v5: How do you see the implementation of these ideas? What are the steps you're taking to make this a reality?

Marty - We know that we can't build something like this ourselves, and so we're talking to programmers, people who understand Internet programming, people who understand how to write software for architecture and engineering. We're talking to people who understand financing, putting together an Internet software company. We're talking to people who have done this before in other industries, who've put together a team of designers and computer support people and all the stuff that has to go in to make this happen. We want to put all these people together, including ourselves in kind of a design role to steer it, and put together an even larger group of architects and engineers kind of as focus groups to tell us what they would want from it.

David - And we're building a product, a software application that will be available over the Internet. It allows a lot of these things to happen in the beginning stages of this five-year idea. It will be available for architects, and hopefully it will be a tool that they really use, instead of  just something they go to for reference. It will be integral to their work. And four architects are running it as if it were an architectural project. We're also acting as developer in the process.

Marty - So maybe there will be someone else who's like the contractor who will actually build this, and we'll participate as the architect of the system. Right now we're in the schematic design phase. We know what the shape is, and who we want to bring to the team to make it possible. We're actively seeking out those people.

Adam - We all have a huge amount of faith in the Internet as the best possible way to give everyone access to the process; as opposed to individual pieces of software that everyone buys and rigs together. That's what will probably take the longest time, developing a consistent interface that is standardized worldwide, one that architects, engineers, and everyone in the process can understand and operate regularly.

You have to have a certain amount of interactivity to bring about design. The Internet as a entity isn't so important as its ability to bring about instant communication and exchange.

David - A lot of contractors will want to hold out, but once e-commerce really engages the building product market, they won't be able to hold out. They'll lose their competitive advantage. You create a better product that forces the market to come on board, or allows the market to come to it. You offer those tools to builders in ways that advantage them, and then that momentum will build.

v5: Are you working with existing companies such as Autodesk and Form Z?
Everyone is fighting for that geography in the architectural office right now.
 

Desert Residence.Scott Parker

Marty - Yes. It seems that Autodesk doesn't want the product information part, while the publishers of Sweet's Catalogue don't know anything about the CAD part. What no one seems to be doing is getting all these people to talk in some kind of universal, or at least compatible, language. Our interest really is in integrating all these things. We don't want to build a CAD program, we don't want to build a library, but we want to bring all these people together to build this tool.

v5: So if I'm an architect in the year 2001, and I'm on the Internet and I want to use a given window type, let's say Anderson, I can just go to their Web site and from their catalogue pick something that's three-dimensional and integrate it with the other fixtures that I've picked out as an architect, from American Standard or whoever. So all those products are meant to work within the model base - the 3-D model.

Marty - It's as simple as drag and drop - you just drag it straight from the catalogue on Anderson Windows' Web site onto your CAD model, and you can see changes in your specifications, changes in your cost estimate, changes in the renderings; this allows all of these things to be connected. It's going to take a long time for this to be engaged, but the same people who use the catalogues successfully now will use the Internet successfully in the future.

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