Autodesk Research
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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…
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After posting several times about our recent trip to the US - with stops in Boston, Los Angeles and San Francisco - it's time to talk about the broader purpose of the tour. My team has been organizing a series of evening events called "Encoding Experience", with the primary goal of bringing together a community of interest around capturing the human experience of the built environment. We invited interesting people from academia and industry to come together and have a discussion about how we might start to quantify and simulate human experience. Our first event was in Boston on April…
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After posting about our time in Boston and Los Angeles, it's now time to talk about San Francisco. Before finally (in the next post) getting around to the whole point of the trip. Let's hope it's not too much of an anti-climax. On Monday of last week, Dagmara and I arrived in San Francisco after a short hop from LA. Seeing the Marin Airporter brought back lots of memories from when I lived in San Rafael from 2000 to 2003, back before Uber and Lyft made airport drop-offs a breeze. I can't count the number of times I took the…
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In the last post I talked about arriving in Boston. I've deliberately skipped the reason we were in Boston - and in San Francisco afterwards, too - as I'll cover those in an upcoming post. I do want to spend some time talking about what we did between Boston and SF, though. When I originally looked at the options for this trip, I first thought about spending the weekend in Baltimore with my son: it turns out he's in full-on exam period, though, so it wouldn't have been the best time to visit, to say the least. Besides that he'll…
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After a relaxing long Easter weekend, on Wednesday I was back on the train to Zurich airport. This trip is primarily for events we're holding in Boston and San Francisco, but we decided to insert a stop in Los Angeles between the two, to catch up with a number of people there and and to visit venues for the LA28 Olympic Games. But first, I had to get to the E gates at Zurich airport. Not that this was particularly arduous, I just happened to snap a photo on the train that goes there. I've recently been granted frequent flyer…
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In Europe we're about to celebrate the long Easter weekend, so things have been a little busy finishing up work in a number of areas, especially as soon after I'll be heading across to the US for the rest of the month. I managed to submit two Autodesk University 2025 proposals - let's hope that at least one of them gets accepted. I was also (apparently) the first DevCon presenter to record their session ahead of next month's event. I'm very happy to have gotten that one out of the way before my travels. I haven't had time to properly…
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After a relatively quiet winter season - I've had a few trips to the UK and Italy, but nothing too hectic - things are about to get much more busy. Looking at my calendar I see trips to Italy and the UK again, but also trips to Boston, L.A. and SF (thankfully all in one trip) and others to Amsterdam and Toronto. And it's only going to get busier. I'm actually really lucky to have been able to attend the Neuroscience and Design class during this period: only one of the 12 sessions looks like it's going to be affected…
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I'm roughly halfway through a class on Neuroscience and Design, which has introduced me to many interesting new concepts and many interesting new people, too. It's through this class that I've connected with the Future Cities Lab - which has staff both at ETH Zurich and its satellite location in Singapore - who are performing some really valuable research. They're currently running a survey to understand how cognitive sciences impact architectural design. Here's a description of what they're looking for in their own words: This research aims to explore how well knowledge from cognitive sciences is being integrated into architectural…