SOM gets on Board with Tall Wood

If you have been following the recent building trends in wood architecture, you may have already asked yourself this question: How tall can we build in wood? As it turns out, the currently most prolific highrise planning firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) is throwing their weight into the discussion. With a recently published report, this firm is […] Read more..

Fire-resistance of Cross-Laminated Timber

  Canadian researchers recently put Cross-Laminated Timber (CLT), a somewhat new building product, to the test to determine fire-resistance properties. Their findings were: The tests demonstrated that CLT assemblies can achieve significant fire resistance that is close to three hours in some cases with even unprotected CLT under full loading conditions. The failure modes were […] Read more..

My SketchUp Book is Out!

This is an exciting week! My book “Architectural Design with SketchUp” is now available from all of the online booksellers and should be in stores soon, too. After a year of writing and a few months editing and finalizing, it feels really good to see the final product now on store shelves and on Amazon’s […] Read more..

Maker Faire 2012 was a blast!

My family just spent an amazing day at the 2012 World Maker Faire in New York. It was a blast! Between the life-sized mousetrap and the kids coloring a Zipcar, there was so much to see and do. What amazed me most was the fact that almost every single booth had at least one 3D […] Read more..