World Expo to promote building

Ninety Eighth Post: World Expo to promote building

It probably be months before recovery from Hurricane Katrina. But people and business are going to need a place to live and operate. Plus the levies must be fixed and the city protected from future hurricanes.

But what if to inspire and calm people and to motivate others to help and rebuild the city, there would be a World Expo to promote building. If people could see something being done along with current relief efforts, they would be more hopeful.

To explain where the idea comes from, I will describe the article in “Computer Graphics World” June 1999 issue. In the article on pages 34 - 40, it tells the story of how Lisbon, the Capital of Portugal, host a World Expo. They decided that the Expo would not only be architecture to beautify the city, it would have useable buildings that people and businesses could populate after the fair was over.

The reason the story was in CGW is that the designers used CAD and 3D graphics to maintain, design, and keep structured when designing the buildings. They requested building offered to submission be in electronic format (preferably AutoCad) along with traditional format. This was around 1993, 1994 respectively. This let them choose the buildings and have a computer model to show.

The concentration of the article was on how they used 3D graphics, but I think the idea of a World Expo or at least showing a model of the future buildings and homes if key. The only thing is that something like this takes time. Portugal’s Expo buildings are scheduled to be completed in 2010. That is 15 years to design and build almost an entire city. But with time so will the problems caused by Hurricane Katrina be solved.