Founded in 1985, BKSK Architects is a 30-person, four-partner firm in Manhattan. About a third of their work involves high-end residential design, either for individual clients or for developers and owners who convert entire buildings from industrial to residential use. The balance of their projects involves a variety of building types, including public and institutional buildings, child-care centers, and places of worship. record sat down recently with partner Joan Krevlin and associate Todd Poisson to discuss the firm’s technology.

BKSK’s partners (from left): George Schieferdecker, Stephen F. Byrns, Joan Krevlin, and Harry Kendall.

ARCHITECTURAL RECORD: First things first—Mac or PC?

JOAN KREVLIN: We’re all on Macs here. We chose our CAD package, [Nemetschek’s] Vectorworks, because we felt it was more intuitive to use and easier to learn than other CAD programs. And Vectorworks is Mac-compatible, so using Macs was a natural choice for us. We do maintain one PC in the office, to translate some AutoCAD files into Vectorworks and to use the AIA’s Contract Documents software. I really wish that package were on the Mac platform. [Editor’s note: the AIA plans to make this product dual-platform in the future.]

BKSK upgrades its hardware continuously—none of their computers is more than three years old. Apple Macintosh G4,from $1,499 www.apple.com Partner Harry Kendall and associate Todd Poisson rely on Handspring Visors to organize their days. Handspring Visor Pro, $199 www.handspring.com

AR: Do you employ anybody on staff for technical support?

JK: No, but we have an on-call consultant, Rick Bernstein, who does this work for us: maintains workstations, installs software, trains the staff. We find we get better service by hiring tech support people on a contract basis.

TODD POISSON: Rick is an irreplaceable asset. He steps in to do presentation renderings for us when needed, as well. And he teaches periodic classes to small groups of us, to keep us up to date on various types of software. We also try to appoint one person as an “expert” in each of the software packages, so we can go to that person when we have questions.

AR: Who designed your Web site? Do you maintain it in-house?

JK: A company called the Brooklyn Digital Foundry designed our site (www.brooklynfoundry.com). We chose them because we really admired the sites they’d built for other architecture firms, like Tod Williams Billie Tsien. The Foundry also designed a very user-friendly interface to allow us to upload text and photos ourselves.

TP: We ran into an interesting conflict when we were designing our Web site. AOL doesn’t support Flash 6 [used to create animated Web pages], so we had to create both HTML and Flash versions of our site. We have a lot of residential clients that use AOL to access the Internet, so we need our site to be accessible by all possible venues.

The firm uses digital cameras to document site conditions and construction. Canon PowerShot S200, $299 www.usa.canon.com

AR: Is there a difference between younger and older staff when it comes to technological proficiency?

TP: Yes. And the older/younger divide changes continuously—it seems to happen in 10-year increments. Heavy-duty software prowess is the domain of the younger junior architects, who learn by doing things over and over or from school experience. There isn’t a project with a big enough budget for me to learn Form-Z, but I’d love to master that program.

AR: What’s the biggest technological challenge your firm faces?

JK: I’d say it’s color printing. Getting the colors to display correctly on-screen and on paper is tougher than it sounds, and the printers are expensive to buy and maintain.

AR: If you could create any pie-in-the-sky application or techno-toy for your practice, what would it be?

TP: We’d like to find database software that can be shared officewide.

JK: We really need an application that will let us maintain a list of contacts, leads, past clients, things like that. We just haven’t found anything yet that’s Mac-compatible and easy to use.

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