John V. J. Finkell aka Obi-Wan (born 1961) is the son of Arthur W. A. Finkell (decesased) and Agnes M. Finkell (deceased). He has had a passion for combining his Architectural schooling from The Catholic University of America with computers since 1983.
In 2003 he launched his web site DezignViz to serve as creative outlet for his views on Design Technology. This wiki entry is a further extension of that need for such a creative outlet.
He has been an end-user of design software, CADD Manager, and Application Designer and most recently part of the Design Technology group at NBBJ.
In January, 2005, John wrote an article entitled "Study Model Rendering for the Masses" which was in response to a posting on the Bentley Visualization newsgroup, entitled "Rendering Challenge - Quick Study Model Rendering." The posting itself generated quite a bit of feedback. The resultant article was not a solo effort in the least and much was garnered from that feedback as well as a great deal of advice from many on the newsgroups as well as Bentley personnel. Please refer to the Acknowledgements section at the end of the article.
John is fairly outspoken on his views regarding BIM, Building Information Modeling and Design Technology. To him BIM is too limiting a concept with its focus on Building it excludes other Design disciplines like Industrial and Product Design, and Information with its emphasis on Data excludes other forms of communication. He therefore is much more comfortable with the term Design Technology which he defines as the "application of technologies (computer or otherwise) to communicate (using various mediums) design intent and thus ultimately improve the design process and design realization." To him this is a much more open and encompassing definition and can even be considered "timeless" because it could just as easily be applied to DaVinci's Helicopter sketchs (technologies: pen/pencil, medium: paper/papyrus) as todays virtual walk throughs (technologies: VR software, medium: VR sensory gear), and tomorrows...
