Today’s download resource is a 3D Apple Power Mac g5 & Cinema Display combo complete with keyboard and textures. The model has a low polygon count and makes use of textures for most of the detail. I have had 30 or so of these computers in a model and render times and Open GL performance has not diminished. The model is supplied in dwg and fmz file formats. The FormZ file is completely textured, and materials are set up in the model, requiring only minor tweaks. This is the only computer I use in my renderings, because it is dead sexy and instantly makes any space cool. … continue reading Download: 3D Apple Power Mac G5, Cinema Display & Keyboard

DesignIntelligence proves every year that they are the architectural community’s greatest oxymoron with the publication of their highly suspect and highly controversial ranking of accredited undergraduate and graduate architectural programs in the country. If you have had any doubts about the credibility of DesignIntelligence’s yearly ranking of architectural programs, you are really going to love this. I received an email from a friend a couple of days ago regarding the announcement of the new 2009 Design Futures Council Fellows. I did not care at first, because I did not even know what the Design Futures Council was. … continue reading 2009 Design Futures Council Fellows Named

Europa Concorsi is an Italian site dedicated to the profession of architecture.  Using a free translator on the internet Europaconcorsi roughly translates from Italian to English: Europe Competitons.  Although the entire site is in Italian, it is by far one of  the premiere resources on the internet for discovering new architects and projects from around the world.  Although the site is in Italian and it can be difficult to navigate, the quality of content outweighs the difficulty of breaking through the language barrier.  The positive of the site being in Italian is that I have found myself learning the Italian language little by little each day, and discovering projects that most sites or magazine simply do not cover.  … continue reading LOTW: Europaconcorsi

One of the evil things about the internet is that there are numerous threats to blogs like this one. Spammers, bots, people trying to sell naked photos and supplements, attempt to hack into sites like this to spread their filth. Previously, if you wanted to post comments on the Critique This site, as a precautionary measure to stop spammers you had to create an account and log into the site. Many individuals do not like to create accounts on blog sites for many reasons, particularly because it is another account that they have to keep track of. Now comments can be posted without creating an account! I have incorporated a CAPTCHA anti-spam feature … continue reading Vitruvius 0.50 Released: Comments Reloaded

Images of contemporary architecture do not necessarily come to mind when thinking about the architecture of Orlando.  While Orlando is not the architectural capital of the United States, there are actually a great number of buildings in the Orlando area that have been designed by architects of varying styles,  different eras, and degrees of fame. Although great examples of contemporary architecture do exist in Orlando, I did not think that I would find a high design contemporary structure at the mall, but that is exactly what I found shortly after moving to this city.  … continue reading Bloomingdale’s Meet Kevin Kennon Architects

Glass block is a great building material; I believe that if Louis Kahn would have had the opportunity he would have made his arches out of glass block and not bricks. Don’t believe me check out his unbuilt design for the Memorial to Six Million Jewish Martyrs. When is the last time that you asked glass block, what do you want? Has anyone ever?  Glass block is one of those materials that have only had part of its potential exploited.  Before I die, I’ll have to build a glass archway as a tribute to the deceased master architect, but until then let’s look at some glass block details.
… continue reading Glass Block & Water Slides At Bay Lake Tower

This is the first of what is hopefully many video tutorials that focus on techniques associated with architectural rendering. This particular video tutorial is a two part video that shows you how to take raw digital photographs, and Photoshop them to be high resolution background images for your renderings.   Below the video is a brief description of tools and shortcuts used, and how to use these tools. … continue reading Video Tutorial: Create Your Own Sky In Photoshop (part 1)

This is the first of what is hopefully many video tutorials that focus on techniques associated with architectural rendering. This particular video tutorial is a two part video that shows you how to take raw digital photographs, and Photoshop them to be high resolution background images for your renderings. Below the video is a brief description of tools and shortcuts used, and how to use these tools. … continue reading Video Tutorial: Create Your Own Sky In Photoshop (part 2)

The only reason that you are going to read this article is because you wanted to eat the image to the left, and because every day you have the same disappointed expression as this poor bastard to my left.  Why does he look so disappointed?  Because its another day of eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.  You don’t have to go through life treating lunch like a chore or getting fat eating out at restaurants that are killing you with tasteless food. Be the cool kid in the office with the brown bag that rocks. … continue reading Chickpeas, Tomato & Feta Salad

While cleaning up the images for the previous article Download: Sky, one of the things that bothered me was that my digital SLR camera produced a small amount of noise and grain in the image.  Although the Florida skies are beautiful, the sun is also very bright, which can make it difficult to capture a photograph without pixel artifacts in the image.  I don’t have the money to buy a new camera with better features or lenses to correct the problem, so I began to research the internet attempting to find a cheap quick solution to my debacle.  The answer is a beautiful piece of software, which is a Photoshop plugin called Noiseware, and was developed by the fine folks at Imagenomic. … continue reading Imagenomic Noiseware: Quiet Your Images