All the following are aticles from Architectural Record.
This post aims to exhaust Architectural Record as one source of information.
A body of articles will become the foundation of my research and will help generate specific areas of research.
The information in this post is directing me to my first precedent, John Natsasi, director of the design (build) school: Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, NJ. He is a graduate of Pratt Institute and Harvard. . . "sophisticated ways to build sophisticated forms".
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VectorWorks Architect 12
Nemetschek North American
www.nemetschek.netWindows and Mac
Improvements in the latest version of this CAD package focus on increasing productivity and the ability to work simultaneously with 2D and 3D information. One new feature, live sections, lets users slice 2D sectional views through a building, which are updated automatically as the building’s design is modified. Developers also improved built-in libraries for building elements like wall styles, doors, windows, roofs, and stairs. Enhanced compatibility with DXF and DWG files lets users share drawings and design data more easily with clients and collaborators. The software now supports 3ds format, a popular 3D file type used online, and embeds RenderWorks radiosity for realistic presentations.
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Copper 2005Element Software
www.copperproject.comWindows and Mac
This Australian company recently released a Web-based project and customer-relationship-management tool that’s won over architectural clients because of its simple interface. An administrator creates or imports users, clients, contacts, and projects, and then project teams may log on. Functions and features include calendars, project time lines, and task management.
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From Architectural Record, by Ken Sanders, FAIA:
"Are you doing it?" During last January's Technology in Construction conference in Orlando, Florida, designers posed that question to each other about building information modeling (BIM), long billed as the technological sine qua non for efficient and cost-effective design and construction. But most designers, it seems, are taking a wait-and-see attitude about BIM\interested in its benefits, but hesitant to adopt it unless assured of a return on the significant investment it entails. Nearly 10 years after his seminal book, The Digital Architect, was published, architect Ken Sanders weighs in on the BIM discussion.
Building information modeling (BIM) is the latest rebranding of a 25-year-old idea that architects should create intelligent 3D models instead of paper drawings to communicate design ideas and guide construction. Today, it’s hard to peruse a professional journal or an AIA practice conference agenda without reading about BIM, and software vendors and consultants continue to promote it as the solution to waste and inefficiency in building design and construction. After all, why can’t we make buildings like Boeing makes airplanes?
Yet, after decades of research, software development, and consultant evangelism, the industry has yet to reach the tipping point where a critical mass of owners, designers, and builders embrace the methodology and its use becomes commonplace. If the idea is so strong and the return on investment so attractive, why hasn't that happened? A decade ago, the technology seemed two or three years away; today, it still seems two or three years away. Like the dilemma confronting TV weatherman Phil Connors, played by Bill Murray in the film Groundhog Day, how and when will we awaken to a different reality?
Wheels and wings versus bricks and mortar
The design community must first recognize the differences between the design and construction industry and manufacturing industries that create mass-produced products. As software developers borrow ideas from the latter industries, they also need to recognize what makes ours unique: how its economics are different, and how creating complex, one-of-a-kind products requires a broadly distributed, specialized work effort and method of decision making.
The automobile and aerospace industries, for example, enjoy economies of scale that building design and construction don’t. Mass production allows amortization of costs: It’s easier to pay for detailed digital models, including initial and ongoing training costs for personnel, when you’re building hundreds or thousands of the products being modeled. Products that can be easily transported are more suitable for start-to-finish factory construction—but unlike airplanes or cars, the final assembly of most buildings must occur on-site. Even when architects and contractors offer services that involve customized mass production, such as implementing a new retail store prototype, they confront a dizzying array of conflicting local codes and regulations, as well as varying standards and methods of the local construction trades. Finally, and most importantly, cars and planes are the products of an integrated design-build process: The designer and builder are one and the same entity. This is rarely the case with building design and construction.
Do these differences mean that architects shouldn’t pursue new delivery methods, or investigate new technologies, or adapt ideas from other industries? Of course not. But recognizing the distinctions is an important first step.
Paving new roads
Although BIM has yet to achieve widespread use among design firms, many new buildings realize the benefits of digitally enabled manufacturing each day. A variety of building components and subsystems are factory-built using digital processes: doors and windows, carpets and fabrics, furniture systems, mechanical equipment, elevators. Although our profession has benefited from these manufacturing innovations, most architects can neither claim credit for them nor extract much value from them.
Some architects are collaborating with manufacturers to accelerate this trend. In their fascinating book Refabricating Architecture (2004), for example, architects Stephen Kieran and James Timberlake describe how increasing the size of premanufactured “chunks” of buildings, and reducing the number of assembly joints between them, can help lower costs and streamline construction.
The key prerequisite to achieving these innovations, however, is not more digital technology. It is creating new partnerships between owners, designers, and builders; developing organizational cultures and educational programs that support them; and inventing new delivery processes to leverage them. Gehry Partners is often held up as the paragon of this approach, and rightly so: The firm collaborates directly with contractors, fabricators, and suppliers in order to realize Gehry’s unique designs, and strives to overcome the legal and institutional barriers that impede the process.
Without these fundamental changes in the culture of our profession, the value opportunity of BIM will remain out of our reach. Trying to implement BIM without first focusing on organizational transformation is like trying to drive a car on an ungraded, unpaved road: It’s a long, hard slog.
Timing the market
Where is the client demand for BIM? After starting slowly during the 1980s, the adoption of 2D CAD among design firms rose quickly in the early 1990s as owners began requesting digital drawings from architects, and powerful computers became cheap and ubiquitous enough to deliver them cost-effectively. More than 10 years later, however, broad client demand for 3D building models has yet to materialize.
A modest but growing number of public and private clients, however, including GSA, Disney, and Intel, are starting to explore BIM and pursue integrated delivery approaches. Their common interest is ownership of facilities that extends beyond construction completion. Many clients wonder why designers and builders aren’t offering new delivery solutions that address the unpredictability and adversarial nature of the traditional design-bid-build process. The Construction Users Roundtable (CURT), whose objective is to maintain an “owner’s voice” in the industry, has emerged as a powerful advocate for process innovations. Since its founding four years ago, CURT has grown to include over 50 of the largest corporate clients in the U.S., including Citigroup, General Electric, GlaxoSmithKline, IBM, and Procter & Gamble. [Note: record publisher McGraw-Hill is a member.]
Without a strong client advocate, or an integrated approach to design and construction, BIM technologies remain difficult to leverage. It’s challenging to confront the risks inherent in implementing new processes that seem to reward one party for costs and risks incurred by another. Indeed, one might argue that it’s easier and cheaper for our profession to continue to practice using our traditional methods.
But clients are clearly asking for something different. As architects, we have a professional responsibility to learn how to package our services in collaboration with those who construct our designs; to resolve the imbalance between investment and reward; and to create an integrated solution with fewer elements of risk for all parties. The growing influence of organizations like CURT highlights this as-yet-unrealized opportunity for our profession and for builders.
New perspectives
Phil Connors escaped Groundhog Day by gaining new perspectives and discarding old habits. Many in our industry should follow his lead. The AIA and Association of General Contractors (AGC), for example, should expand their collaborative relationship, focus on their shared interests, align their lobbying efforts, and work together to dismantle the legal and institutional barriers to integrated design and construction. As a first step, the AIA and AGC should work closely with insurance providers and client groups such as CURT and merge their competing design-build agreements into a single, unified standard.
CAD software developers, including Autodesk, Bentley, and Graphisoft, should also establish new collaborative partnerships and develop consistent, reliable methods for sharing 2D and 3D data among their programs. Earlier this year, after 15 years of bitter rivalry, Microsoft and Sun Microsystems set a great example by agreeing to a new framework of interoperability between their products. Both companies responded to customers no longer willing to shoulder the cost of integrating incompatible technologies, and it’s time for CAD vendors to do the same.
The leading candidate for standardized digital building descriptions remains the Industry Foundation Class (IFC) standard, developed by the International Alliance for Interoperability (IAI). [Note: record publisher McGraw-Hill was a founding member of IAI.] The IAI needs to focus on implementing standards they’ve already proposed, and recognize that rigid compliance with a one-size-fits-all solution is less important than the adoption of well-documented, flexible data-sharing protocols (“digital handshakes”) among multiple software programs.
In the meantime, architects shouldn’t wait for any of this before collaborating with their clients, consultants, and contractors to develop streamlined delivery methods using existing technology. BIM and 3D CAD aren’t necessarily prerequisites to doing so; a substantial volume of reusable data can continue to reside in 2D representations of buildings. The critical path isn’t BIM, but rather process innovation squarely focused on people, partnerships, shared expertise, and timely decision making.
With the economy on the rebound and the construction market holding steady, there has never been a better opportunity for architects, owners, and contractors to work together to reinvent and streamline the building design and delivery process. The remaining question for architects is simple: Will you lead or will you follow?
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No longer just pretty pictures, digital models are becoming workhorsesSlowly, firms are starting to combine digital building models with wider-scale geospatial data and other information as they design, analyze, build, and maintain their projects.
Although global positioning systems (GPS), geographic information systems (GIS), 3D modeling, and graphics technologies are standard tools in many design firms, architecture is still executed through a somewhat disjointed progression of 2D and 3D representations of buildings. While this is problem enough for single building projects, the resulting jumble of spatial and graphical information makes it especially hard to grasp the details of larger-scale work that involves campuses, city blocks, and urban development schemes.
Geospatial data and 3D CAD are helping KPF design London’s tallest building. The firm created this image to study the building’s impact on the neighborhood.Image: Courtesy KPF/Cityscape
But sophisticated design and graphics packages have opened up formal possibilities, while GPS, GIS systems, photogrammetry (measuring objects from photos), and laser range finders have brought greater accuracy to the measurement and representation of buildings, objects, and spaces in 3D. These tools are helping firms get a better grasp on what designs are possible, how they will fit into their neighborhoods, and how to build them. As long-time proponents of building information modeling (BIM) have long pointed out, the potential benefits of designing with a “master” 3D model (or 4D if the element of time is added) span all aspects of design and construction, from project management to maintenance to cost containment and community review. And while no single company provides a “Swiss army knife” tool for 3D design, modeling and project-management applications are becoming more interoperable, and architects are learning how to meld these tools into everyday practice. As a number of firms are finding, such models can improve design, communications, budgeting, and construction.
Using 3D to stand tall in London
In designing Bishopsgate Tower, which will be London’s tallest building at 1,008 feet high, Kohn Pedersen Fox (KPF) has had to be keenly sensitive to the building site’s surroundings. The city has traditionally guarded the view corridors around St. Paul’s Cathedral, Parliament, and other landmarks, but recent planning decisions have made way for high-rises that some contend will block key sight lines. Because of these concerns, the tower’s design has been thoroughly analyzed and reviewed to determine its visual impact and to otherwise check its compliance with relevant codes and standards. The project was commissioned by the German developer and fund manager DIFA.
KPF created 3D models of Bishopsgate Tower in London for study and design purposes: A view of the tower from the Tate Modern Gallery across the Thames River.
On this project and others, KPF has made extensive use of 3D visualization and modeling software along with geospatial data, according to Lars Hesselgren, KPF’s London-based research director. To aid in conducting site studies, KPF worked with a 3D city model of London generated from a traditional map, photogrammetry, laser-point clouds derived from a scanning of site features, and radio triangulation data (which is similar to GPS, but uses radio signals instead of satellite transmissions to gather and transmit information).
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Tech Briefs
Seismic framing technology and smart siting aid a California community collegeBy Deborah Snoonian, P.E.
Click images to see larger view
Lighting animates the health sciences building and emphasizes its angles.
Several years ago, during a seismic study of the San Bernardino Valley College (SBVC) in California, engineers discovered that a portion of the San Jacinto fault, a branch of the San Andreas fault system, lay right underneath the school’s campus—endangering the integrity of nearby buildings and threatening the safety of students and faculty. With the help of design architect Steven Ehrlich Associates, along with engineers at Arup and associate architect Thomas Blurock Architects, SBVC recently opened three new buildings that employ unbonded brace frames, or buckling-resistant frames, as they’ve come to be known, a Japanese technology that’s been making inroads in U.S. seismic design for the past five to six years. The new buildings are part of a larger master plan and rebuilding effort that reflects and even celebrates the existence of the fault under SBVC’s 60-acre campus.
More strength, less material
The three new structures—a health and life sciences center, a library and learning center, and an administrative and student services building—opened earlier this year. (An arts center and campus center, also designed by Ehrlich and his collaborators, are slated for completion in 2006.) They share a common material language of structural steel, glass and metal panels, and stucco cladding; their angular, dynamic volumes, folded roof plates, and triangular forms are meant to suggest the plate tectonics of the shifting ground planes they sit on. “This was a unique opportunity for the architects and the college to change an entire campus with a consistent voice,” Ehrlich says. He and his collaborators worked closely with the SBVC community to solicit input on what the new structures should look like.
All the buildings are framed in structural steel, made in the U.S., and augmented with the buckling-resistant braces, which were made in Japan. Unlike typical structural steel braces, buckling-resistant braces perform as well in compression as they do in tension. The brace consists of a steel core, typically in a cruciform shape, slipped inside a steel sleeve or tube filled with lightweight mortar. A special coating is applied to the core steel so that it doesn’t adhere to the mortar, meaning the core can slide back and forth, much like a piston, inside the tube. When tension forces are applied, the brace can elongate like a traditional brace as the core slides within the tube. When hit with compression forces, the combination of the mortar and steel core provides enough stiffness and strength to prevent the brace from buckling, which can reduce the stiffness and strength of the entire building, leading to catastrophic collapses.
The buckling-resistant braces have other advantages, as well. They allow the structural frame to be built using less steel overall, but more important, their increased compressive strength simplifies the design of member connections and lowers the foundation’s strength requirements, says Atila Zekioglu, a principal at Arup’s Los Angeles office and the structural engineer on the SBVC project. Although the design team also considered using concrete shear walls for lateral stability, the weight and thickness necessitated by the fault’s location made them infeasible both aesthetically and technically.
The buildings are strong enough to withstand earthquake forces twice the force of gravity in the lateral direction. To put that in perspective, the buildings would be structurally sound if they were turned on their sides and acted structurally as cantilevers, Zekioglu says.
Planning for future growth
Arup’s Los Angeles office has been consulting with SBVC on seismic and geotechnical issues for more than 10 years, and the architects tapped the firm’s expertise not only for engineering the new buildings, but also for finessing tricky siting and planning issues.
As per state code, SBVC had to establish a no-build zone within 50 feet of the fault trace on each side; as a result, seven existing structures were razed. At a design charrette early in the project, Zekioglu explained to the design team that the strongest forces during an earthquake run either parallel or perpendicular to the San Jacinto fault line. He recommended that the master plan require new buildings to be aligned in these directions (rather than the existing campus grid) to reduce torsional forces on the buildings in the event of an earthquake. This decision also uses open land efficiently around the swath of the no-build zone, which is at least 150 feet wide in some areas of campus.
A changing field
The rebuilding effort at SBVC may serve as a template for the design of future buildings in seismically vulnerable regions. The three new structures are the first approved by California’s Division of the State Architect (DSA) that use buckling-resistant braces, and perhaps more critically, the first to employ performance-based seismic design rather than relying on prescriptive building codes. The codes can be troublesome because they don’t always accurately reflect what’s going on at a particular site. “At SBVC’s campus, the general seismic hazard code underestimates the severity of possible seismic activity at the campus by 100 percent,” Zekioglu says. Arup’s design experience with the new braces, which began several years ago when they used them in projects at U.C. Davis and U.C. Berkeley [record, October 2002, page 185], helped convince state officials that they’re a proven method. “Advocating any unique system requires intense investigation and collaboration,” he says, “but DSA is breaking new ground here. We’d be happy to see other projects follow suit.”
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Mini-Mits XD60U
Mitsubishi Digital Electronics America
www.mitsubishi-presentations.comWindows and Mac
Although it’s smaller than a three-ring binder and weighs less than a half-gallon of milk, Mitsubishi’s Mini-Mits XD60U packs powerful projection capability for on-the-road presentations and slide shows.
The compact projector accepts analog, digital, and HDTV signals from laptops, desktops, and TV sets. Its bright, long-life lamp and high native resolution allow users to see crisp, sharp images and details. A password-protected security lock prevents unauthorized use at public presentation venues. At 3.3 pounds, the projector is the smallest, lightest model offered by the company.
Aerial images covering more regions are now available at Terraserver.com.
TerraserverTerraserver.com
www.terraserver.comWindows and Mac
Gain a bird’s-eye view with this online imaging service. TerraServer.com has relaunched its Web site with an expanded array of aerial photographs and an improved user interface. The new content, which includes different image sizes and formats, is a result of the company’s expanded alliances with photography providers. The revamped site also offers more efficient purchasing options.
Graphisoft has created a specially tailored software program for the residential construction market.
ArchiCAD ResidentialGraphisoft
www.graphisoft.comWindows and Mac
This new application is geared to the U.S. homebuilder market and based on ArchiCAD’s existing modeling technology. The company has designed the software so that model floor plans for homes, which are common in residential construction, can be easily adapted, annotated, and saved for individual client needs. Key features include an option manager so that users can create and present variations on a single floor plan with just one click of the mouse, and a wall framing tool that simplifies the design of frames and construction schedules. A notes area lets architects and homeowners keep track of comments and changes during reviews.
Realtime visualization software is based on gaming technology.
RealtimeArup Research & Development
www.arup.comWindows only
Conceived by Arup Research & Development, this software allows users to model and explore 3D environments. It can adapt existing CAD data and 3D models, as well as create new models from 2D drawings, hand sketches, photographs, and a range of other source materials. Based on gaming technology, the software has been used to evaluate everything from appearance to issues such as ergonomics, access, and construction.
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Virtual reality and digital modeling go on trial for a federal courtroom designBy Alan Joch
Arup tested the courtroom’s acoustics (top) and helped build 3D models for lighting and sight-line analysis (below). The team noticed a potential glare problem behind the jury box (below) during the CAVE walkthrough.
Justice may be blind, but some federal judges in Mississippi have been seeing in 3D. In recent months, they’ve been part of a pilot project launched by the General Services Administration (GSA) to use virtual reality in the design process. Twice last year, the judges donned red-and-green 3D glasses, like those from 1950s movie theaters, to view stereographic representations of their new courtroom in Jackson long before its construction. Sponsors of the pilot project hope the design team and client can flag problems with sight lines, lighting, and materials before the courtroom is built, to avoid retrofits or costly change orders.
Federal courtrooms aren’t cookie-cutter designs. Each judiciary voices preferences for room geometries and the placement of elements like the judge’s bench, counsel tables, the jury box, and the witness stand. To visualize designs prior to construction—which is key for preventing problems with sight lines among the various courtroom parties—clients typically review 2D drawings and crude plywood mock-ups costing $50,000 or more to build. Could sophisticated imaging technology create better 3D representations and reduce errors?
This question was posed by Renée Tietjen, AIA, a senior architect in the office of applied science of the GSA, which contracts with private-sector architects for federal courthouses. The Jackson project seemed well suited for a new approach. “The space was a modified ellipse, and we thought there might be some problems,” she recalls.
PC-generated walkthroughs alone aren’t sufficient to validate the design issues the team sought to resolve. “I abhor them because you’re always looking straight ahead,” says Hugh Hardy, FAIA, principal of H3 Hardy Collaboration Architecture of New York, the courtroom’s architect. Instead, the judges met with the design team at Disney Imagineering Studios in California—once in June 2004 to test sight lines, and once in December to assess lighting. There, a special room called a CAVE (Computer Automatic Virtual Environment) houses a wraparound screen that stereoscopically reproduced a life-size virtual model of the courtroom. Stanford University’s Center for Integrated Facility Engineering (CIFE), a virtual design research center, built the 3D model based on CAD drawings, with help from the engineering firm Arup in New York.
During the model walkthrough, courtroom elements could be rearranged based on the feedback of judges and others. After getting the judges’ response, Hardy and the GSA refined a number of design elements, including lowering the view-blocking rail on the top of the judge’s bench, and the CAVE sessions also resolved where the counsel tables would be located.
To validate the design’s acoustic characteristics, the GSA relied on a 3D sound model created by Arup Acoustics, which was tested last summer at the firm’s sound lab in New York, where judges could hear accurate simulations of speech. “If there are any problems, we can proactively work to fix them,” says Raj Patel, principal consultant at Arup. Acoustic revisions in the Jackson courtroom included changing some surface shapes and adding sound-absorbing materials to improve speech intelligibility.
Paul Marantz, the project’s lighting designer and a partner of Fisher Marantz Stone of New York, notes some of the limitations of the virtual-reality process for lighting analysis. Contrast ratios below what’s perceptible by the human eye block out shadows and highlights in the 3D environment that people would normally see in a real room. Nevertheless, because lighting isn’t evaluated at all in a plywood courtroom mock-up, Marantz feels the CAVE experience was valuable. “We were able to fix a half-dozen issues—none of which was fatal. But it gave us the opportunity to improve the design.”
Tietjen, who declines to say how much the pilot cost, says the technology proved itself as a design tool. Now the challenge lies with the GSA to streamline the feedback process. “We need to bring the technology to clients, not the clients to the technology,” she says. But for Judge William Barbour, U.S. District Court judge for the southern district of Mississippi, the jury is still out. “We won’t know if virtual reality accurately simulated the courtroom until we get through with the building,” he says. “But my initial impression is yes, it definitely did.”
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Comprehensive Building Modeling
by Larry Rocha
"What happens to the cost of the building if we add 40 square meters to the lobby?" "What happens to the total height of the building if we use a steel frame instead of a cast-in-place system?" "How will changing the structural system affect the construction schedule?"
Answering these questions during design used to take days or even weeks. Using current technology, some designers are answering them in a matter of minutes or hours. This is because they create an "intelligent" digital model — which combines data and geometry — as a part of their design process. This approach is sometimes referred to as using an "integrated building model," a "virtual building model," a "single building model," or, more recently, a "building information model."
Not Just a Pretty Picture
Designers have long used three-dimensional representations as part of their analysis and communication processes. Three-dimensional computer models have been used since the 1970s. Renderings and massing models are part of many building design projects. In most conventional software systems, these 3D representations of the building are created and maintained separate from, and requiring coordination with, the 2D contract documents, or construction drawings.
Changes to a design always require coordination between the 2D and 3D representations. In conventional systems, it is the designer's responsibility to make the necessary changes to maintain consistency. With integrated models, the 2D and 3D representations come from the same dataset, so the adjustments can be automatic.
By "slicing" a virtual building, the design team can generate 2D "reports" — such as floor plans, elevations, sections — anywhere more study or clarity is needed. With the integrated building model, contract documentation can be smoothly coordinated, evolving representation of the building's design, a byproduct of the design process.
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Two-dimensional design representations are largely symbolic, presenting design intent as a set of symbols and annotations that the design and construction community has come to understand as a common language. Because 2D symbols are often not literally representative of a building component's actual size and shape, there is a possibility for misunderstanding during construction. For example, a water closet symbol does not precisely represent the actual product. During installation, such imprecision can lead to interference with other objects.
An integrated building model may be built by the design team by assembling the building object by object, system by system, in a digital environment. This not only allows the designers to visualize 3D representations at any point during design, it can also enable the design and construction teams to extract, almost instantly, much richer information than they could get from 2D drawings.
Several well known firms in Europe, Japan, and the United States have worked with consultants and manufacturers using digital building models to solve complex design and construction problems on unique portions of a building. For example,
Norman Foster has worked with
Bentley Systems, and
Frank Gehry has worked with
Dassault Systemes to build extraordinary forms.
But the technology is also useful for less experimental constructions. Using an integrated building model as a design tool can push the design team to solve systems-integration problems during design, long before the project goes into construction. The potential for cost savings by reducing "errors and omissions" is huge.
This is not to say that all integrated building model design activity is necessarily conducted in 3D. Most design activity may still occur in traditional 2D views.
Building Savvy
The level of "intelligence" contained within a completed building model depends on the quantity and quality of data embedded in its objects. At the beginning of design, the design team is more likely to construct basic representations of the building, to study form and function with simple, generic representations of building objects such as walls, doors, and windows.
As the design progresses, such simple objects need to be replaced with more data-rich ones. Sometimes these objects are provided by the product manufacturer and include information such as model number, cost, weight, and scheduled delivery.
Reliance on manufacturers to provide intelligent objects for unique situations may help everyone, from owner to builder, understand the implications of specific design choices. This is a different challenge from drawing a graphic symbol with minimal data attached and simply postponing any problems or conflicts that might arise during construction.
By sharing the integrated model with consultants, builders, and owners, some design teams have taken advantage of this approach to realize significant gains in efficiency and error reduction in the field. Some have claimed estimates of up to 14 percent design and construction cost savings.
Realizing the Potential
Integrated building model tools are not necessarily more expensive or more complicated to use than more widely deployed CAD systems. In fact, these tools can be easier to learn in some ways than conventional CAD because they make coordinating 2D and 3D representations more intuitive. When using integrated 2D/3D design tools, architects can focus on design and the integration of building systems instead of on drafting. So why haven't they been more widely adopted?
In their early days, the leap from traditional manual drafting into a 2D/3D computer world was especially daunting. Also, the software and the computers to support them were expensive, sometimes costing $100,000 per seat in the days before the personal computer. Until the mid-1980s, when cheaper computers became available along with technical drafting software, hardware and software both represented serious investments.
Now, of course, most design professionals accept electronic tools as a means of delivering design projects. CAD systems are ubiquitous, and the industry is poised to accept the next generation of software. These will be design tools, not drafting tools.
There is still a simple directness available with single-purpose, design-oriented 2D drawing tools and 3D modeling tools that some designers may prefer for certain design phases. These tools stand in contrast to the potentially Swiss-Army-knife approach of an integrated building modeling system. But such distinctions may not last forever.
Real-Time Feedback
Intelligent integrated building models can give design teams instant access to relatively complex design information. Area calculations are one example of a mundane and tedious but necessary exercise that designers perform dozens of times during the course of sorting out a building program. Good building modeling tools allow the designer to derive and update area calculation results effortlessly whenever they modify the building design.
Similarly, cost information can be quickly calculated by attaching to any object the cost per length, per area, per volume, or per item. The software can count or measure the objects and insert them in a schedule, providing fast access to cost information whenever a change is made.
Decreasing the amount of time required to evaluate the effects of a design change can help designers focus more on design study, leaving the computer to perform repetitive calculations. Also under development for many years are "design agents" that perform structural, mechanical, and code analysis calculations and give the designer real-time feedback on the implications of design changes. Integrated into the comprehensive building model, such agents can be powerful design accessories.
Changing the Process
The largest obstacle to realizing the benefits of the integrated building model may lie in the complexity of changing design, documentation, and construction processes. We have learned, taught, and built industries around symbolic 2D communications. Millions of person-years of effort have been invested in developing our current systems of project documentation and delivery. All of our legal precedents are built on those methodologies.
Delivering an integrated building model instead of 2D drawings to a contractor, local building official, or client will require a major change in process and a shift in responsibility and liability. This has been a major obstacle to adoption of the integrated building model in the U.S. construction industry.
Now, however, the design and financial advantages have motivated many firms to begin the transition between old methodologies and new ones. A number of organizations (BAA,
The Movement for Innovation, and the
Lean Construction Institute) are forming alliances based on their use of integrated building models and other technologies.
They are challenging the very culture of the industry by having owners indemnify team members with the expectation that any remaining reservations about the feasibility of the technology will be mitigated by this shift of responsibility and liability.
These are today's pioneers; the rest will follow eventually. It has taken the industry most of a generation to make the transition from manual drafting to CAD. Some insisted that it would never happen. But it happened, just as the transition to the integrated building model will happen. Based on its potential cost and time savings, clients will demand it, and the industry will require it. Those who understand how to manage the implementation of this type of technology will have an advantage.
The comprehensive or integrated building model can help deliver on the longstanding promise that the computer can help us be more productive. More importantly, the automation of drawing coordination and building information management can give us more time to do what we like to do and what we hopefully do best — design.
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master-fit
Advances in manufacturing technology are bringing mass customization closer to reality for home building.
For a number years, building suppliers have manufactured made-to-order components with a high degree of automation. Now, a supplier called MF Technologies is using a CAD-driven system called MasterFit, developed in Japan, to churn out custom-cut, engineered wood frames for single- and multifamily houses.
The Minneapolis-based company opened its first fully automated U.S. plant in June 2004. Company officials tout the system’s frugal use of materials, which makes for less factory waste, as well as its ability to produce tighter frames and shells, reduce production and assembly time, and simplify labor requirements.
The MasterFit system consists of a proprietary CAD tool (an AutoCAD add-on) to which data from standard CAD files, hard-copy drawings, or sketches are added. The tool then lays out the frame and cuts studs, joists, rafters, and trusses from engineered wood using a computer numeric control (CNC) system. Frame components are labeled and shipped to building sites as a kit of parts. Because they are assembled with interlocking metal pegs and plates, the frames can be erected by construction teams with minimal training, rather than skilled laborers. (Prefabricated building panels used with the frames must be attached with nails or screws, however.)
The Albert Lea, Minnesota, factory can turn around an order in about two weeks. Once components are on-site, the shell of a 1,500-square-foot house can be erected and enclosed within three days, according to MF Technologies president Santos Martin.
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Being a doormat can be a good thing
Jason Pollen stumbled into his new design process by accident. Two years ago, Pollen, the creator of fine-art textiles and chairman of the fiber department at the Kansas City Art Institute, organized a class trip to a local manufacturer of floor coverings to show his students how the company turned cotton into commercial products. During the tour, Pollen chanced upon the company’s 7-foot-wide, 40-foot-long industrial inkjet printing machine, which sprayed nylon-pile floor mats with permanent acid dyes—the same type of dye Pollen used in his work.
Jason Pollen (above) designs mats that are made with a digitally controlled printing process he discovered while touring a plant with his students.
The digitally controlled machine sported nozzles for 12 different colors and was capable of reproducing corporate logos and other complex design elements. Pollen’s fascination with the process was immediate. He began to picture possibilities for his own work. After convincing the company president to indulge his curiosity, “I spent a year hanging out at the plant and playing with new designs,” he says.
Architects and interior designers are beginning to use the mats in modern spaces; their durability and ease of maintenance are major selling points.
Unlike Barnes, Pollen doesn’t use custom-built software to automatically generate design options. Instead, he relies on combinations of off-the-shelf software like Photoshop, scanners, and digital control equipment that guides the inkjet printer he uses. Many of his early ideas came from physical objects he encounters in the natural world. In one case, he created a design for a floor mat called Taormina, named after the Italian seaside city, where he once found shards of glazed tile washed up on the beach. He scanned the multicolored shards into an image, edited the image in Photoshop, and ultimately developed three different variations on a basic pattern. Lately, Pollen is using a similar design process to produce a second line of mats made of a material he calls Pollenium, the rubber-mat backing with colored vinyl threads that are melted into it during the manufacturing process. The result is “a very elegant, hybrid product” without the nap of his original line, he says.
His floor mats have been springing up at museum gift shops and on the floors of contemporary interiors across the country. Pollen says he’s receiving particular interest from architects and interior designers who do “very contemporary designs, people who want to make a new statement.” Cary Goodman, FAIA, with the architectural firm Gould Evans Goodman Associates in Kansas City, says Pollen’s creations are as appealing for stone entryways as fine oriental carpets are for wood floors. “You just want to have the mats on your floor because they’re so beautiful,” he says.
Machine intelligence can’t replace know-how
Technology can’t increase a designer’s talent. Nor will digitally delivered designs replace the importance of feeling and touching a carpet or textile sample before putting it into large-scale production. Yet these case studies demonstrate the potential for technology to enable designers to be more productive and more exploratory in their everyday work. The end results—more choices, faster time to market—are welcome by-products of this evolution.
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As the competition for plum appointments and perhaps a partnership at a choice firm heats up, architects look for every advantage to distinguish themselves from their colleagues. Increasingly, these competitive strengths include more than just design skills and a creative eye. Educators and principals at large architectural firms say that IT skills, if promoted correctly, can sometimes open the door to the boardroom. “The firms we are feeders to are very committed to computing,” says Dr. Mark J. Clayton, executive associate dean of the College of Architecture at Texas A&M University in College Station. “There is clearly a career path for architects who focus on IT.”
Young architects are typically very computer-savvy, but just knowing how to use software won’t get them far without other crucial job skills. Photography: © Jon Feingersh/Corbis
But a basic proficiency with PCs and CAD software isn’t a rare skill set anymore. “Technical expertise is not the badge of honor it used to be,” says Ken Sanders, FAIA, vice president and chief information officer in the San Francisco office of Gensler Architecture, Design & Planning. To make an impact on progressive practices today, architects need to demonstrate a sophisticated understanding of many different types of technologies. In addition to stalwarts like CAD, rendering, and modeling software, architects hoping to use technology as a fast track also must be adept with applications that streamline communications with clients, manage project schedules, and crunch return-on-investment numbers. Added points come with the ability to create Web sites, as the Internet becomes a ubiquitous communication tool for firms wanting to connect with clients and community groups. Similarly, Web technology helps practices create intranets to distribute in-house expertise to the entire staff in the form of electronic resources such as detail and image libraries, marketing materials, and project schedules.
However, IT training in itself isn’t enough. Fast-trackers also need the creativity to see how new technology can be applied to their firms and projects in innovative ways. “It’s less a skill set and more an openness and willingness to look for new ways of doing business,” says Jonathan Cohen, AIA, principal of Jonathan Cohen and Associates in Berkeley, California, and chair of the AIA’s Technology in Architecture Practice committee.
Old school lives
Unfortunately, not every architectural firm embraces technology as a strategic business tool. Firms vary widely in their views of the importance of technology and may either promote or pigeonhole technology-savvy architects. Some staid firms regard technology as an annoyance or a support function, and in those cultures, becoming “the IT guy” may be a fast path to nowhere, Cohen says.
He recalls one consulting assignment with an East Coast architectural firm that was managed by a group of founding principals approaching their 70s. This “very old-school” firm benefited from a second tier of managers who had risen through the ranks and came to understand that architectural practices were changing. “They had an inkling that technology was becoming an integral part of that practice,” Cohen says, “but they couldn’t penetrate the existing culture.” If a firm’s principals won’t listen to new ideas, lower-ranking architects may find it challenging or impossible to bring about technology-based changes, and in turn, they may not secure career rewards for their expertise. “Firms that have been successful [in the past] often cling to the oldest methods,” he adds.
On the other hand, progressive firms view IT expertise as having strategic value that pushes the boundaries of their practice to attract new clients and bring about greater work-flow efficiencies. “In firms like that, a person sits at the management table and helps set the direction of the firm,” Cohen says. “Those are the firms doing exciting things.”
By following her IT interests, Jill Rothenberg, principal and chief information officer at ADD Inc in Cambridge, Massachusetts, landed a seat in the boardroom. Joining the firm in the 1980s as a junior-level interior designer, she became involved with the IT group because of a desire to do “something new,” she recalls. A decade ago, the firm named Rothenberg head of IT, a role that eventually became an entrée into senior management. “Many architectural firms would only consider making an architect a principal,” she says. (Rothenberg herself is an architect, but given her career path, prefers not to use her AIA designation). “But technology has become integral to our practice. Because of this, the executive management values my contribution to the direction and success of the firm.”
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New Gehry Technologies will enable many to boldly go where only Frank has gone beforeBy Deborah Snoonian, P.E.
Image courtesy of Gehry technologies
The expertise that made buildings like the Disney Concert Hall possible, coming soon to a studio near you.
Frank O. Gehry, FAIA, is taking his expertise to the masses. This fall marks the launch of the sidekick to his architectural practice, Gehry Technologies (GT)—a business venture he hopes will raise the level of technological fluency within architectural practice, as well as cement his legacy as one of the field's foremost innovators.
Heading the new company as chief executive officer is senior partner James Glymph, who has worked alongside Gehry for more than a decade. Dennis Shelden, Gehry Partners' director of computing, will serve as GT's chief technical officer.
The vision for GT is to create a " ‘building ecosystem' tackling innovations in construction practices and associated technologies," according to a press release. Essentially, it will be a consulting practice, providing technologies and expertise to teams who are building specific projects as well as to the industry at large. "Manufacturing industries have completely transformed the way products are designed, built, and delivered," says Glymph, "but the building industry remains entrenched in a paper-based, two-dimensional world. We realized that substantial opportunities existed in bringing advances in practice that we have discovered to the rest of the industry." He adds that faster, cheaper computers make it feasible for firms of all sizes to use the digitally driven process that Gehry follows in his practice, and that the process is suitable for a variety of project types, not just the high-end cultural buildings for which Gehry is renowned.
GT may also serve as a software developer, creating specialized interfaces or additional capabilities for existing design software such as CATIA, the aerospace program the firm has used on many projects. Such tools could be developed on a project-specific basis—a common practice in manufacturing and other industries—and then licensed for a fee to the software maker for widespread use, or sold to the company paying for the project work.
The AIA, the Civil Engineering Research Foundation (CERF), andthe Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Laboratory have already agreed to collaborate with GT; the projects they will take on together have yet to be fully scoped. In time, the company hopes to create partnerships with the entire range of organizations that have a stake in the design and construction of the built environment.
What Glymph wants to achieve is "a fundamental reshuffling of the roles, responsibilities, and compensation structures for participants across the industry as a consequence of the digital revolution," he says. This could mean, for instance, that all participants in a construction project share the liability for its completion on time and within budget, or that project deliverables be submitted in digital rather than paper form. Many technology enthusiasts believe that requiring architects and their collaborators to rely on digital design information is a necessary step toward reestablishing the architect as a master builder, as well as shortening the time needed to design and construct buildings.
Whether the business model for GT can succeed in a down-market for design and construction services has yet to be determined—firms aren't spending on training and technology like they once were. But like many innovators, Glymph and his staff aren't cowed. "We've been pretty lonely pioneers," he says.
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Hertzberger's Watervilla prototype
pushes Dutch houseboat design to new levels
By Raul Barreneche
The Watervilla, a prototype floating house designed by architect Herman Hertzberger, is supported like an oil rig, on a frame of hollow steel tubes. Inhabitants can reorient the house to optimize its solar orientation.
Photography: © Patrick Fransen
For centuries, the Dutch have shown great ingenuity in keeping the water that surrounds their low-lying country at bay. That's allowed them to preserve land on which to build housing for the dense population of the Randstad, the crescent that runs from Amsterdam to Rotterdam. Dutch architect Herman Hertzberger has turned the idea on its head by putting houses in the water. Of course, there have always been houseboats in Holland. The architect says traditional Dutch houseboats were his inspiration, but notes that as places to live these quaint, colorful anachronisms look better than they work. They're uncomfortable—too much boat and not enough house, he says.
Hertzberger's Amsterdam-based Architectuurstudio designed its first “watervilla” back in 1986. It floated on foam-filled concrete—not exactly a traditional material. Since then, the studio changed the floating foundations from foam-filled concrete to buoyant steel tubes, inspired by off-shore oil rigs. “It was necessary to change the structural system because we wanted the house to float freely in the water and be able to change orientation,” explains project architect Patrick Franzen. The design also nearly doubled in size from 80 square meters to 156 square meters, or about 1,680 square feet. (The updated model can be expanded up to 200 square meters, while the original design was fixed.) Most important, the firm was able to build a prototype of the revised house in De Veersche Poort, located in Middelburg in southwestern Holland, which will eventually be home to six Watervillas. The developer of De Veersche Poort commissioned the prototype's construction.
Like oil rigs, the Watervilla floats on a hexagonal frame of six 10-millimeter-thick hollow steel tubes roughly 2 meters in diameter. The D-shaped pipes create enough buoyancy to support 135 tons and are engineered to keep the aquatic houses stable even in choppy waters or high winds. The floating base supports a three-story steel structural frame with steel-plate and concrete floors. The cladding is a prefabricated, low-maintenance skin of made of lightweight steel plates over the 60-centimeter-deep steel frame with foam insulation. The interior can be finished in a number of materials; Hertzberger's studio clad the interior walls in 18 centimeter-thick plywood. Prefab materials allow the house to be built on a quick four-month construction schedule.
The first floor of the prototype currently bobbing in the waters of De Veersche Poort contains two bedrooms, a bathroom, and storage space. Upstairs, via a spiral staircase, is the open living/dining room and a kitchen, all surrounded by walls of floor-to-ceiling glass. On the third level is a large open space that can be used as an office or spare bedroom. Each level has outdoor terraces. An 8-meter-long gangway provides access from shore.
The prototype includes standard (for Holland) heating and cooling systems, but future options include underfloor or wall systems; photovoltaics are another energy-saving possibility, although Franzen explains that the Middelburg villa doesn't have many high-tech bells and whistles in order to keep
costs down.
Obviously, it's possible to navigate the Watervilla to a number of different locations, as much for a change of scenery as for energy conservation: Hertzberger designed the villa to rotate 90 degrees by means of two steering wheels. The Watervilla can be moved to capture the best solar orientation, facing the warming sun in winter and away from the sun in summer to minimize heat gain. Franzen says he would recommend a small onboard motor if the owner wanted to change the home's position weekly or even daily.
So far, Watervilla is an information center—consider it a floating "model home"—but Franzen anticipates occupancy by the beginning of 2004. Franzen says the studio can't calculate the exact building cost, given the high engineering expense involved in getting a prototype off the ground (or into the water), but he anticipates that the flotation system will be costlier than earthbound foundations. He estimates future houses will cost between 2,000 and 2,500 euros per square meter—currently $218 to $273 per square foot.
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GenerativeComponents softwaregives "bending the rules" a whole new meaning By Deborah Snoonian, P.E.
The California firm Morphosis is experimenting with GenerativeComponents software to design a new cultural building.
Images courtesy of Bentley, developed by Morphosis
Some architects can program computers, some programmers are architects—but having the one skill shouldn't mean having to have the other, says CAD pioneer Robert Aish, Bentley Systems' director of research. New parametric design software he has developed, GenerativeComponents (formerly CustomObjects) is poised to allow even technophobes to harness computing power for customized designs.
GenerativeComponents lets designers create rules for a project—for example, a complex stadium roof of known dimensions and curvature—and form specialized components to be used to construct it. These components then "populate" a design that's generated automatically according to the rule. If the rule changes—if the designer modifies the roof's span or curvature—so too do the shape, orientation, and behavior of all its component parts, much like changing a formula in a spreadsheet affects all the values on which that formula is based.
"This process enables architects to explore design alternatives more quickly and capture geometric relationships," says Aish. This is not the case with traditional CAD, in which elements such as walls and windows are merely graphical representations of building parts. It also differs significantly from parametric programs like Autodesk's Revit, whose chief benefit is production efficiency achieved by embedding non-design information like cost and manufacturer into well-understood building components like doors. Aish has been vetting his tool for two years with a collective he helped found, the SmartGeometry Group, whose tagline—"Architectural design with computational design tools"—elegantly articulates a fundamental challenge of the CAD era. Last summer the group convened in Cambridge, England to put the tool through its paces and to educate a larger audience of early adopters. Bentley plans to integrate Generative Components into their signature CAD program, MicroStation, in 2004.
Above all, Aish wants to introduce freedom of expression in an era of digital fabrication and mass customization. Users who want to create complex sculptural forms can still do custom programming within the software, although, "if exploring modifications to a design takes too long," he says, "you just exhaust people."
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