Watch the AT webinar, in partnership with Serif, Total Synergy and Vectorworks, examining the digital tools that are enabling closer working relationships, improved visualisations, and the delivery of low-carbon buildings.
What are the technical and digital tools that afford practitioners better means of working together and improved ways of delivering low-carbon buildings? Where do the tensions lie between technology and creativity with data-driven design on the journey to net zero? And what can specifiers do to ensure they stay ahead of the technology curve? These were just some of the questions that were explored in this AT webinar, supported by Serif, Total Synergy and Vectorworks.
Chaired by AT Editor Isabel Allen, the speakers comprised Luka Stefanovic, Senior Architecture Industry Specialist at Vectorworks; Claudia Tschunko, Associate Director at Arup; James Ritson, Product Expert Team Leader at Serif; Jack Brunton, Associate Director of AECOM; and Miles Mitchell, Account Executive at Total Synergy.
Speakers (from left to right) James Ritson, Luka Stefanovic, Claudia Tschunko, Miles Mitchell, and Jack Brunton.
Luka Stefanovic ran through some of the often-overlooked opportunities to take advantage of the data contained in BIM models. For example, it is possible to flag up the fire rating of particular walls or partitions, making it simpler to create building fire strategies, or to quickly communicate the U-values of different components of the envelope making it easy to identify areas of the design that undermine the thermal performance of the building as a whole.
Harnessing data from BIM models, the Vectorworks Embodied Carbon Calculator (VECC) enables architects to assess whole-life cycle (WLC) carbon footprints of their projects live while modelling.
He went on to present tools developed by Vectorworks that help architects make informed design decisions, including Energos, an integrated energy-performance evaluation tool based on Passivhaus methodology, which provides architects with an insight into the operational carbon performance of their designs at every stage of a project from the earliest concept through to documentation, and VECC (Vectorworks Embodied Carbon Calculator), a live worksheet that directly reports on the Vectorworks BIM model and calculates the embodied carbon implications of different design options.
Vectorworks facilitates data-driven design by assigning data-rich materials to objects in the model. The data is then used to make embodied carbon calculations.
Claudia Tschunko gave an overview of the way Arup is using digital tools and data-driven design to optimise workflows, generate and compare alternative design options, streamline collaboration and consultation, and support its ambitions to achieve net zero by 2050 across all emissions scopes. She referenced two projects currently in the design stage: the next phase of AstraZeneca’s headquarters at the Cambridge Biomedical Campus, where a federated BIM 360 model is being used as a working platform to collect comments from the team and client; and the next stage of the Battersea masterplan, building on the work undertaken by Rafael Viñoly Architects and Frank Gehry, where digital tools, including Miro and VU.CITY, have been used to communicate with the client and the planning department, as well as generate algorithms that can establish design parameters, test massing scenarios, and design optimum solutions for a highly complex site.
1Triton Square, London, designed by Arup (ph: Simon Kennedy).
Tschunko also introduced two tools developed by Arup to measure and hence reduce carbon: Zero, a carbon measurement platform that allows all members of a design team to contribute the data accrued over the lifetime of a project in order to build up a complete picture of carbon impact across all disciplines; and Indita, an in-house carbon modelling programme designed as a plug in tool within Revit that enables an assessment of the embodied carbon implications of different design options.
80 Charlotte Street, London, designed by Make Architects in collaboration with Arup (ph: Hufton+Crow).
She showed how these tools have supported the delivery of two central London projects: 1 Triton Square, a 46,450-square-metre retrofit for British Land completed in 2021, where a strategy of ‘multiple gains’ – a complex matrix of numerous discrete but complementary interventions and design decisions – supported the delivery of a BREEAM Outstanding project that delivered a 54 per cent reduction in embodied carbon; and Arup’s own offices at 80 Charlotte Street, an ongoing ‘work in progress’ where a building management system highlights issues affecting occupant comfort, hence allowing the facilities management team to make changes as appropriate.
Visualisation composited in Affinity Photo using multiple render passes, cutouts, adjustment layers and live filters.
Serif’s James Ritson gave a detailed demonstration of graphic design tool Affinity Photo, the first professional image editing application to have 100 per cent file format compatibility across Windows, Mac and iPad, allowing users to work with the same file across any device. Focussing on functionality likely to be of particular interest to architects, Ritson showed how the tool can be used across a full range of visualisations from ‘hand drawn’ sketches, including options such as distressed paper texture and sketch hatching, though to detailed visualisations and photographs.
Vertical extension study leveraging AECOM’s Eco.Zero Tool.
Jack Brunton introduced Eco.Zero, a design suite that provides instant embodied carbon, design material, and cost data for varying building uses along with site data, structural frame typologies, material specifications and geometric forms, developed with the aim of reducing embodied carbon across AECOM projects. The tool is designed to be used from the earliest stages of a project’s inception, before the architectural massing has been established and when the most impactful decisions relating to carbon are made and the most significant savings can be achieved.
Total Synergy is a cloud business and project management software used by architects and engineers to drive business collaboration and visibility (ph: Gorodenkoff/Shutterstock).
Finally, Total Synergy’s Miles Mitchell explained how practices can use Synergy practice management software to drive internal and external collaboration, communication, and coordination, thereby freeing up time to spend on design. He also explained how the software can collate, present and analyse data, to deliver a clear picture of the way practices and individual projects are performing. This in turn enables practice managers to analyse the health of the business and make good business decisions.
Source: Architecture Today