On Reflection: The Future Is Now

The Future Is Now…

I slip virtual reality goggles over my head and I find myself inside a 3-D model of a condo. I pick up a plastic pistol. As I fire at the walls of the condo, the paint colors change. If I aim my shots at the floor, the wood finish flips from blond to brown to ebony. As I step forward, the room slides around me and I get a sense of how the tweed sofa looks and how far it is from the open-style kitchen.

This virtual-reality demonstration by Seattle gaming company VRcade (vrcade.com) was one of dozens of high-tech products on display at a recent three-day Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) Hackathon at the University of Washingtons Pacific Northwest Center for Construction Research and Education at Sand Point in Seattle.

The hackathon gave building industry professionals and techies from Seattle and around the country a chance to brainstorm solutions to challenges facing the construction industry. VRcades demo showed how gaming technology could be adapted to help sell condominiums. Wearing the goggles, which look like an oversize scuba mask, a prospective buyer in China could have a better sense of what it might feel like to be inside a Seattle condo under construction. And the buyer could use the technology to choose his or her favorite finishes.

The construction industry is not very innovative or technical, says AEC Hackathon board member Greg Howes, CEO of Seattle-based IDEAbuilder. But technology is steadily making headway in the $7 trillion construction business. IDEAbuilder, for example, uses robotics to make building components. Many construction firms use digital scanners and 3-D printers to boost productivity.

…but some old-fashioned ideas still hold water

Seattle construction company McKinstry is using a clever adaptation of long-established technology to help Amazon slash heating costs at the new campus its building in downtown Seattle. McKinstry and Clise Properties will recirculate the water used to cool a data center in Clises Westin Building to heat Amazons new offices in the Denny Triangle campus.

A 400,000-gallon reservoir and a heat-reclaiming chiller plant will be incorporated into one of the new Amazon buildings. Hot water from the Clise property will circulate to the Amazon buildings and then return much cooler to Clises data center across Sixth Avenue, where the cycle will begin again. Using this waste water to heat other buildings is likely to require only one-quarter of the amount of energy needed to heat water in a typical steam plant.