Revit In The Classroom

As many of you know, one of the chapters in "Beyond" section in Mastering Autodesk Revit Architecture 2012 is focused on using Revit in higher education. This past year, we had the pleasure of working with Singapore Polytechnic.

Founded in 1954, Singapore Polytechnic is the first polytechnic in Singapore that offered 3-year diploma courses. Today, there are 49 diploma programs ranging from architecture, arts and humanities, business, design, engineering to health sciences. There are 1,500 staff and 16,000 students housed in a unique green campus, which has been architecturally designed with landscaped courtyards.

Singapore Polytechnic offers Diploma in Architecture from the School of Architecture and the Built Environment. The School also offers courses in landscape architecture, civil engineering, facilities management and water technology. Each academic year 120 students enroll in the first year of the three year Diploma in Architecture (DARCH) program. The DARCH curriculum focuses on the integration design with technology and students are exposed to the real-world in a simulated office environment.

The School believes that BIM an important part of challenging the creativity of the students into innovative architectural solutions. In order to formalize the integration of BIM into the curriculum, a pilot program was introduced in 2010 for final year students of the fall 2009 / spring 2010 class. A year later, the DARCH course now requires students to be able to conceptualize design ideas and develop into workable design schemes with details using BIM.

The results? Check out chapter 23 in Mastering Autodesk Revit Architecture 2012. But this is the age of the internet, right? You want to see something now!!!

Well, you're in luck. Until your book arrives, the Mastering Revit Team has started a YouTube Channel located at http://www.youtube.com/MasteringRevit. And please subscribe in order to be notified when new stuff is posted.

We're not exactly sure how we're going to use the YouTube Channel after today, but for a start we've uploaded 10 videos (over 7 gigs!) highlighting Singapore Polytechnic and the School of Architecture and the Built Environment. Take a moment and check out the videos. The students have worked incredibly hard and we're really pleased and grateful to have highlighted their work in this year's book.

What's next for the YouTube Channel? Well, James and I have super-embarrassing video from AU 2010 of Eddy crying Twitter Tears into a tumbler of absinthe right after getting caught "sexting" a number of world famous architects. So we could post that stuff.

Hold on a minute! It's not what you think.

You see, in Eddy's lexicon, "sexting" refers to soliciting and receiving numerous and explicit texts messages and images highlighting the environmental benefits of "Semiarid Xeriscaping".

"Blah blah blah sob sob drink sob people should really think before they act so they can save the planet one drop of water at a time and I was just trying to do my part to make the world a better place sob sob drink...."

So it's not what you think (thank goodness). But on the other hand, you can't begin to imagine the size of the carbon footprint created by flying across the country to drink absinthe in the middle of the desert. Pretty explicit and disturbing stuff. Fortunately, the dry air and alcohol does a great job of numbing away the nagging irony.