I just finished attending the two day conference hosted by the Chicago AIA. The theme was Green and Sustainable Architecture and was kicked off with a presentation by Ed Mazria. I had the opportunity to chat with Ed briefly before his breakfast presentation and tell him how much his keynote speech from last year’s conference affected me. I was so troubled by what he discussed, that I immediately hired a new Architect for our office who specialized in Sustainable and Green design.

I may have mentioned this earlier in another blog, but if you want a real awakening, visit the Architecture 2030 website by clicking the image here. I felt like last year’s presentation was comparable to watching a horror film. I came away so disturbed by both the images and scientific projections that we were talking about it for days afterward. It also inspired me to take my family, including my two children (ages 12 and 10 at the time), to see Al Gore’s movie, An Inconvenient Truth.

There's lot's of really cool software programs out there. They range from those that have a really elegant, slick interface to others which may be weak on the graphics side - but have very powerful analytical tools. From my experience, it seems that the more powerful the tools, the less interesting the graphics. And the cooler looking the software, the less powerful the tools. Interesting conundrum.

Lately, I've been experimenting with programs that reside on both sides of the spectrum. They're all good - for different reasons. However, I can't ever imagine having a long-term relationship with any of them. So the trick - is to have a balance of just the right tools - with the right look.

Why put a jet engine in a Volkswagen?
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As we begin planning our 3rd generation of ArchiOffice, this particular question is one which is keeping me up at nights (yup, it's already 1:44am - and I'm still working). While I'm rarely satisfied with the status-quo, the more I look at other software programs, the more confident I am that what we've built so far - in ArchiOffice, is on the right track.

But we have far to go to make this as powerful and simple as I dream it can be. Like a child's first trip to a playroom - we shouldn't need training on how to use the objects before us. It should be totally innate. Do we really need so many bells and whistles? My favorite example of simplicity and sophistication in software is manifested in SketchUp