Morpholio was founded by Anna and three more architects who wanted smarter mobile tools for all phases of the design process. From our interview with Jim Keen we already know how amazing architectural illustrations can be by using Morpholio Trace. Besides Trace, for sketching and drafting, the suite for iPad and iPhone includes Morpholio; a digital portfolio, Board, for mood and design boards, and Journal, a sketchbook for drawing.

Morpholio believes that design tools should amplify the creative process, that thinking with your hands is critical. And that smart software should be accessible everywhere. And almost two million downloads and users in over 150 countries speak for themselves! The apps put designers first as they fuse the fluidity and speed of working by hand with the intelligence and precision of device and CAD technology.

Keep on reading to learn how architects founded this tech startup and how Morpholio could help your practice.

Enjoy the interview!

Could you tell us a little about your background?

I am an architect. I worked in New York City as an architect for almost ten years, spending the most time at Work AC, an OMA offshoot, and then at Columbia University curating and creating public programs, publications and exhibitions at the Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture. A notable exhibition from that time was Foreclosed: ReHousing the American Dream in collaboration with the Museum of Modern Art. My interest was always in the way that design interacts with the public and it’s ability to shape culture.

What made you decide to found/create Morpholio and who are the co-founders?

Morpholio happened when the first iPad came out, in 2009. Suddenly, we were carrying these incredible devices, but they weren’t meeting any of our creative or professional needs. We were first struck by the beauty and mobility, and therefore created a portfolio app so that we could share and present our work anywhere. But, as a team, we felt strongly, even from this early moment, that the touch screen was a gift to creatives. We believed that the ability to interact with our work in a new way – by hand as opposed to mouse – would have tremendous potential for designers and artists.

My co-founders were friends from the Graduate School of Architecture at Columbia University who were starting to build apps, as well as another architect.

Because we all knew design culture so well, it was easy to generate ideas about how it might translate into device culture.

What is your role in the company?

We all collaborate on designing the features and experience of the software. I also handle all of the PR and work hard to build relationships with our community and share their stories.

What is Morpholio’s business model?

Our business model is based on subscriptions. The app is free for basic use. Pro Tools have a free trial and then a monthly $3.99 or yearly $11.99 subscription.

Morphilio’s flagship app is Trace. Could you give us some examples of how it can be used and how it helps architectural practices?

Canary yellow trace paper is very familiar to architects. It’s a tool we’ve used for decades as a drawing medium, and yet, it was one of the last things to get translated into the digital workflow. Architects use so many programs fluidly, but hand sketching is ultimately the way we communicate to create, develop, and discuss ideas.

This is where Morpholio Trace comes in. It is the only tool that takes you through the entire design workflow. From start to finish, whether you are sketching early ideas over a site photo; developing massing that require scale and measuring tools, marking up drawing sets and details, or capturing images on-site and making notes to share with a contractor; all you need these days is your iPad Pro and Apple Pencil.

It takes the fluidity of hand drawing and merges it with the precision and smart tools of CAD.

This means that not only can professionals benefit from this fast new intersection of thinking and drawing enhanced by digital magic. But that anyone can experience architecture and have access to design-specific tools that will help them start a renovation or dream up a new plan for their home or office.

Morpholio has just lanched two new augumented reality tools. Could you tell us a little about them?

Yes! Morpholio is excited to add augmented reality to Trace with the launch of AR Perspective Finder. This new drawing tool lets users uncover virtual perspective girds, to scale, anywhere — making complex sketching easy and accessible. The scaling of the projected grids is revolutionary. And is only made possible by the power of iPad and ARKit to read and interpret the environment for you. You can now capture any space and sketch on top with perspective grides and guides to help you get it right!

Morpholio is also exploring new territories in Augmented Reality with the launch of AR Color Capture, a new feature in its already popular Board app, a mood boarding app primarily for interior design ideas. The new tool lets anyone virtually sample, experience and record colors from the world around them. Not only is this a new way of experiencing color, but also a new way of allowing color to influence décor, design and sourcing.

How has your architectural training helped you in the actual running of your businesses? What specific/transferable skills have proved the most useful?

Practically, architects are trained to work very hard, and to try their hand at a variety of skills. From graphic design to various software and techniques. Which means that architects are well versed to tackle the day to day needs of a startup as they arise.

But, above all, architects look at problems differently. When faced with a challenge, we are encouraged to rethink the angle, look at it from a new perspective, maybe even reframe the question in order to propose something that is both smart and novel.

The building industry is known for being slow to adapt to now technologies. How is your experience with this? 

Designers are generally early adopters. They are not afraid to try new things and genuinely enthusiastic about finding ways to make their work smarter, faster and more productive.

Do you have any advice for Archipreneurs who want to start and build their own business?

Go for it! But stay lean. We’ve built a creative team that allowed us to do most of the work on our own without expensive outsourcing. They say that startups that have to make tough decisions early on about priorities sometimes make smarter decisions than those who take investment and don’t have the same constraints. Don’t be afraid to take risks and fail along the way. It’s all about experimenting and getting feedback as you build a community.

In which areas (outside of traditional practice) can you see major business opportunities for up and coming architects?

I believe technology is opening so many doors for makers. We see this in the Brooklyn neighborhoods where warehouses and office have been transformed into furniture, fabric and product studios and showrooms. Digital processes and fabrication are really creating new possibilities for creatives and architects already know how to work with materials and details.

On the other had, we’re seeing really interesting think tanks gather teams around solving problems across the city. I heard a story about a startup gathering architects, technologists, urban planners and public health specialists to rethink a group of disfunctional neighborhood health clinics into a highly performing network of care providers that could also better track the data. And therefore the needs, of the population they were serving. This feat required the application of both technology and design. I imagine this is more of a “social” opportunity than a “business” opportunity, but certainly an interesting segue career that could have various immeasurable rewards.

About Anna Kenoff

Anna Kenoff is an architect, curator, and a co-creator of Morpholio; a software company that makes mobile design tools for creatives and professionals such as architects and designers. As an architect, she worked in New York City leading projects for Work Architecture Company; and exhibitions and public programming for Columbia University’s Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture.

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Anna would love to see your work and hear about your experience with Morpholio Trace or Board. Drop her a line at community@morpholioapps.com

The post How Morpholio Apps Revolutionizes the Creative Design Workflow appeared first on Archipreneur.

Why Every Project Should Tell a Story

Every story or narrative is a series of events tied together into a plot. In architectural terms, it could be the concept, shape or intended usage of a building. The audience wants to be guided through the plot within your story. In today’s world, you have a lot of tools to carry your ideas and visualize your project’s story. Architects use sketches and diagrams, even videos, to explain and transmit their ideas to the end user.

Telling a story by visualizing it can be can be a very different and innovative way to put forward your concept. Some architects sketch, some collect data and show diagrams, some build scale models and some render their designs. The key is to display your concept in the most appropriate visual form for the project in question.

There are many tools to visualize your architectural story. The art is in first hooking your audience with your story and then “selling” your design concepts to them through the narrative. But you don’t have to start plotting your story entirely from scratch; every urban task has a framework that can be exploited. This could be building law regulations, the spatial program you get from your client or the budget you have for the task.

Here are five popular methods, examples and tools that show the process of visual storytelling in architecture. You could easily make use of them to present your ideas and work to your clients, so giving them simple, visual cues that will raise their understanding of how the project will look. A good architectural design should tell a story that will stick in the client’s mind.

#1 Sketches – The Foundation of Architectural Storytelling

A sketch is a classic tool for an architect and one of the most powerful in helping to display a project narrative. Sketching is always the ‘go-to’ tool when you develop an idea for a building or a site. It is the foundation for all other tools. You could, of course, sketch a diagram as well as a storyboard for your design concept.

The way you draw a sketch should be understandable for the audience and transmit your idea in a clear and straightforward way. The following sketches are examples that easily explain design aspects to the audience.

#2 Conceptual Diagrams – The Storyboards of Architectural Design

Sometimes, you have a lot of ideas to put into one building design. It begins with the urban location and shape you are creating within the wider context of the city. It continues with how you would place the main entrance and organize the floor plans. After that, you might ask why there has to be, say, a public area in the third floor, or a courtyard in the middle. You might want to ensure that the façade has an opening in a certain position. There are many possibilities and questions you have to consider before you end up with your final design.

Naturally, you want to communicate all of these great ideas and the creative potential of your design to your audience. A series of conceptual diagrams make this possible.

Diagrams can tell a story to your client and make people better understand the overall concept of a building before the physical foundations are laid. The Danish company BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group) has mastered that approach. They come up with unconventional design ideas and often explain them through a series of well put-together design images.

On first impression, some of their building designs may not seem logical, even out of sync with the context. But if you connect their storyboard to the image, it will all become crystal clear and the shapes you see will be readily connectable to the narrative of their story.

It is fascinating to see how BIG tells these architectural stories, cementing the design in the audience’s mind, enabling them to connect and identify with it and even spread the word – it’s always fun to re-tell a good story!

#3 Models – Prototyping Architecture

The creative world is greatly concerned with design thinking and prototyping before the product is made. Architects have prototyped their plans for years by building models to test their designs on a smaller scale.

Models are a great way to visualize your design in 3D and to test a variety of different shapes in a way that is both time and cost effective. Not to mention, prototypes are a huge help in explaining your designs to your audience.

People who do not have an architectural background often find it difficult to visualize what you mean if you are simply telling them about new floor plans or renderings. Models will solve that problem and help you to tell your project’s story in a much more tangible way. So build models to visualize your design story!

#4 Renderings – Creating Virtual Reality

Architectural renderings illustrate your design project on a virtual platform. They are especially useful tools in winning people over to your ideas. You can introduce atmosphere, materials and even human interaction by way of the virtual platform.

Let’s say you want to sell the plans for a new apartment block. It will be much more likely to sell if your rendering shows beautiful green rooftops and balconies thronging with happy people watering their plants, than if you’d given them a simple mock-up on paper.

Imagine this: one of the apartment’s interiors is furnished with designer furniture and an open wine bottle stands temptingly on the kitchen counter. I know; architects have come to hate those cheesy moments that are often a part of renderings! But these moments are nevertheless important – you aren’t just creating a design plan for your audience; you are creating a vision of their ideal lifestyle.

Good images will burn into the mind of your audience and leave a lasting impression. It is a promising taste of something yet to come. Below are a few great examples of virtual rendering; with some of them it’s difficult to tell that they’re not real.

#5 Video – Let your Audience Fly with You

Making a movie about your project is probably the latest architectural storytelling tool out there. In some countries, it is already standard practice to present your project in this way to your client. In China, for example. Just as with renderings, films of your project can show your audience a virtual taste of their future, with moving images to boot.

Sound and music, virtual mock-ups of building materials and camera ‘flights’ inside and around the building all give you the opportunity to create a long lasting impression for your audience. I am very curious to see how this tool will develop in the future. See an architectural video of the West 57th Street Pyramid Tower from Durst Fetner Residential below.

I hope you have enjoyed this article and can implement some of the suggested tools into your work. I am now very curious to hear about the kind of tools you use to tell your project story.

Please feel free to add links to your architectural projects and stories in the comment section. And please do SHARE this article with your friends and colleagues!

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