Tracking,Tagging and Scanning the City

The proliferation of social media and software, such as building information modelling (BIM), has led to an unprecedented accumulation of data in the last few years, which can be tracked, tagged and scanned.With it, buildings and cities have been transformed into portals for information. Andrew Hudson-Smith , Director at the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, University College London (UCL), describes how the ability to use emerging urban analytic tool kits provides the possibility of a real-time view of the city and a crystal-ball-like glimpse into urban networks of the future.     

Unified Frontiers: Reaching Out with BIM

Coren Sharples is a partner of SHoP Architects in New York where building information modelling (BIM) has become integral to the fluid promotion of communication between contractors, consultants and clients on a project. This is exemplified by two projects in the city: the reconstruction of Rector Bridge, where BIM enabled SHoP to work seamlessly with a firm of custom boat builders and other contractors, and the speculative development at 290 Mulberry Street, where it became a significant means of disseminating key data to the client for marketing and financial planning. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Public and the V2

The London Blitz has come to epitomise the golden age of urban togetherness and bonhomie when the public was bound by a common enemy threat. Through his reading of Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, literary critic Bruce Robbins questions the archetypal view of the Second World War as a watershed after which the ideal intact city and its community were ultimately destroyed. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Old Dispersions and Scenes for the Production of Public Space The Constructive Margins of Secondarity

The density of development in Belgium is such that the entire country has become an open city, with little sense of where one metropolitan area begins and another ends. Bruno De Meulder describes the underlying logic of this unbroken urbanscape, and the opportunity it affords for re-editing and reinserting informal social spaces in areas of wasted land. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Works In/On//Around///Behind Progress

Artist Hilary Powell describes how her work in film, food and the pop-up book offers playful critiques of regeneration and place making. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The $300,000/Year Architect

Could building information modelling (BIM) shake up not only design and delivery processes, but also be set to redefine the construction hierarchy? Could it shift the architect's position from near the bottom of the current food chain to one nearer the top? Urs Gauchat , Professor and Dean of the School of Architecture at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, outlines the architect's place in a complex future where there is an increasing demand for buildings but a demise in available materials and conventional energy sources. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Biodiversity Targets as the Basis for Green Design

Mike Wells , the Director of Biodiversity by Design, and Ken Yeang outline the need for biodiversity targets in architecture to provide a more far-reaching basis for green design. Rather than just literally ‘greening’ a building by covering it with foliage, they seek to encourage designers to engage with wider ecological processes and in more specific detail. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Low-Tech Transgression: The Interventional Work of EXYZT

Alex Romer and Naïm Aït-Sidhoum define EXYZT's practice as one characterised by ‘transgressive forms’ and ‘construction devices’. They explain how this has come about through the studio's penchant for the loose conditions of leftover spaces – derelict urban sites or marginal spaces by the sides of roads and railway lines – which require the building of temporary structures in tight timetables on limited budgets.     

An Architectural Chemistry

Protocell technology has a precedent in the innovative use of plastic in the 1960s, when chemistry first came up with an innovative new material that could be applied to architecture, interiors and product design. Omar Khan describes how at the Center for Architecture and Situated Technologies at the University at Buffalo in New York, he is developing a line of research that builds on the legacy of the 1960s and 1970s for soft materials and the capabilities of an elastic responsive architecture. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Complex Systems Architecture

Neil Spiller reveals the complexity of architectural systems to us, or is it the complexity of the architectural mind? For Spiller, the potential of a single notation as a seed for a truly ecological architecture provides an essential catalyst, triggering a multifaceted musing that takes in diagrams, Paul Preissner's new competition entry for the Taiwan Centre of Disease Control and his future work with Dr Rachel Armstrong on complex biological systems. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Stalker/ON

How might we ‘reboot’ architecture and ‘regain the critical’? American architectural critic and professor Peter Lang finds in Stalker's interactive field study of a Romany community around Rome a trigger for a re-energised way of thinking that questions how we might effectively live communally and economically. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

美英高校土木建筑类专业BIM教育实践与启示

BIM技术已成为建筑业变革的强大推动力,将BIM纳入工程教育是培养建筑产业从业者的关键。在回顾BIM教育进展、教育内容及面临挑战的基础上,梳理了美英高校土木建筑类专业BIM教育的层次、课程设置和教学方法,归纳了两国高校BIM教育的核心思想、主题与课程及教育方法。中国高校应从BIM课程体系、软硬件环境、师资队伍建设、多元化教学模式和校企深度合作等方面加快土木建筑类专业中BIM教育的步伐。     

Distinguishing Concepts: Lexicons of Interactive Art and Architecture

Interactive design has come about as a result of the intermingling of disciplines. As a consequence, the language it uses has become blurred - borrowed or stolen with little restraint from elsewhere. Though particular terms have become ubiquitous, the original concepts that lie behind them have been lost. This means that all too frequently they are no longer knowingly used. Usman Haque sorts the wheat from the chaff and brings clarity to bear on the vocabulary and thinking behind interactivity. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Information Modelling as a Paradigm Shift

Building information modelling (BIM) is not just a change in software or skills sets, it requires a paradigm shift. Dennis Shelden , Chief Technology Officer of Gehry Technologies, outlines the more ‘fundamental, subtle and profound decisions’ on the road to BIM. It is necessary to fully consider not only the impacts both ‘upstream’ and ‘downstream’ from the conventional design phase, but also the possible creative restrictions as there is a potential trade-off that comes with the emphasis on collaborative processes. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Between Pragmatism and Theory

For the last three decades, Italian architecture has been characterised by an extreme polarisation. At one end of the spectrum have been the neo-conservators, who are subsumed by Italy's history, and at the other end the avant-garde for whom innovation is the Holy Grail and the present is a clean slate. Francesco Proto outlines the current potential for steering a middle course that will afford a greater eclecticism, enabling a natural balance between pragmatism and theory. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

After China: The World? Three Perspectives on a Critical Question

Are China’s cities now poised for global influence? This challenging question initiates a tripartite response from three authors: Kyong Park , Laurence Liauw and Doreen Heng Liu . In order to fully speculate on the potential of Chinese urbanism and architecture beyond its own borders: Park looks at whether China is a fully replicable capitalist model; Liauw outlines recent indicators of urban Sinofication around the world, whether it is the exporting of high-end designer furniture to the West or the injection of Chinese capital into Africa; and Heng Liu examines the dissemination of the Pearl River Delta both as an idea - first proliferated by Rem Koolhaas in the mid-1990s - and in its physical manifestations. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Design coordination strategies in a 2D and BIM mixed-project environment: social dynamics and productivity

ABSTRACT

Despite the rapid spread of building information modelling (BIM), the majority of BIM projects are still conducted in a mixed-project environment: two-dimensional (2D) drawing and BIM. The design-coordination productivity and information-exchange patterns are analysed for a unique case where two towers, A and B, of a hospital project deployed two different design coordination strategies in a 2D and BIM mixed-construction environment. The tower A strategy coordinated designs using drawings as the main source of information and confirmed them using BIM (BIM-assisted coordination), whereas the tower B strategy coordinated designs using BIM and confirmed them using drawings (BIM-led coordination). The coordination productivity was 228% faster for tower B than for tower A. The frequency of design changes was much lower for tower B (0.42 times/drawing) than for tower A (2.13 times/drawing). As the result, the design coordination for tower A was delayed by 9.3 months, whereas tower B was completed rapidly and without any delay. A social network analysis revealed that the BIM-led coordination was supported by the relatively even distribution of information, the reduced control of an mechanical, electrical and plumbing (MEP) engineer over a project, and higher accessibility to the information for every project participant.     

Josep Lluís Mateo/MAP Architects

By focusing on a ‘scientific approach’ that emphasises the importance of cause and effect, Josep Lluís Mateo/MAP has developed a design for the Camp Nou Stadium in Barcelona that is less about spectacle and more about the people it accommodates. Croatian critic and architect Krunoslav Ivanisin admires the structure for the ‘inherent logic of its parts’, but also for its prioritisation of communal life. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The project benefits of Building Information Modelling (BIM)

Theoretical developments in Building Information Modelling (BIM) suggest that not only is it useful for geometric modelling of a building's performance but also that it can assist in the management of construction projects. The purpose of this paper is to explore the extent to which the use of BIM has resulted in reported benefits on a cross-section of construction projects. This exploration is done by collecting secondary data from 35 construction projects that utilised BIM. A set of project success criteria were generated and content analysis was used to establish the extent to which each individual project met a criterion. The most frequently reported benefit related to the cost reduction and control through the project life cycle. Significant time savings were also reported. Negative benefits were mainly focused on the use of BIM software. Cost/benefit analysis, awareness raising and education and training are important activities to address the challenges of BIM usage.     

Architecture + Textiles = Architextiles

A hybrid term, ‘architextiles’ encompasses a wide range of projects and ways of thinking that unite architecture and textiles. By way of introduction to this issue, guest-editor Mark Garcia highlights the significant rise of interest in this confluence by theorists, architects, engineers, textile designers, materials scientists and artists. He also explains how, as a hybrid mode of design and practice, architextiles is better able to respond to society's fast-changing cultural and consumer demands, enabling the production of more dynamic, flexible, interactive, event and process-based spaces. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.