Wednesday, November 27, 2019

AIA Minnesota Convention 2019 Recap

The annual Minnesota Conference on Architecture, hosted by the Minnesota chapter of the American Institute of Architects, is now behind us. I was honored to present for a fourth year in a row on efforts I am engaged in here at LHB. Today I will share a recap of that event. Perhaps this post will entice you to attend this prestigious event in the Mid-West next year!
"Minnesota AIA is one of my favorites - more like a national conference than a state conference" Randy Deutsch AIA, LEED AP - Architect, Author, Educator, Speaker


Keep reading to learn more...

As usual, I will recount the story of what was the 2019 Minnesota AIA Convention with lots of photos, mostly in chronological order.


The conference was held at the Minneapolis Convention Center in Downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota.


The first session I attended, Using BIM Data to Automate Project Benchmarking, was a great one by my friend (and co-speaker in another session) Rachel Riopel, AIA, Digital Design Managing Principal at HDR, who was joined by the talented Kristen Schulte from Proving Ground. I ran up to the front before the session started to get this great close up:)


The next session was the first or two sessions I participated in; a tour of one our completed projects which we employed augmented reality on; Vertical Endeavors Tour - Informing Design with Augmented Reality. Each year, the conference hosts a number of tours throughout the conference.

The next image is from my presentation, which showed the president and owner of Nicros, Inc & Vertical Endeavors, Nate Postma, using the Microsoft HoloLens at the existing warehouse about two years ago.


Here is a photo of the completed project, which the folks who signed up for this session got to tour.


This next image is what Google Earth still shows...


Contrast that image with this one, which is at the lower right corner in the previous image.


The group who signed up for this session all met at a designated location and boarded a traditional yellow school bus to be transported to the project, about 15 minutes away.


LHB's Design Director R. Bruce Cornwall, AIA kicked things off with the group gathered in a large multi-purpose room at the facility.


After the presentation I gave, on what the Microsoft HoloLens is and how we used it, we broke the group up into two. One group toured the facility with Bruce and Nate. The other group got to try out the two HoloLens devices with the project model loaded and aligned with the now built-out space. I was joined by Stuart Shrimpton (LHB Designer) and Tracy Panio (VP at Nicros, Inc. & Vertical Endeavors). Finally, the groups switch between tour and AR demo.

The next two photos are of folks trying out the HoloLens. The AR model was closely aligned with what was actually built. Everyone really seamed to like what they saw!



Back at the convention center, is the exhibit hall...  always something new and interesting to see and learn here. The Dunwoody School of Architecture students were CNC'ing natural wood jewelry... I notice the other day that my daughter was wearing the earnings I gave her:)


And, thanks to my suggestion we had Enscape in the exhibit hall this year! Hosted by none other than Phil Read.


Wednesday ended with an inspiring evening keynote presentation from Jing Liu, AIA, founder of SO-IL from Brooklyn, New York.


Here is a photo of a slide highlighting one of her projects... Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art.


First thing the next morning what the other session I participated  in; A Cross Section of New Technology for Architecture. This was a panel that included Joshua Franco, Assoc. AIA (P/K Arch & Dunwoody student), Ted Martin (P/K Arch), Rachel Riopel, AIA, NCARB, LEED AP (HDR) and Dustin Schipper (Cuningham Group).


We each had time to talk about what we are working on at our respective firms and then opened things up for Q&A. I think this session went well... we had a lot of good questions.


This last session I was involved in was on "Student Day" so I did a drawing for all the students in our session to win one of two copies of my Revit book Autodesk Revit 2020 Architectural Command Reference.



And with that... another great conference is in the books.

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