Category: Musings

100 Years of Zurich

By Lynda

zurich100years_adA treat for Architects, Engineers, and roller coaster enthusiasts alike.

In 2012, Zurich Insurance celebrated their 100th anniversary. A century spent insuring people, places, and things has given the company a fascinating historical perspective, from covering one of the rides at the Chicago World’s Fair to utilizing special training to help employees handle the first computers.

Visit 100 Years Insuring America, Zurich’s special anniversary web feature, to explore the last century through the eyes of one of the country’s leading insurance companies. Check out cool black and white photos, old advertisements, and a timeline organized by decade.

“Zurich first brought its knowledge and experience in workers’ compensation insurance from Switzerland to America in 1912 to help its customers take intelligent risks.” Today, “Zurich employs about 60,000 people serving customers in more than 170 countries.” Read more about Zurich at their website.

Learn more about Zurich’s insurance program for Design Professionals here. And if you have any questions or if you’re interested in obtaining a quote from Zurich, contact your local a/e ProNet broker today!

The Textiles of a Not-So-Famous Skyline

By Lynda

Photo by Jonathan Camp

Oslo, Norway’s waterfront has undergone major reconstruction and renovation in the last few years. Following the completion of Oslo Operahuset (white building at the left of the photo) in April 2008, developers pushed forward with several new commercial high-rises nearby. It appears that the architects of each building created a unique textile for the building’s face by utilizing a wide range of materials, colors, window patterns and building silhouettes. While nowhere near the height, number, or drama of other major world skylines, Oslo’s is fresh, clean, and has quickly become a favorite of mine.

Blog Love: Amusing Planet’s Architecture Section

By Lynda

In October alone, this eclectic and fancifully-curated blog jumped around from Pre-Islamic Civilization in Madain Saleh in Saudi Arabia to Volkswagen’s Car Towers at Autostadt in Wolfsburg, Germany to the Construction of an Amazing Underground Hotel in Songjiang and the triumph of a Polish Architect who designed the World’s Thinnest House. If your workday needs a dose of hilarity, trivia, or awe, we recommend a visit to Amusing Planet’s Architecture section straight away!

Expanding Employment Liability Risks for Design Firms

By Lynda

It’s true. The insurance industry has a reputation for bringing doom and gloom to an otherwise cheery outlook. Forgive us. Our business relies on our being able to spot negative trends in advance so that we can assist our clients in preparing for the worst. That doesn’t mean we don’t also hope for the best! Economic recovery is still ongoing, and we are thrilled that this means our architect and engineer clients are working and growing again.

That’s why, in our May 2012 post, To Hire or Not to Hire?, we mentioned some of the considerations and concerns facing design firms as they take on work that “could require additional hands,” including the need for accurate Professional Liability limits on their insurance policies… just a little worth-thinking-about-in-advance gloom.

Then this week, leading Professional Liability insurance provider, Victor O. Schinnerer, released its most recent Risk Management Guidelines, including an item on the Expanding Employment Liability Risks of recovering architecture and engineering firms.

“As firms downsized to face an economic downturn and restructured due to changing technology and new project delivery systems that required altered business models, employment practices claims rose. Add to that the challenges presented by the new generation of employees—many of whom consider their lives and the operations of their employers as public information, and a number of whom find the workplace to be a forum for their opinions—who are flooding the market during difficult economic times, and by returning military who must be accommodated in their former civilian positions or given preferential treatment, and firms are faced with a demanding and confusing employment perspective as they begin to staff up.”

Continue reading “Expanding Employment Liability Risks for Design Firms”

Resilient Architecture & the Work of Doris Kim Sung – VIDEO

By Lynda

“My big question for Architecture is, Why do humans have to adapt to buildings? And why can’t Architecture adapt to humans?”

Doris Kim Sung

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=-Ms5qoMO3gQ]

It is in the very nature of a trend to move on past its point of highest enthusiasm and fizzle out in favor of something else. Architecture, like everything else, goes through these periods of interest and inclination. For a long time, Sustainable Architecture–environmentally conscious design–was considered the latest trend. Now that trend is evolving.

Resilient Architecture takes the ideas behind sustainable design a step further. Metal That Breathes is one of the latest evolutionary byproducts of the new trend, and is best evidenced by the work of Architect Doris Kim Sung of the University of Southern California.

Inspired by her original interest and education in Biology, Sung used so-called “smart metal” to design and build her Bloom installation in Los Angeles. As Sung pointed out in her recent TED talk, “[Skin is] the first line of defense for the [human] body… Our building skins should be more similar to human skin.”

One author on the Core77 design blog explained Sung’s work this way:

Sung has been experimenting with thermo-bimetals, two thin layers of metal that expand and contract, in response to temperature, at different rates. Laminating two like-sized sheets of different material together and subjecting them to a temperature change causes the sheet to curl up—and this phenomenon can be exploited to create a building that ingeniously shades itself as needed, requiring no external power.

Sounds crazy, no? And it’s possible that the American market is not yet ready to explore the possibilities of this breathing metal in its regular buildings. But as Sung mentioned in her recent TED talk, at least one Chinese developer is already including the thermo-bimetal screens in its design for a house. The screens “can actually open and close as the sun moves around on that surface,” said Sung. “[This implies] that we don’t need shutters, or drapes, or blinds anymore… we can control the amount of air conditioning you need inside that building.”

Watch Sung’s Metal That Breathes TED Talk (and hear about how the breathing capabilities of grasshoppers factor into her research!) here:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=wvIyVZf3qZU#!]

And in case you’re wondering about the deeper implications of this kind of beyond-the-basic-sustainability philosophy, I’ll leave you with this quote from a recent Treehugger.com blog post entitled Building Green Is No Longer Enough, It is Time To Build Resilient:

It turns out that many of the strategies needed to achieve resilience–such as really well-insulated homes that will keep their occupants safe if the power goes out or interruptions in heating fuel occur–are exactly the same strategies we have been promoting for years in the green building movement. The solutions are largely the same, but the motivation is one of life-safety, rather than simply doing the right thing. We need to practice green building, because it will keep us safe–a powerful motivation–and this may be the way to finally achieve widespread adoption of such measures. — Alex Wilson, founder of BuildingGreen

World-Architects & URBANSCREEN

By Lynda

I love when the latest update from World-Architects arrives in my email. Covering projects and trends from around the globe, this e-magazine makes architecture available and interesting to the public. There’s always something cool to see. This week, it’s a game of shadows and light: the colorful disappearing act of Sydney’s Opera House, brought to the masses by URBANSCREEN.

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/45835867]

Is your mind sufficiently blown? Thought so.

URBANSCREEN is based in Bremen, Germany. Established in 2005, their team currently consists of eight contributors, artists brought together from different disciplines representing architecture, music, stage design and media-art.

As URBANSCREEN notes in the World-Architects interview, “The majority of our works are homages to the concept of the architect, emphasizing a building’s features and extending the perception of its construction.”

Art feeding art feeding art. Check out the URBANSCREEN blog for more incredible videos like this one, and read the World-Architects article for an in-depth look at the artistic process.

Conflicting Trends in the Engineering Industry

By Lynda

School is back in session for Engineering students across the country. So, let’s talk about the future of Engineering. It is one of the oldest fields of study. It is also an industry integral to the everyday workings of our infrastructure. What can we expect of and for our engineers in the next two decades?

Recently, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers released a study on the future of the Mechanical Engineering profession, specifically. The survey included results from 1,200 engineers with a minimum of two years of experience in mechanical engineering-related positions. According to an article in Virtual-Strategy Magazine, “The study also revealed that early career engineers and students will play a major role in meeting global challenges over the next 10-20 years, especially in the areas of sustainability or renewable energy, bioengineering and biomedical fields, nanotechnology, green building technology, energy storage, smart grids and greenhouse gas mitigation.”

Other positive results from the survey showed that over the next 20 years:

  • The prestige of working as an engineer will increase
  • The financial rewards of working as an engineer will be greater
  • The number of engineers working in less-developed countries will be greater
  • The need for engineers to increase their ability to communicate more effectively, increase language skills and manage global teams will increase
  • Skills in motion simulation, animation and virtual prototype creation are needed

This is all great news, both for Engineering students still looking forward to beginning their careers, as well as for those who graduated in recent recession-hobbled years and may have struggled to enter the Engineering workforce.

But there is another trend in the Engineering industry that doesn’t quite jive with this expected uptick in demand, prestige, and reward. Even a cursory review of the enrollment figures for Top Engineering Schools indicates the presence of the problem. Continue reading “Conflicting Trends in the Engineering Industry”

Sheep, Voldemort, Paul McCartney & Civil Engineers: London’s Opening Ceremonies

By Lynda

Pretty cool that the hardhat-wearing men and women who designed and built the infrastructure of the thirtieth Olympic games received a shout-out last night during the opening ceremonies. They deserved some applause! Just ask ICE president Richard Coackley:

Olympic Stadium - London 2012 Olympics: Who will light the torch at the Opening Ceremony?

Photo: AFP

“Our day-to-day lives depend on the infrastructure around us that is designed, built and maintained by civil engineers – from roads, railways and bridges to energy, water and waste networks. It forms the backbone of society and the economy. But unfortunately it is often only when things go wrong that the work of civil engineers is thrust into the media spotlight.

“The London 2012 Games have changed this – showcasing and celebrating the work of these often ‘unsung heroes’ while at the same time helping the public understand more about what civil engineers do and what a diverse and exciting career it is.

“If anything could excite and inspire young people to pursue civil engineering as a career it’s the Olympic and Paralympic Games – a true feat of engineering in every sense.”

— ICE president Richard Coackley —

Read the rest of London Olympics 2012: Opening ceremony to ‘reinvigorate careers in engineering’ in The Telegraph.

Some Civil Engineering Optimism in Napa, CA

By Lynda

ProNet Client Project Profile

Who else is sick of hearing about the world’s crippling recession? The last couple of years have been especially tough on the construction industry, as well as on the various industries surrounding it. But design professionals are eager to see the light at the end of this thoroughly designed, planned, surveyed, engineered, and constructed tunnel.

So here’s some light! a/e ProNet client Chaudhary & Associates, a California civil engineering firm that’s determined to grow through and out of this tough time, received a glowing mention in the North Bay Business Journal last week. The following is an excerpt from the NBBJ article:

Napa-based civil engineering, surveying and construction inspection services firm Chaudhary & Associates (www.chaudhary.com) is bouncing back from the huge slowdown in private construction projects in the past few years, thanks to big public works projects rolling forward, according to President Arvin Chaudhary.

The firm currently employs 25, up from about 15 a year and a half ago and 49 at the peak of construction activity. In May, the firm moved to 211 Gateway Dr. W., in a same-sized office — 7,200 square feet — for about half the rent.

Targets for more business are a contract in Merced County that could call for four or five more employees and pieces of the $1.5 billion first and followup contracts for the planned California high-speed train project. Design-bid contractor proposals are due this fall for work next year. The company has been involved in major public works projects such as the Bay Bridge retrofit.

Yet with the state government fiscal crisis, Department of Transportation contracts for construction inspection and other services increasingly are less fruitful than anticipated, Mr. Chaudhary said. Overstaffing at Caltrans is resulting in retraining efforts and less of a need for consultants to fill roles on projects, as staff designers have been moving into field inspections, a role firms such as Chaudhary would handle.

The worry in civil engineering is that this move of Caltrans designers into the field will lead to a dearth of projects moving to construction in a few years, Mr. Chaudhary said. Continue reading “Some Civil Engineering Optimism in Napa, CA”