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Projects
You can find many of my projects below. These tend to be larger projects. I usually post smaller projects in my blog under the AEC-CAD, Design, Timber Engineering or Web & Programming categories.
(most recent on top)
Finding Our Favorite Places
A university of 27,000 students and several thousand more faculty and employees is a very complex environment whose spaces and places are experienced differently by different audiences.
This project sought to request feedback from students, faculty, employees and visitors to UMass about their favorite places on campus. This was done by providing a website that allowed to crowdsource feedback by letting users place a pin at their favorite locations and submit a comment.
Departmental LCD Lobby Display
Having a CMS-based departmental website, it just made sense to display our news items and other content on an LCD screen in our lobby. While the lobby admittedly still needs some renovating, the new screen brightens the space up nicely and promotes our department to students and visitors.
Read on...My Printed Work @ UMass
This is an overview of my graphic design work at UMass. These are mostly conference announcements, program flyers, postcards or posters.
With all my digital work, it is always fun to create something that you can hold in your hands afterwards.
SketchUp Ruby Code Editor
This code editor offers an easy and visually appealing way to create and modify Ruby scripts directly within SketchUp, Google’s free 3D modeling software.
These scripts can be used to create geometry, add functionality or add data within the SketchUp 3D modeling environment.
Interactive 3D Visualization of Building Envelope Systems Using Infrared Thermography and SketchUp
This project explored the application of the visualization capabilities of Infrared Thermography in conjunction with three-dimensional models of buildings. Three-dimensional modeling is a powerful tool for visualizing and representing building conditions that is used by architects, builders, and contractors. Also, a three-dimensional model is better understandable than a more abstract two-dimensional representation (like a floor plan or an image).
Read on...Plugin Loader for SketchUp
This SketchUp plugin was created out of a need for having plugins available in a “locked down” computer lab setting (similar to my solution for AutoCAD). It also provides an easy way to browse some of the web plugin repositories and then to load any plugin into SketchUp – from any location.
Read on...My Web Projects
I conceptualize, design, implement and am maintaining a fair number of websites for myself, UMass and other entities. Most of these are WordPress-based CMS-type sites.
To keep track I figured I should keep a list of all of them. You can find it here.
Centroid and Area Properties Plugin for SketchUp
A little while ago, I had a need for calculating centroids for planar shapes in SketchUp. To be more exact, my students had the need since I gave them an assignment that required this. Not knowing of a plugin for SketchUp that would accomplish this feat, they did it in Rhino or AutoCAD instead.
To rid SketchUp of this shortcoming, I decided to re-use some old Pascal code of mine and try my hand at writing a plugin for this. Here is the result.
MillRenovation.org as a Portal for Redevelopment
MillRenovation.org has been created as an open, web-based directory of successful and potential post-industrial re-use case-studies of mill buildings and other commercial structures.
It is the aim of MillRenovation.org to provide a collection of redevelopment case-studies.
HTML and CSS Font Size Chart
This was an early attempt of mine to get a handle on font sizes in web design.
Read on...Timber Engineering Dictionary / Wörterbuch Holzbau (German, English)
This is a specialized dictionary for timber engineering terms in English and German. It currently contains approx. 1000 timber engineering and general engineering terms.
Read on...Strength Capacities and Behaviour of a Composite Timber-Steel Connection System
This study examined the strength properties of a new timber connector that consisted of a sectioned steel tube embedded into the end grain of heavy-timber structural members using a vinyl-ester based mortar. The steel cap of the connector featured a threaded hole that allowed for the attachment of a variety of connecting steel elements.
Read on...DOWEL – A Software to Simulate Dowel-Type Connectors in Wood or Other Materials
The DOWEL program is a finite-element modeler for dowel-type connections (e.g. nails, bolts, lag screws) in wood-wood, wood-steel or any other type of connection material configuration. The underlying model has even been used for pile modeling in soil. It calculates load-displacement curves for monotonic and cyclic loading applictions and plots deformed shapes at predefined displacement steps. Material inputs consist of basic material embedment data. All material data is stored in a database that can be appended by the user.
Read on...Preliminary Structural Evaluation and Presentation of Refurbishment Options for the Usher Mill in Erving, Massachusetts
This project, which was completed in the summer of 2003, was aimed at evaluating the structure of a 1918 Western Massachusetts paper mill, which sat empty and had been deteriorating for 13 years. Ultimately, the feasibility of any redevelopment on the site was to be investigated.
Read on...Design of a New Arts Building for the University of Massachusetts
At the time of this project, the University of Massachusetts in Amherst was seeking seeking proposals for the design of a new Arts building. I created the design presented herein as a semester project for an Architectural Studies studio led by Sigrid Miller-Pollin.
Read on...A New Website for the UMass Amherst Architecture Program
In 2004, the University of Massachusetts got approval to start a new accredited graduate-level Masters program in Architecture. In the process of reorganizing the existing design program in the Department of Art & Art History into the new Architecture+Design program, a new website was needed. The design of this site is based on two motifs: The strong horizontal shapes of the Fine Arts Center in which the program is housed and the square, which is meant to be a visual representation of the equal contributions of the interdisciplinary partners on campus.
Read on...Long-Term Testing of a Wood-Concrete Composite Bridge Deck
To understand the long-term behavior and to test a wood-concrete system in the New England climate, we constructed a 14 ft. slab (the “bridge”), loaded it and have been measuring deflections and strain in the structure since November 2005.
Read on...Monotonic and Cyclic Behaviour of Slender Dowel-Type Fasteners in Wood-Steel-Wood Connections
The objective of this study was to investigate the monotonic and cyclic behaviour of different kinds of slender dowel-type fasteners. To accomplish this, four types of fasteners were tested in a series of 73 monotonic and cyclic tests. All tests used either one or two slotted-in steel plates in PARALLAM®, a Parallel Strand Lumber (PSL) product.
Read on...GA Optimization for MS Excel
This program allows the user to take an Excel spreadsheet with any type of calculation data (no matter how complex) and optimize a calculation outcome (e.g. total cost) using a Genetic Algorithm approach. Genetic algorithms (GAs) are based on biological principles of evolution and provide an interesting alternative to “classic” gradient-based optimization methods.
Read on...