Autodesk Research
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On Monday I hopped on an early train to Geneva to meet with Eve Edelstein. Eve is an Adjunct Professor at the Stanford University School of Medicine and a board member of the Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture (ANFA). Eve and I had met in San Francisco at our Encoding Experience event there, and she had kindly reached out to let me know she'd be passing by my general vicinity on her trip to Europe. We met at the Cottage Café and over a couple of cappuccinos (cappuccini?) we had a really interesting discussion about the human experience of architecture,…
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Now that I'm back from Toronto I have the time to share some news that came our way last week. The production team at Frontiers in Sustainable Cities informed us that a paper we've been working on - Experiential space analysis: scoring tranquil, social, and explorative places in habitable buildings - has been published in their research topic on Intelligent Systems for Sustainable Building: Balancing IEQ with Energy Efficiency. The paper is the culmination of significant effort from the various authors - Rhys, Nastaran, Jeremy, Seba, Dianne, Frederik, Mike, Liviu, Tomas, Dagmara and myself - over a couple of years.…
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This week I've been in Toronto for an internal summit of our Research Engineering team. On Monday I stopped at the SWISS lounge by the E gates at Zurich airport. It was nice to hang out on the balcony overlooking the planes... they even have binoculars you can borrow! Shortly before we left a quick rainstorm hit. As I boarded it was getting sunny again, though. The flight was largely uneventful. On arrival I zipped through customs and immigration and took the UP Express to Union Station. As it was a really quick trip, I'd planned on going straight out…
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The recording from our panel discussion at the "100 Minds in Motion" event - held a few weeks ago at UCL PEARL - is now live on the Bartlett School of Architecture faculty webpag for the project. The least interesting piece of this recording is when I'm speaking, so really do please feel free to stop watching beforehand. It's quite near the end, so you have plenty to enjoy until then. Image courtesy of Hugo Spiers, UCL. We're very excited about the future of this collaboration with UCL: we have co-funded a PhD project for someone to work on analyzing…
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Last week prospective speakers who submitted class proposals for AU 2025 - which is being held in Nashville from September 16-18 - were notified whether the sessions were accepted or not. For this year's AU I'd submitted two classes. One was a look at various technologies we've been exploring to capture the human experience of the built environment, going back to projects such as the one we did with The Bentway, but also looking at more recent efforts involving crowdsourcing, EEG and VR. Unfortunately this class was declined. My other proposal was to repeat the session I delivered at the…
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At the end of the last post I was waiting for my new flight from Schipol to Heathrow, the original having been cancelled for some reason. In the end I managed to fly out the same night: I was in a middle seat, but by that point I would have stowed away in the hold or in the toilet if I had to. Next time I need to do that journey I will take the train - I really don't know why it didn't occur to me this time. It was getting late when I got in: I was held…
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On Tuesday morning, the beginning of the first day proper of Autodesk's DevCon Europe 2025 in Amsterdam, attendees started to arrive at the historic Beurs van Berlage. It's really a beautiful conference venue. It wasn't long before I was catching up with old friends, including past and present Autodesk employees. The Piro brothers are regulars at Autodesk events, although they're now there with different companies. For the first day's general session employees were asked to use an overflow room with a large screen. I ended up standing at the back. I propped my machine on a table holding a scale…
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This week I'm spending time in Amsterdam and London. On Sunday I headed across to Geneva airport and checked into a hotel that's a gentle 10-minute walk from the terminal. It was the first time I'd stayed there, and I admit I was pleasantly surprised. The atrium was nice and I even had a cheeky sauna before sleeping. The alarm going off soon after 5am was a bit of a shock, but I felt rested enough. The walk across to the terminal was pleasant, considering the early hour. There weren't yet cars on the roads. Security was really quick, so…
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I was up earlier than I needed to be on Saturday - even after the MIT party of the night before - so headed across to the Giardini della Biennale in very good time for the 11am opening. It was a very nice walk along the main waterfront. I decided to stop nearby for breakfast. If I'd known at the time that this would be the last thing that passed my lips until getting to the airport, I'd definitely have eaten more. I walked through a very nice park with an arts & craft market just being set up. I…
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This mini-series of posts relates to my trip over the weekend to Venice for the opening of the 2025 Biennale. I took so many photos that I've decided to split it into three parts. The first being about my trip across to Venice with the second two focusing on the Biennale itself. My main purpose for visiting Venice was to attend the last in-person session of the Neuroscience and Design class I've been attending. On Thursday afternoon of last week I took the train to Zurich, while doing my best to participate in the course's last virtual session. I dropped…