I had a day of culture yesterday – visiting the excellent Francis Bacon exhibition at Tate Britain in London. My accomplices were 3 architects (real ones, not IT ones) and as we enjoyed some fine chow at The Phoenix in Victoria, their conversation turned to buildings and software. They lamented the time they’d need to invest to learn the software tools of the architecture trade such as AutoCad, Photoshop, etc.

It got me thinking about how Photosynth could assist their trade – for free too! They could visit their sites, take a load of photos and upload them to www.photosynth.net where they’d be digitally “stitched” together allowing their friends and colleagues to view recent site visits. They could even upload new sets with new photos added to an existing set and see changes in the site as building progressed. Using a high resolution digital camera would give them the ability to see even the smallest details with the excellent zoom features.

Check out Stonehenge to see what I mean

If I were an architecture practice I would by playing with this today and using it to differentiate my service to clients – you could provide links to client to allow them to see the project develop over time.

There are only 2 immediate downsides I can see (well, one for me…)

1. All “synths” are public – which may be a problem if you’re project is confidential
2. Viewing is currently limited to XP or Vista – I guess some clients may only have Mac’s

Do you know any architects using this? I’d love to hear more and found a promising example on the Digital Urban blog but I really don’t know enough about architecture to know if this really could be a big deal.