Article 4: Google FLUX

OUR STORY

» We are a passionate team of technologists optimistic about technology’s ability to improve the quality of buildings, the strength of communities, and to minimize their impact on the environment. Our project was started in late-2010 at Google[x], Google’s research lab, with the mission to address two global challenges: climate change and affordable housing for the urbanizing population. We are funded by Surbana Jurong, DFJ, Borealis Ventures, Obvious Ventures, South Park Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, and Google Ventures.

Flux provides cloud-based collaboration tools for architects, engineers, and contractors to exchange data and streamline complex design workflows. Flux acts as an interchange point for sharing project data such as the architectural program, schematic designs, analysis models, and material schedules. Flux plugins work with popular design software, such as Rhino/Grasshopper, Excel, and Revit/Dynamo, to automate data transfer to and from Flux. In contrast, most design software today relies on manual file transfer, data conversion, and data-merge, which are tedious and error-prone tasks. Let us handle “the plumbing” so your teams can spend time on what is most important to them: design.

Collaboration tools are critical infrastructure to address the urgent need for affordable and sustainable buildings for an urbanizing world. Today, there are 1 billion people with substandard housing. By 2050, another 2 billion people will move into cities. Our industry needs to work together to develop new methodologies to meet this demand, while minimizing our usage of energy, water, and extracted materials. We want to partner with people and companies who share this mission. » Fragmento sacado de la pagina oficial

Google BIM for Construction and Design

“In the future there’s potentially two types of jobs: where you tell a machine what to do, programming a computer, or a machine is going to tell you what to do,” says Preston-Werner.

Flux es la primera organizacion de google que interviene el area de construccion y diseno arquitectonico. La diea principal es darle una herramienta el cual le ayuda al arquitecto en el proceso de diseno. «Google’s management, was a platform with online-based planning applications to help architects and engineers in the design process, especially for skyscrapers and large buildings. The platform includes planning tools of expert architects and engineers and advance analytics and simulation tools. Genie standardizes and automates the design and construction processes with unlimited design options, enabling an architect to preserve the building’s uniqueness in the urban environment.» Randy Deutsch

Se promueve de que esta herramienta va a posibilitar que el costo de las construccion en edificios de gran magnitud se redusca a un 50%.

La ideologia principal del sistema es producir una «semilla» unica el cual apropie las caracteristicas urbanas y cambie segun su contexto. La semilla contiene unas variables preterdeminadas las cuales cambian a partir de las caracteristicas que se le proporcione. «To address the urban population crisis, says Jen Carlile, we need to stop designing individual buildings and start designing building seeds.» Randy Deutsch