3rd Dimension Blog

Added Value For Your Project!

To help celebrate 10 years in business, 3rd Dimension are offering fantastic ADDED VALUE to your project by announcing a range of amazing special offers that will suit EVERYone, EVERY business and EVERY project. And the best bit -They’re all FREE! 

Click Here for full list of offers.

Oscar Winner From Ireland.

RICHARD BANEHAM, graduate of Ballyfermot College of Further Education, shares a well-deserved Oscar trophy with Joe Letteri, Stephen Rosenbaum, and Andrew R. Jones. Richard earned the Oscar for Visual Effects for his work in Avatar and in doing so, he put down a marker for creative Ireland at a time when “grade inflation” seems to be the preferred topic of discussion among the non-creative class in Ireland. Much of Ireland’s creative genius can be traced back to immersive tutorial experiences in creative spaces like Ballyfermot, Dun Laoghaire and other third level institutions involved in the craft of visual language training and life drawing. I’ve listened to interviewers chat with Oscar nominees and their creative cadre (Tomm Moore, Paul Young, Darragh O’Connell) and it becomes obvious that where award-winning creativity is happening, foundation skills are paramount.

Drawing and the art of narration features in a new animation degree programme under review in Tipperary Institute. It takes years, “8-10 years to understand why we had learned this,” Baneham told IFTN, as he reflected on why an accredited third level curriculum spends so much time on those core skills. As all the dust settles and Third Level Ireland attempts to horn into the spotlight of Oscar glory, those carping about standards should take a moment to reflect on the fact that some of the best creative minds coming from Ireland did not approach third level with a pile of CAO points. Many of the most successful animators and designers in Ireland did not complete four years of college. Instead, they reveled in achieving high marks in continuous assessments, built commendable portfolios in a collegial atmosphere, and learned what the creative industry admired before they went off in search of professional exposure.

Said another way, it’s not smart for the Department of Education and Science to chase after a lagging indicator like academic marks. Instead, it’s more fruitful setting standards for continuous assessment and in archiving portfolio work appraised to meet course training guidelines. I would really like to put Richard Baneham’s Ballyfermot portfolio on display at our Digital Expression exhibition in April so my creative multimedia students can see the kind of work an up-and-coming creative needs to accomplish at third level.

article ref

Dockland chiefs ran up €600,000 travel bill.

Board members and executives from the Dublin Docklands Development Authority (DDDA) splashed hundreds of thousands of euro on luxury travel, expensive meals and fine wines, an Irish Independent investigation reveals. Dozens of unpublished internal DDDA documents have uncovered a culture of excess and extravagance at the authority, which has accumulated crippling losses of €213m.  They show that board members — including disgraced banker Sean FitzPatrick — spent huge sums on visits to dockland developments in the US, Russia, Finland, the Netherlands and elsewhere.

Mr FitzPatrick and other former board members stayed in hotels charging up to €580 a night while on DDDA business. On one trip, champagne and caviar were ordered during a lavish banquet. Mini-bar and bar bills were frequently claimed from the DDDA on other trips, while large quantities of wine were purchased for some board meetings. On another occasion, the DDDA was billed for more than €1,000 worth of tickets to a West End show in London. The Irish Independent has also learnt that receipts linked to a number of foreign fact-finding missions have “gone missing” despite a requirement for the authority to keep them on file.

The DDDA’s new board, chaired by Professor Niamh Brennan, has since banned expensive foreign trips, which cost the authority almost €600,000 in the space of just five years. The revelations will heap further pressure on Environment Minister John Gormley to publish potentially explosive corporate governance reports on finance and planning at the authority.  The publication of the reports has been delayed while they are being examined by Attorney General Paul Gallagher. As well as Mr FitzPatrick, another former Anglo Irish Bank board member, Lar Bradshaw, also went on expensive DDDA trips between 2003 and 2007. Both men simultaneously sat on the boards of the bank and the authority when Anglo Irish agreed to part-finance the disastrous €412m Irish Glass Bottle site deal.

Read More

Architecture head at WIT insists architecture is still an attractive career for school leavers

School leavers and mature students are being urged not to overlook a professional career in architecture because of concerns about the impact of the current recession on employment across the construction sector. Máire Henry, Head of the Architecture Department at Waterford Institute of Technology, encouraged potential future architects to remain upbeat with those interested in design and the societal importance of architecture encouraged to examine it as a career.

Henry was speaking as the first cohort to successfully complete the Bachelor of Architecture (Hons) programme at the Institute; the BArch (Hons) at Waterford is the first new professional programme in architecture in Ireland to have full accreditation from the RIAI.

While acknowledging that opportunities to work in architecture practices in Ireland at present are “incredibly scarce” for those starting their careers, Henry said there were more encouraging trends beginning to emerge in key overseas labour markets where many Irish architecture graduates are building their early professional experience.

She added that opportunities for graduate architects also exist in certain other key overseas markets including north America and southeast Asia. “There is no denying that it is now massively more competitive than at the height of the boom but the situation is not entirely without hope for those who are flexible and willing and able to temporarily relocate if the right opportunities exist elsewhere. At WIT, we prepare students for the possibility of working internationally and our staff have considerable overseas experience. We offer electives in foreign languages and have successful work placement and exchange programmes in France, Germany, Italy, Denmark and Mexico.”

article ref

mydeco and Dassault Systemes launch the ‘Furnish Your Photo’ application, allowing users to choose from hundreds of 3D furniture models to add to a photo, helping them to visualize how a new sofa, table or even chandelier might look in their home.

mydeco.com and Dassault Systemes launched a new augmented reality iPhone application, ‘Furnish Your Photo’ which enables users to choose from hundreds of 3D models of furniture to add to their photo, helping them to visualize how a new sofa, table or even chandelier might look in their own room.

The mydeco app allows anyone with an iPhone to become their own interior designer by making it quick and easy to visualize a specific item in your own room – to scale, and positioned where you want it.  By downloading the free mydeco app (search ‘mydeco’), now available in the iTunes app store, users can choose from 500 3D models of real pieces of furniture including design classics such as Philippe Starck’s ‘Miss Lacy’ chair, Tom Dixon’s wingback chair and the Eames lounge chair. Although the app already includes more interior design themed 3D models than any other iPhone app, mydeco plans to expand the range to include approx 75,000 3D models from the catalogue of over 5 million furniture items already available on http://mydeco.com/.

Brent Hoberman, mydeco Executive Chairman and founder of lastminute.com, comments “The ‘Furnish Your Photo’ app is the first app to enable iPhone users to visualize a piece of furniture in any room – instantly. This isn’t an example of an app which uses technology for the sake of it; it’s fun but it’s also very practical. By positioning the sofa exactly where you want it, you can get a really good idea of whether it’s going to work in your home before you even shop for it. It’s like a virtual fitting room for your living room.”

The app takes one of the most useful features of the iPhone – the ability to quickly take a photo while you’re on the move – and layers on top sophisticated 3D visualization technology to give the user a simple, but useful ‘augmented reality’ experience.
Once added to any photo, the 3D furniture models can be spun around, moved up or down, and moved forwards and backwards to give an incredibly realistic photo-quality image of the item in your own room. The furnished photo can be saved to the iPhone photo library, shared on Facebook or emailed according to user preferences.  “This iPhone app is a first step towards a strong partnership with mydeco, to bring 3D life-like experience to this creative and vivid online decorating and interior design community” stated Frederic Vacher, Dassault Systemes Director Digital, Content and Media. (http://www.3ds.com)  “With 3D, people can now experience on their mobile or online not only the form of the product but also have a real interaction: 3D is a new media that engages consumers with products.“

Inspired by Tim Burton’s hotly anticipated ‘Alice in Wonderland’ film, the app also includes fantasy 3D models such as giant toadstools, thrones, and oversized tea-cups. To celebrate the launch of the app, mydeco is launching a competition for users to design the best fantasy Alice in Wonderland room, to win tickets to see the film when it is released on March 5th. To enter, users simply email their furnished fantasy room photo to iPhone@mydeco.com
To download the free mydeco visit ‘Furnish Your Photo’ app, search for ‘mydeco’ in the iTunes app store.

mydeco, founded by the management team behind lastminute.com, is the UKs leading interior design and home wares website. It brings together 5 million products from over 2,000 retailers, boasts 3D technology to design your home, and a thriving community.

article ref

Have you ever wondered how many computers it takes for Pixar to render their big screen 3d animated films or ILM to render giant transforming robotic aliens? I understand this area of filmmaking might not be interesting to everyone, but I find it fascinating. Besides being a huge film geek, I’m somewhat of a techie as well. The first time I had the opportunity to visit LucasFilm, they actually showed me the company’s huge renderfarm, a room in the basement housing all the computer servers used for all the LucasFilm, LucasArts and ILM productions.  A few videos have been circulating the interwebs this week giving us a glimpse at the tech behind LucasFilm and Pixar, the San Francisco Bay Area’s two big film companies. Watch them now, after the jump.

The campus has a 13,500-square-foot data center, which houses a render farm, file servers and storage systems. The set-up includes more than 3,000 AMD processors, proprietary render-management tools, allowing desktop workstations to be added to the render farm pool after hours, expanding the processing capacity to more than 5,000 processors. Here is some more information about the impressive tech employed at LucasFilm’s Letterman Digital Arts Center:

• A state-of-the-art high-performance data network with more than 300 10-gigabyte ports and 1,500 1-gigabyte ports — the largest in the entertainment industry
• Fiber-optics cable pulled to every artist desktop, enabling Lucasfilm to deliver high-resolution images to each digital artist
• 600 miles of cable throughout the four buildings on the campus
• Raised floors throughout the building, opening the layout of the studio and enabling the workspace to be reconfigured with each new project
• Data storage (at opening) of more than 100 terabytes
• A Media Data Center to host custom-designed media servers to deliver high-resolution images to the on-campus digital theaters, screening rooms and desktops
  Systems for image and sound editing, color management and correction, and high-speed compositing
• A Media Control Room that manages media input, output, format conversions and duplication

Read more, see more photos and video clips: www.slashfilm.com/2010/02/25/cool-stuff-a-look-at-pixar-and-lucasfilms-renderfarms/#ixzz0ha8Vhlez

€100M Station Project For Dublin.

Award winning, international design practice Austin-Smith: Lord has secured planning consent for a new €100m railway station in Dublin.  The strategic infrastructure plans have been approved by An Bord Pleanála, the Irish planning authority, for a 12-storey air rights office and a new concourse above Tara Street in the city centre based on a somewhat taller design by Adamson Associates developed with Irish Rail Architects. Austin-Smith: Lord is working in conjunction with engineering consultancy AECOM, Irish Rail Architects and Córas Iompair Éireann, a publicly-owned public transportation company in Ireland.

At 50 metres high, the new building will be just nine metres shorter than Ireland’s first sky-scraper, Liberty Hall, which is directly across Dublin’s river Liffey. The existing station is already one of Ireland’s busiest, serving 25,000 passengers a day. Demand is expected to grow as the number of trains entering the station increases and the new building will be able to cope with a passenger rate of 14,500 per hour at peak times.

The plans include the demolition of the existing structure and the construction of a new 20,990sqm development that will retain the 19th century railway arches and platform walls. All work will be phased to keep the station operational throughout. Access to the new station will be from Tara Street and George’s Quay, with 14,990sqm of offices on 10 levels over the station concourse. Richard Cronin, a Director at Austin-Smith: Lord, said: “The work at Tara Street station forms a crucial part of the infrastructure development plans for the rail network in central Dublin. “The new concourse will provide passengers with a vastly improved access point on the Liffey in the centre of the city. “The new station will be a striking addition to the city’s skyline but one that will sit comfortably alongside the existing structures.” Austin-Smith: Lord has extensive experience of major railway redevelopments, including Liverpool Lime Street, Oxford Road in Manchester. The practice is currently working on the £185 million Wolverhampton Interchange project.

article ref

US embassy plans inspire naming of Mulryan’s giant London development.

DEVELOPER Sean Mulryan is expected to name his giant property scheme in south-west London “Embassy Quarters”, after the US government unveiled its new “glass cube” embassy in the area this week.  Mulryan, of Ballymore Properties, owns large tracts of the Nine Elms development in south-west London and a new US embassy is set to be the anchor tenant. The scale of the new embassy design, complete with moat, is likely to persuade other tenants to become part of the scheme.

Ballymore sold the land at Nine Elms to the US government, but retained all the land around the embassy site for its own development. The company acquired the land over a number of years through individual land purchases and joined it together. Ballymore, which is believed to be the largest Irish development company, is hoping a recent endorsement of the area by Mayor Boris Johnson will boost the area further.

This week, an innovative design for a new London US embassy by architect Kieran Timberlake, was unveiled. It aims to be one of the greenest buildings ever built in Britain and it will have several security enhancements, including bomb-proof glazing.  David Brophy, Ballymore chief executive said: “The move of the US Embassy to Nine Elms will act as a catalyst to the regeneration of the whole area and we are delighted that this landmark building will be at the heart of our scheme.”

artilce ref

Engineers Ireland launch joint report on Ireland’s Infrastructure needs in 2030.

Ireland’s infrastructure development should focus on the eight principal city regions, according to a study launched today. The report, “Infrastructure for an island Population of 8 million”, estimates that the population of the island will reach 8 million in the 2030s, compared with six and a quarter million today.  It projects that by then 90% of the island population will be living in the eight principal City Regions comprising an area of about 65 km from the centre of each city. 

Jointly prepared by Engineers Ireland, the Irish Academy of Engineering and commissioned by InterTradeIreland, the study outlines the intense international competition for the knowledge based industry of the future.  This industry, which will provide the island with a high standard of living, will only locate in regions with a high level of infrastructure. Ireland’s infrastructure at present is well below that of its international competitors.  World class infrastructure can best be provided in a cost efficient way with an urbanised population (towns with at least 1500 people) and in cities with high density.  On the island of Ireland this can best be achieved by concentrating on eight City Regions with 90% of the island’s population according to the study. The performance of the City Regions will determine the overall competitiveness of the island.  They must each be of top international standard appropriate to their scale.  All infrastructure development undertaken in the interim should have this goal in view. 

On being presented with the study, An Taoiseach Brian Cowen TD welcomed the initiative by the engineering profession in undertaking this valuable independent evidence-based research to determine the infrastructural requirements of the island of Ireland in the decades ahead.  The report will be of considerable assistance to Government in determining how an internationally competitive island economy can be progressed in a sustainable manner into the future.

Director General of Engineers Ireland John Power acknowledged the contribution made by all the organisations involved and the importance of the study.  “It is clear that there is still an acute infrastructure deficit in Ireland but this study provides a framework that can help the Government to direct funds to where maximum return on investment will be provided.  On behalf of Engineers Ireland, I would like to thank the Irish Academy of Engineering and InterTradeIreland for their contribution towards what is a thorough and comprehensive analysis of the steps Ireland needs to take to ensure it takes its place amongst the most advanced economies of the world.”   Click Here to Read More.

Described as a “radical departure from orthodox approaches to hospital planning”, the CircleBath scheme is set into the hills 9km south east of Bath

The three storey building provides operating theatres, bedrooms, consultation, treatment and recovery spaces, and offers both in-patient and out-patient accommodation. Planned around a central light filled atrium with private consultation rooms leading from it at ground level and in-patient bedrooms arranged around it above, divisions between departments are minimised to ease the stress involved in consultation, treatment and recovery for patients and reducing walking distances for staff.

The building is dug into its hillside site; public entry is from the road on the north directly into the atrium on the ground level floor. The northern façade comprises dark panelling at the lower levels while on the south, glazing opens out to views over the surrounding rolling countryside.

According to the architect’s description, the rectangular upper volume and roof appears to float above this recessive skirting and is clad in a reflective lattice of aluminium shingles. Throughout the building, there is an emphasis on natural light and views. Balconies line the building’s northern and southern edges, oriented to maximise views across the surrounding rolling countryside. Commenting on the design, the architects said: “Sympathetic landscaping further emphasises the therapeutic natural environment – an overall approach very different from more familiar hospital surroundings.”

Artilce ref and more photos: http://www.planonline.ie/page/240