Human-centric building design
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Just 24 hours after getting back from my trip to Toronto and Banff, I was heading back to Zürich for a flight across to London. It was really hot, so I waited in the tunnel at my local station for a good 10 minutes before heading up to the platform. The trains in Switzerland are generally quite comfortable even in hot weather. Normally I have to change in Neuchatel to get to Zurich airport, but at this time of day I also had to change in Bienne and Zurich main station. Going past Swiss lakes on a hot day sometimes…
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At the end of the last post, Andrew Sonta and I had managed to arrive (slightly delayed) in Calgary, missing our bus and having to wait 2 hours for the next one. After grabbing dinner at the airport, we were able to take the last bus of the night, leaving at 10:30pm. We eventually arrived safely in Banff, at the Centre for Arts and Creativity, where the ACM BuildSys conference was due to be hosted the following week. Here's a photo of the entrance that I took during daylight, the following day. Here's a map of their lovely campus. We…
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Last week ended up being a really good week, in many ways. My research team had our bi-annual feedback session with our leadership team, which I feel went very well, and the day after my daughter performed at Festi'Neuch. I was so busy worrying about the former that by the time the latter happened I was completely relaxed. Which ended up being 100% appropriate, as "The BANNED" completely nailed it. Check them out on Spotify! On the following Monday, I started off for Canada. It was a direct flight from Zurich to Toronto. The flight was slightly delayed, but only…
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I posted this today on LinkedIn. I'm having to rethink my approach to using this platform. Next week marks 20 years of my "Through the Interface" blog, but lately my standard approach of posting links to my content - with a few images - is leading to fewer and fewer people seeing my posts, at least those coming in from platforms such as this one. Part of me doesn't care all that much: I feel like I've grown out of my dopamine-hungry, engagement-measuring phase and I certainly find it a shame that I have to create "native" content to be…
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This is really exciting: for the first time, Autodesk Research - and specifically the Enlivened Design team - will be participating in the London Festival of Architecture, hosting a workshop at our office in Covent Garden on Friday June 26th, 2026. The LFA kicked off this week and runs through the month of June. This year's event has the theme of #Belonging, which is perfectly aligned with our research interests. Be sure to check out the programme! Here are some details about our workshop from the LFA website and the Autodesk Research LinkedIn post: Encoding Experience: Rethinking how software shapes…
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In a few weeks I'll be heading back across to Canada for several meetings. During the week of June 15th I'll be in Toronto for internal meetings, then I'll fly across to Calgary (somewhere I haven't been since the early 2000s) on my way to Banff to participate in the SocialSys'26 workshop ahead of the ACM BuildSys conference in Banff. For many old-time Autodeskers, the name Banff immediately brings back memories of AutoCAD, specifically the 2000i release, which had Banff as a codename. This will be my first time visiting Banff - and speaking at BuildSys - so I'm very…
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On Saturday I once again headed to my local railway station to start my journey to this year's annual technical conference for Autodesk employees, TechX 2026. It was, as ever a lovely train journey to Zurich. There were some engineering works, so I had to change trains in Zurich's main station. Not uncommon for a weekend. This year's event was in Seattle. There isn't a direct flight from Zurich, so my first flight was to San Francisco. The flight was uneventful. I had a middle seat but at a bulkhead, so I was actually really comfortable. I'd been warned by…
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Today marks the beginning of this year's Mental Health Awareness Week in the UK. We're collaborating with University College London in a number of areas - not least through our Visiting Scholar, Fiona Zisch - and one important project is being highlighted alongside other projects that have been funded via UCL's Grand Challenge relating to Mental Health & Wellbeing. The MINDS Living Lab - which stands for Mental Health, Interiors, Design & Sustainability - has been highlighted in this video, and I'm happy that my friend and close Autodesk Research collaborator Dagmara Szkurlat was featured alongside Fiona and another close partner…
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I haven't posted since DevCon - other than the excellent guest posts being contributed by Patrick Nadeau - as we've entered quite a busy time of year. My team has now delivered a couple of shareouts for our company's senior leadership, and we'll shortly be going into the Research organisation's mid-year review cycle for our various projects. Anyway, this week has given me a bit of a breather: while Friday was a holiday in Switzerland, today is a holiday in the UK and Canada, presumably for Star Wars Day. May The Fourth Be With You Always! At the weekend I'll…
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Wednesday marked the start of this year's DevCon, after the warm-up day on Tuesday. Things started with a breakfast in the Expo Hall. (These pictures are actually from later in the day, when I happened to be upstairs by the balcony.) Autodeskers were asked to attend the keynotes in the overflow room. The main takeaways for me from the Day 1 keynote were around the imminent public availability of official MCP servers for some of our products, as well as the fact that Autodesk Assistant will be able to call MCP servers that partners have certified in our Design &…