Another installment in our series about the inspiring women of HOK (not to say that our men aren’t inspiring, too!): Meet Jeannette Thompson, Business Communications Specialist in the HOK Planning Group. While Jeannette calls St. Louis her home, she supports the HOK network throughout the world. You also know her as one of the Life@HOK blogstar team and future American Idol judge! Jeannette is a true superstar and I hope you enjoy getting to know her a bit better.

Q: What’s a typical day in the life of Jeannette Thompson?

A typical day involves a morning routine that is anything but typical, …

In celebration of ‘the Fifth of November’, aka ‘BIM Day’ I thought I’d post some ideas of what BIM (Building Information Modeling/Management) might look like in the future. This could be 20 years or 30 years, or never, but we should never stop thinking ‘what if’. In fact, recently I’ve been thinking about the possibilities so much that I’m getting scared that I don’t really know nearly as much as I should.

At any rate, I’m going to post possible future-casting ideas for the way in which we could be using BIM in the future to harness the power of the ‘building in vitro’. Some of these ideas are simply and process software related, but a majority of the focus is …

Two trains of thought. The city planned by the people, and the city planned for the people.

What do you think? Is one more democratic? Is one more successful and to whom? Is there a difference in the individual good and the collective good and do we view them differently? (think hard about that last one)

Maybe it’s both, I don’t know. But I have my assumptions. Maybe there’s just the ‘public’ and ‘planned’ framework that’s the most important part. Like New York City in the 1811?

One more thought. In the scheme of things, ‘What would nature do?’ Develop a framework or organize a system that builds its own framework? Instead of the ‘overlay’ for the greater good, it could …

This is not something we would normally be concerned with when you have the weight of the world’s tallest tower to manage… but WOW lightning loads on this must have been crazy! The bottom photos make it look like the lightning is literally stretching across the city to just touch this building! What’s really unbelievable is that in most of these photos you’re only seeing half the building–the vantage point must have been from high on the balcony of another building.

This is the Burj Dubai standing at just over 1/2 of a mile… 818 Meters!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burj_Dubai

…

City life wasn’t easy a hundred years back. At the peak of industrial industrial innovation, cities were crowded and congested. As some scientists have found recently, urban life isn’t easy even today. Jonah Lehrer writes in his article in Boston Globe, “One of the main forces at work is a stark lack of nature, which is surprisingly beneficial for the brain.”

This is brings up one of the key differences between Traditional Urbanism and New Urbanism. Traditional cities were restrained by walkability and security needs to keep the urban form tight and close knit. This did not allow for much open space or natural escapes within the urban core. New Urbanism promotes a healthy mix of natural and …