install ArchiOffice on a server used by other applications to save resources, but, if your budget allows, it should run on its own server. Anything that pulls resources away from ArchiOffice can degrade its performance during peak hours. Small offices (e.g., 1-4 employees) can get away with using an unused or newly purchased computer workstation as a server. Larger offices should set up a proper dedicated server (i.e., Windows Server or Lion Server) to host ArchiOffice. Nothing else should run on this machine (i.e., no exchange server, file server services, etc.).
ArchiOffice creates a hidden cache folder (.Servoy) that can cause performance problems after updates - especially after upgrading from 2010. Deleting this folder from each client machine can drastically speed up launch time. See our knowledge base article (KB-573) for details on how to delete this folder.
Follow these tips and you should experience a significant boost in ArchiOffice’s performance.
]]>Each one of us can make a difference:
What does this mean to you if you’re an ArchiOffice V8 user? You will not have access to technical support, training, consulting and any other ArchiOffice services – unless you upgrade to ArchiOffice 2011 before Dec 31, 2011. If you don’t require any of these services, you can still continue to use ArchiOffice V8.
We understand this change may have an impact on your business. But, like many other software companies, we’ve found that we must focus on our latest releases to ensure that ArchiOffice remains compatible with other software and operating systems. By doing this, we can continue to provide you with the best possible support and product enhancements you have come to expect.
Your business means a lot to us and we know change isn’t easy. Rest assured that our support team will make this transition as simple as possible.
Letting go of what’s working for you can be difficult. But, we feel that the significant enhancements made to ArchiOffice since V8 will make the change worth the effort. Since V8 was released, over 200 features/enhancements have been made to ArchiOffice. Here are some of the key features of ArchiOffice 2011:
Go to http://www.archioffice.com/ to see the rest of the powerful features.
Aside from upgrading to benefit from all of the new features, we are also making a special upgrade offer to V8 users. Call (855) 687-1028 today for details.
* If you have an active support contract that expires after Dec 31, 2011, we will support your product until your contract expiration date. The support contract for ArchiOffice V8 will not be renewed after that.
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