Pooling together at AIA in New Orleans, the staff of WF Designer -- a new publication that joins the family of Church Production and Worship Facilities magazines -- took eyes and ears to the busy expo floor. These are among the products we reviewed: LG's commercial air conditioning units (space-efficient, non-obstructive tower types) for large churches and community centers and small no-duct wall units ideal for retrofit spaces and smaller room use. Then we learned that LG offers much more than electronics and air conditioning -- the company also offers LG Hausys with stone countertops for church kitchen and food prep areas, as well as a new LG Solar division. Find out more at www.lge.com and www.LG-SOLAR.com.
At Saint Gobain's booth we saw Certainteed building materials, as well as a number of other products applicable to church design and building. One in particular is Sage Glass's new automated shading system for worship space and multipurpose areas where a building calls for both ample natural light and the ability to darken a room for A/V/L presentations and worship services. Watch upcoming issues of WF Designer for a case study on a Virginia church multipurpose area designed with a Sage system (www.sage-ec.com).
Another interesting conversation today took place at the Autodesk booth, makers of Revit Building Information Modeling software. Autodesk unveiled today a number of 3D BIM-type products that work hand-in-hand with an architect to help him or her potentially better communicate with clients, including church leaders, throughout the stages of an integrated design approach. Now Autodesk offers a set of tools that works within the larger tool of BIM to help architects better model buildings at each stage of a job -- to help deliver church clients the best 3D product for buy-in from congregants, for example, to software that allows architects to fashion building plans for church retrofits where no such plans existed before (allowing an addition to an existing building to move forward in a more smooth, cost-effective, and time-efficient manner). And even software that can give information about a building's performance after construction, helping facilities managers and building owners do a better job of effectively managing this important asset.
A number of products we saw today on the expo floor are now in BIM tools, as well, including Architectural Area Lighting's newest line of outdoor campus fixtures. Watch for more coverage on AAL's products and others in upcoming issues of WF Designer, running as its own standalone publication four times in 2012, beginning in March.
More WF Designer news can also be found in July -- when www.wfdesigner.com goes live. Watch for more AIA New Orleans updates tomorrow.
