Efficiency at the Design Level: A Comparison Between Two Methods

Efficiency at the design level: A comparison between two methods

ABSTRACT

Many architecture firms nowadays have access to modern technologies and tools in the CAD field, but still one might find that these firms do not use these advanced capabilities to the max and prefer to go through the design process using the common and sometimes rusty methods, mimicking the classic ways of drawing by hand when architects had no access to computers.

The problem begins with these architects and entrepreneurs working under strict time tables and fixed budgets for the economic benefit and by so having to finish the project stage by stage, in a straight forward way, without giving time and effort to discover and develop smarter and more computer intelligent ways and by thus developing the project in a more mature way, producing more alternatives and digging deep into the meaning of the architecture presented.

When the right tools are at hand, architects can do less of a drudgery work, and more of the understanding of what the project is and wants to be according to the place and time and the performance.

As Ali Rahim puts it, "The path of evolution produced by cultural entity – an object, a building, a company or a career immersed in its context – produces a distinct lineage as a result of its propagation. Each lineage exists indefinitely through time, and may be selected in terms of its performance." (Kolarevic and Malkawi, 2005, p. 179).

This paper is about the design process in architecture firms and how efficiency in work and optimization in the tools set, affect the final result and lead to a better project in less time and effort. It is also about the struggle for architects to develop their concept for the projects while satisfying the needs of the entrepreneurs.

For the sake of the discussion, I will present two projects from the work of Architects Studio in Tel-Aviv, the two project differ in the size, concept, and workflow. Both the projects were made under time pressure and designed within fixed budget.

Keywords:

Efficiency, optimization, workflow, generative design, design process, space syntax, profitability.

About the projects

The first project is a 10 floors residential building at Tel-Aviv, the intention was to demolish an old building sitting on the plot and building a new and higher one, for the project to be profitable, our studio had to maximize the build print between the building lines and minimise the irregular shapes and the over costly details, from the start we knew that for achieving this purpose we had to start with straight lines and orthogonal shapes, the project started out with us designing the best shape to satisfy our goals and aspirations, we knew there was no time nor budget for thinking over our designs so we had to make the right choices on each step and to advance forward with each decision.

For this project, we used the Autodesk BIM software Revit, we wanted to be able to go through fast sketching and modular building by using the dynamic family engine in the software and also to be able to quickly export data from the drawings like facades, sections, and schedules, we found that this software was the right one for the task.

The second project is a residential compound covering about 14 dunams of land in north Tell-Aviv, and housing over 400 apartments, this project was part of a closed competition in which our studio took part and won the opportunity to continue on planning. The purpose of the project is yet again, to demolish the current buildings on the plot and build 5 new buildings in a new complex with internal and external pathways, connecting the new block to the existing grid.

In this project, we had the chance to try out new and under-development methods like space syntax and generative design, using the grasshopper engine in Mckneel rhino software. The idea of using the new method was discussed in the studio and we were keen to know how far can we go using it, "the diffusion of CAD technology in architectural design practice is primarily driven by internal rather than external influence factors." (Kale Serdar and Arditi David, 2005).

Design constraints

The limitations for both the projects were excessive, in the first project the shape of the plot was almost rectangular-like, which gave us almost no option of making any irregular shapes, so we had to start with a box-like building. little by little the external factors started affecting the shape, the entrepreneur interest vs the current landlords' interest vs the architects desire to give a unique work, all played a role to make the final result a standard like building with a standard façade and standard internal spaces(with standard being relatively height), although many alternatives were introduces for the façade part of the design but in the end all were rejected and reduced to the minimum possible by the fixed budget.

The BIM software played a significant role in giving fast results at relatively low time, the designing team had to build up the blocks that were used in the design process, dynamic blocks, families and dynamic elements, and to update theme with accordance to the situation and the stage of development.  

In the second project, the situation was a bit different, the plot was relatively big, it didn't have a regular shape, and the external interests of the entrepreneurs and the landlords where all encouraging use into thinking outside the box and bringing up some new ideas and working and developing new methods. In this project we started by building a motive and a concept around which we designed the compound. The concept had to do with the environment in which the compound was found, so in this sense the software did its magic by providing us with tools to make a generative design based on parameters translated from the neighborhood's  attributes. The parameters were then translated into concept shapes which were followed with detailed design. The software's ability to work with NURBS enabled us to shape the project into organic forms stretched along curved and forked walking paths for the pedestrians which were in the core of our design concept.

What did the tools grant us as architects?

The Parametricism in the BIM software used in the first project has given use the guarantee of controlling the different families, typologies, and elements in the building throughout the design without having to think over and over again about coding and scripting and concept designing, it is because we knew from the start that this project was going to be troublesome on the micro level that we decided on using this type of method. However during the conceptual design we notices that the software lacked some space syntax and form finding tools, which might have helped us to get to the practical solution faster. This didn't stop us from thinking and developing the concept but in a more controlled way, within the borders and capabilities of this project in particular.