American Passive House Network

While the power struggles and controversy continue in the North American passive house comunity continue, a new agnostic group has formed and their website is now live.

Visit the website. Sign up for the newsletter. Contribute to the conversation.

Introductory information on passive house can be found on wikipedia here.

I also started a linkedin group for the APHnetwork, here is a link to it. (and to a post with a list of many other passive house groups). Please join.

Also be sure to check the website of the Passive House Institute in Germany, its Passipedia, the International Passive House Association, and the great resources on the IPHA Multimedia page.

The documentary film maker, Charlie Hoxie, also recently released a film, Passive Passion, with some excerpts embedded below.

Introduction


Wolfgang Feist

How to Fabricate - Fabian Scheurer of Design to Production

A great video from a presentation that Fabian Scheurer of Design to Production gave in Copenhagen at a conference organized by the Center for Information Technology in Architecture.

Fabian Scheurer (Design To Production) at the Digital Crafting Symposium 1 from CITA on Vimeo.

More great videos from CITA are available here.

30 stories in 15 days. In China, Watch and Think.

This video is generating a lot of attention on the web. More coverage here and here.

This story continues to get more interesting, now this is floating around the web, "200 story Prefab for 100,000 People Can Be Built in 2 Months."

The Economist now including Digital Fabrication in its Topics Index

As Digital Fabrication gains increased media coverage it is great to see the Economist offering increased coverage. See the complete Digital Fabrication index here.

The "Print me a Stradivarius - How a new manufacturing technology will change the world" cover article published in February 2011 was widely quoted (and enjoyed) on the web.

Antoine Picon (Harvard Graduate School of Design) at the Digital Crafting Symposium, Copenhagen 2011

More on Digital Fabrication from Denmark's Center for Information Technology and Architecture

Antoine Picon (Harvard Graduate School of Design) at the Digital Crafting Symposium, Copenhagen 2011 from CITA on Vimeo.

Autodesk and Digital Fabrication + Building Information Modeling

Autodesk and Digital Fabrication. At Autodesk University 2011 in Las Vegas Autodesk CTO, Jeff Kowalski, discussed five waves of technology disruption including digital fabrication in his keynote presentation.



Jeffrey McGrew of Because We Can discussed his experience with digital fabrication. Click here to begin the video with Jeff's presentation (if the link doesn't work simply move ahead to 23m 38s in the keynote video). Jeff also gave a presentation on Five Common Pitfalls and Misconceptions of Digital Fabrication from BIM at the event but it wasn't recorded. Jeff's 20 page presentation from Autodesk University 2009 "From Fabulous to Fabrication: Real-World Digital Fabrication and BIM" is available here.


Mark Hatch, CEO of Techshop, discussed the democratization of digital fabrication and the open-access chain of workshops Techshop is opening across the country. Click here to begin the video with Mark's talk (if the link doesn't work simply move to 29m 37s in the keynote video). Here is a post on Mark's talk from Core77.

And here is Autodesk CEO Carl Bass speaking with Vivek Wadhwa about Innovation and Manufacturing at a Singularity University event in January 2012.



The entire interview is almost an hour long, jump to minute 47:25 for Carl's answer to "How does new manufacturing change architecture?" Direct link to his answer here:

http://youtu.be/Chaj7iK-lt8?t=47m25s

Fabricators know this. And are collaborating with innovative architects interested in building the future - and the future of building.

And here is a link to a video with Autodesk Labs VP Brian Mathews showing a 3D printed motorcycle.

Autodesk does offer a "Using BIM for Fabrication" as a BIM Workshop in the "Extending BIM Beyond Design" series which references many other resources including relevant websites like this linkedin group, "BIM + Digital Fabrication = Smart Building"

Also see some of the Customer Stories at the Autodesk - Building Products, Equipment and Fabrication page and this post from Cadalyst on BIM and Digital Fabrication (1-2-3 Revit Tutorial).

If your interest is the digital fabrication of buildings, I highly recommend this video with Fabian Scheurer of Design To Production on

How to Fabricate

Fabian Scheurer (Design To Production) at the Digital Crafting Symposium 1 from CITA on Vimeo.

I also recommend the video below by David Fano of CASE from the Autodesk Yale University BIM Symposium