Craig Janssen of Acoustic Dimensions is in New York today at a strategic planning meeting with George Leventis of Langan, Guy Geier of FXFOWLE, Gray Plosser of KPS Group and Glenn Bell of Simpson Gumpertz & Heger. This executive committee of the Global Design Alliance is focused on a “better together” initiative exploring collaboration and trust-based teams in the architecture and engineering industry.
Craig Janssen was interviewed in InfoComm’s Special Report released this week on Integrated Project Delivery . IPD has been the focus of conversation for multiple groups in which Craig is actively engaged in leadership including the Global Design Alliance, Mindshift, and InfoComm.
The article presents an overview of IPD, outlines that the construction delivery model is changing and highlights the role that BIM plays.
Janssen believes that this shift presents opportunity for the AV industry. “We’re good at picking up technology quickly. Our strength is that we can learn fast,” he says. “We’re moving towards an open-source world, but we don’t yet know the power of Wiki thinking.”
In late 2010, the BIM Task Force—on which Casey Sherred of Acoustic Dimensions serves—will be releasing a comprehensive 30-page report explaining BIM and the role it can play in the AV industry. In addition, InfoComm will begin taking steps to automate certain AV functions in BIM software, so that products will appear in a drop-down menu.
railLA is a collaboration between the Los Angeles Chapters of the American Institute of Architects (AIA|LA) and American Planning Association (APA), which have joined forces to effect change and build public awareness of the benefits of next-generation bullet trains in California. Acoustic Dimensions is a sponsor of the exhibition – a multi-media experience showcasing concepts, ideas, and musings from around the world on the future of Los Angeles – a future beyond just cars!
Participants in this group have developed creative and practical solutions to address the issues surrounding the construction of high-speed rail and the modern transit-focused developments that it will service. The project is expected to be the largest construction project in the nations’ history. railLA has quickly become a growing partnership of architects, city and regional planners, and engineers working with business and community leaders as one voice to guarantee that the promise of high-speed rail becomes a reality.
Located at the Jewel Box/ City National Bank, 525 S. Flower Street, Los Angeles, the exhibit runs through August 28. Admission is free, 10 am – 7 pm daily. You can check out more about railLA at www.railla.org.
As of September 20th, the Dallas office will be relocating to a new building across the street. And watching the project come together has been somewhat amazing.
To understand how meaningful this is for us, we need to highlight that our Dallas office began in the building we currently reside in. Craig Janssen and Vance Breshears rented space here when it was a simple rent- by-the-month office space. Over time, we took over more and more of the building until there was no room for other monthly tenants. When we had completely outgrown the space without hope for further renovation, we began looking for something new when our landlord approached us with the possibility of renovating his previous headquarters which was right across the street.
We called in Beck Architecture to provide the design—with a lot of input from our in-house designers. And we also decided to pursue LEED—which has been an adventure all its own.
As we come closer to move-in date, things are snapping into place quickly. From our vantage point across the street, we get to see the progress clearly. Soon, we will begin sending out moving notices. (Which seems a little funny since it is only a one digit change. Instead of 15505 Wright Brothers Drive, we will now be 15508.)
Most of the consultants in Acoustic Dimensions Dallas office share a love for jalepeno potato chips. In fact, if we order lunch in from a local sandwich shop and they send a variety of potato chips, you have to move pretty fast if you want to lay claim to the one or two jalepeno versions tucked in among the BBQ, sour cream and plain varieties.
And while we know the fate of the world doesn’t hang on the question, there has been long-standing debate over which sandwich shop offers the “best” jalepeno potato chips.
This week, we decided to settle the debate once and for all with the definitive jalepeno potato chip taste test. Chips were scored on taste, aroma, heat, crunch, texture, appearance, and finish. Our consultants took the scoring very seriously taking time with the ratings. In the end, Lays scored the highest with Miss Vickie’s a very close second.
Of course, we should probably put a disclaimer at the end of this post about the lack of scientific accuracy of the study, but our guess is you already know that.
Acousticians have a challenge that few outside the industry may be aware of…and it involves a starter pistol.
During acoustic testing, sometimes you need a big omnidirectional sound source to measure the reverberation time of a space. The noise needs to be louder than absolutely everything else. It needs to be impulsive. (No time to escalate.) And it needs to stop almost immediately.
In testing smaller spaces, you can blow up a large balloon and pop it. As you might imagine, this is no fun if there isn’t any compressed air handy. (Or an intern—as some of our crew remember from their college days.) But in a large space—say an auditorium or an arena—the popping of a balloon, simply isn’t loud enough.
Enter the starter pistol.
It is loud, omnidirectional, impulsive and the sound falls off immediately. Seemingly, it is a perfect solution…except that storage is awkward, you can’t own one without a license in New York, you can’t take it on a plane, and apparently—as we learned this week—you can’t order “blanks” in Texas.
On the upside, testing with a starter pistol has a Mythbusters sort of charm. We used it in our testing for CUMC this week. If you look closely you can see the “smoking gun.”
And if you think using starter pistols present an interesting dynamic, don’t even get us started talking about the use of yachting cannons… (No, that is not a punchline.)
In 1999, we began work on our first NFL stadium. While we had ballparks and university football projects in our resume, Paul Brown Stadium was our first NFL project--and we were given six weeks to get from concept design to contract documents to meet an aggressive schedule.
We set up a 'war room' and our team worked many, many late nights to sort out the engineering and prepare the documents and specifications.
The project would go on to include a number of firsts. At the time of opening, the home of the Cincinnati Bengals had the most extensive use of LED displays in any stadium in the US. As we looked at the mockup of the fascia boards back in 2000--even we were excited. Who would have known that concept would become standard practice for most stadiums and arenas worldwide?
Paul Brown Stadium is 10 years old this month.
When you work with auditorium designers almost anything can become a staging exercise. David Stephens, Russell Reid and Jason Foster have been working on the interior configurations of Dallas’ new office space. This week, they moved into prototype mode. The theatre design team has been experimenting with taking over-the-counter solutions from Ikea and Home Depot and transforming them into custom solutions for Acoustic Dimensions. (And I probably should mention that with a history of stage design not only do these guys have full shops in their homes but they are also deeply experienced in taking things that are used for one purpose and morphing it to do something else.)
Like most designers, we have the day-to-day realities of needing drawing storage and plenty of layout space, comfort in spending hours in front of a computer, and having physical spaces that support connection and collaboration within the team. We also have the need to balance work that requires focus, concentration and acoustical separation with the creative energy that comes from conversation.
So if you stop by our Dallas office at the moment you will find a variety of displaced furniture, Ikea schematics, random tools and various prototypes scattered about. And while messy, it is also building anticipation for our late-September move in date.
Last Thursday evening AD team members Michele Baird and Vance Breshears attended the opening event of the railLA exhibit – ‘LA Beyond Cars’. As event sponsors, it allowed our team the opportunity to support the efforts of this group of collaborators. railLA is a collaboration between the Los Angeles Chapters of the American Institute of Architects (AIA|LA) and American Planning Association (APA), which have joined forces to effect change and build public awareness of the benefits of next-generation bullet trains in California. The group develops creative and practical solutions to address the issues surrounding the construction of high-speed rail and the modern transit-focused developments that it will service – together expected to be the largest construction project in the nations’ history. railLA has quickly become a growing partnership of architects, city and regional planners, and engineers working with business and community leaders as one voice to guarantee that the promise of high-speed rail becomes a reality.
The exhibit is a multi-media experience showcasing concepts, ideas, and musings from around the world on the future of Los Angeles – a future beyond just cars! Located at the Jewel Box/ City National Bank, 525 S. Flower Street, Los Angeles, the exhibit runs through August 28. Admission is free, 10 am – 7 pm daily. You can check out more about railLA at www.railla.org.
Shown in picture left to right: Jonathon Louis, Program Director – railLA; Bob Vanech, Treasurer – railLA; Michele Baird, Business Development Manager – Acoustic Dimensions; Becky Johnson, Director Corporate Communications - Siemens
