For Nerds Only. Field Room Tags in AutoCAD.

In spite of today's powerful CAD and BIM systems, most drafting work is pretty basic. Still, AutoCAD and similar products rely on series of connected line and arc segments, usually separated by layers: CAD documents are still just drawings – mostly they do not imply any building data or structure. Definitely it's a pain if you have to populate CAD plans with space and room tags. For each change a drafter (or an architect) has to redraw the polylines and correct the attribute values of the room tags. I was looking for an AutoCAD script that simplifies the procedure of using the ‘field' feature of AutoCAD and link each room tag attribute to an area polylines. The advantage: if you change the polyline the value of the room tag changes immediately. Not quite BIM but maybe a help.

Start Visual Basic in AutoCAD. Type 'vbaide'. Paste the code and execute it. In the example you need one closed polyline and a two attributes in your room tag block. (1. room, 2. area) Please refer to the AutoCAD help if you like to integrate the tool to the user interface.

' AREA TAG TOOL
' fills an attribute with a field
' by anarchitecture

Sub fillField()
Dim mySelectionBlock As AcadObject
Dim mySelectionPoly As AcadObject
Dim myPointBlock As Variant
Dim myPointPoly As Variant
Dim tAtts As Variant
Dim varAttributes As Variant
Utility.GetEntity mySelectionBlock, myPointBlock, "Choose a Room Tag:"
varAttributes = mySelectionBlock.GetAttributes
Utility.GetEntity mySelectionPoly, myPointPoly, "Choose Polyline to be linked:"
' replace the 2nd attribute value by field value
' IMPORTANT: the tag [0.0001] converts in this example the metric drawing unit [cm] to [m]
' IMPORTANT: the value varAttributes(1).TextString replaces the 2nd attribute value in this case
varAttributes(1).TextString = "%<\AcObjProp.16.2 Object(%<\_ObjId " _ & mySelectionPoly.ObjectID & ">%).Area \f ""%lu2%pr2%ct8[0.0001]"">%"
ThisDrawing.Regen acAllViewports
End Sub

100 Years of the Futurist Manifesto,1909.

The Futurist Manifesto was a brutal program of provocation – a prequel for the ideology of Fascism. In it, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti expressed an absolute aversion of everything old. Herein lies the power of the power of manifesto: the total rejection of the past. In case of the futurist architect Antonio Sant'elia it led to great drawings. The Futurist Manifesto, however, is disgusting.

Antonio Sant'elia

The Futurist Manifesto:

1. We want to sing the love of danger, the habit of danger and of temerity.
2. The essential elements of our poetry will be courage, daring, and revolt.
3. Literature having up to now magnified thoughtful immobility, ecstasy, and sleep, we want to exalt the aggressive gesture, the feverish insomnia, the athletic step, the perilous leap, the box on the ear, and the fisticuff.
4. We declare that the world's wonder has been enriched by a fresh beauty: the beauty of speed. A racing car with its trunk adorned by great exhaust pipes like snakes with an explosive breath ... a roaring car that seems to be driving under shrapnel, is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace.
5. We want to sing the man who holds the steering wheel, whose ideal stem pierces the Earth, itself launched on the circuit of its orbit.
6. The poet must expend himself with warmth, refulgence, and prodigality, to increase the enthusiastic fervor of the primordial elements.
7. There is no more beauty except in struggle. No masterpiece without an aggressive character. Poetry must be a violent attack against the unknown forces, summoning them to lie down before man.
8. We stand on the far promontory of centuries!... What is the use of looking behind us, since our task is to smash the mysterious portals of the impossible? Time and Space died yesterday. We live already in the absolute, since we have already created the eternal omnipresent speed.
9. We want to glorify war - the only hygiene of the world - militarism, patriotism, the anarchist's destructive gesture, the fine Ideas that kill, and the scorn of woman.
10. We want to demolish museums, libraries, fight against moralism, feminism, and all opportunistic and utilitarian cowardices.
11. We shall sing the great crowds tossed about by work, by pleasure, or revolt…

the manifesto was published in Le Figaro on 20 February 1909

Ninety Years of Bauhaus - The Manifesto, 1919.

The ultimate aim of all creative activity is a building! The decoration of buildings was once the noblest function of fine arts, and fine arts were indispensable to great architecture. Today they exist in complacent isolation, and can only be rescued by the conscious co-operation and collaboration of all craftsmen. Architects, painters, and sculptors must once again come to know and comprehend the composite character of a building, both as an entity and in terms of its various parts. Then their work will be filled with that true architectonic spirit which, as "salon art", it has lost.

Manifesto and program of the Bauhaus, illustration (woodcut) by Lyonel Feininger,from bauhaus archiv

The old art schools were unable to produce this unity; and how, indeed, should they have done so, since art cannot be taught? Schools must return to the workshop. The world of the pattern-designer and applied artist, consisting only of drawing and painting must become once again a world in which things are built. If the young person who rejoices in creative activity now begins his career as in the older days by learning a craft, then the unproductive "artist" will no longer be condemned to inadequate artistry, for his skills will be preserved for the crafts in which he can achieve great things.

Architects, painters, sculptors, we must all return to crafts! For there is no such thing as "professional art". There is no essential difference between the artist and the craftsman. The artist is an exalted craftsman. By the grace of Heaven and in rare moments of inspiration which transcend the will, art may unconsciously blossom from the labour of his hand, but a base in handicrafts is essential to every artist. It is there that the original source of creativity lies.

Let us therefore create a new guild of craftsmen without the class-distinctions that raise an arrogant barrier between craftsmen and artists! Let us desire, conceive, and create the new building of the future together. It will combine architecture, sculpture, and painting in a single form, and will one day rise towards the heavens from the hands of a million workers as the crystalline symbol of a new and coming faith.
Walter Gropius

Monte Rosa Hut, Switzerland.

Visualisierung/Visualisation: Studio Monte Rosa, Prof. Andrea Deplazes, D-ARCH, ETH Zürich

The mountain hut (Neue Monte Rosa Hütte) is one of many projects initiated to mark the 150th anniversary of the ETH Zurich. It is an ambitious building project for a forward-looking SAC hut on 2883 meters above sea level, ustainable in terms of energy and ecology. The ambitious target: 90 per cent energy self-sufficiency! The energy is gained from an 85m² photovoltaic plant built into the south facade of the building. The hut will cost about 4.2 million Euro (5.5 million USD) and will be able to use the new hut from autumn 2009.



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Free Education Unit - Ahungalla, Sri Lanka.

project image - photo by Carl Pruscha

The school buildings in Wathuregama, Sri Lanka –a project by the One World Foundation - were almost completely destroyed by the tsunami on 26 December 2004. Already in 2005, a new site in a more secure distance to the sea was found and acquired.

site plan, for approx. units for about 700 schoolchildren, total surface of approx. 2,000 m²

The basis of the new school design (free education unit) by architect Carl Pruscha and his team is a functional, modular structure that can be extended as required both horizontally and vertically. Each module is square with a floor space of 36 m². The modules can be connected, furnished differently and be open or enclosed rooms (e.g. computer room with air conditioning). 32 modular units were built on the site.

Section
1: cross column - robust against sea waves
2: waffle slab - reduces the amount of concrete
3: ventilation opening

Garage Door Painted.

Garage door in fake painting.

Junk Bonus.

VW Golf 1972

When, like in Germany, people get paid for scrapping old cars, the question rises whether we should do the same with our buildings? The “junk-bonus” of about 2,500 Euro ($3,250) per car, is a plan to save the German automotive industry, however, it is highly controversial. The program should both motivate people to buy new fuel efficient cars and boost automobile sales. The criticism - some old cars are still in excellent shape and eco-friendly, whereas the brand new air-conditioned 4-wheel car isn’t – is evident. Moreover, what’s about a bonus for people switching from car to public transportations?

Not all old cars are ready for the junkyard and the same applies to buildings. But what to do with empty, unsalable, environmentally unfriendly houses?

18th century building demolished – shortly before it got protected. A way to make room for real estate projects (see Denkmalschutz-Groteske in Margareten)

Utopia.

"It is the dirty secret of all architecture, even the most debased: deep down all architecture, no matter how naïve and implausible, claims to make the world a better place."

(from: Content, Rem Koolhaas, p. 393)