Shock of the new
Technological advances have transformed the built environment. Now we need more skilled technicians, writes Professor Peter Brandon FRICS
Because we can now design and build new and exciting forms, should we? Does the challenge of more exotic forms of architecture transform our view and make us rethink the way we have worked and behaved for generations?
Sometimes the pressure for change comes from within research and sometimes it comes from industry. Occasionally, the two act together. Such is the case with free-form architecture, which adopts the new techniques of parametric modelling.
In nearly every corner of the globe there are iconic new buildings appearing with flowing curves and projections which would have been impossible to design and construct even a couple of decades ago.
Buildings such as the new commercial and retail complex by Zaha Hadid and Patrick Shumacher in Beijing for the Soho China Group go beyond the shock of the new and provide enormous inspiration for change.
The Frank Gehry Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao was built thanks to a growing command of new technology by the Gehry technical team, headed by his then senior partner Jim Glymph.
It allowed an architect/sculptor of the quality of Gehry to design a building which was quite extraordinary and which caught the imagination of the world. On delivery, it increased the level of tourism in this industrial city in northern Spain by 3,000%.
However, it is not just the manipulation of structures and claddings through parametric models that makes the buildings exciting. It is also the changes to the fields familiar to surveyors, such as design, procurement and construction.
These foretell a potential major change which will benefit the whole industry, transforming it from one of craft to one which is high technology and attractive to many prospective students. We are on the cusp of something very big.
Information models
Salford University is currently exploring some of these issues with Gehry Technologies (the technology arm of Frank Gehry
Associates) and has been provided with building information models for this purpose.
One such project is a fairly conventional 74-storey building in Hong Kong (One Island East) for Swire Properties. Swire has encouraged the use of these methods because of the substantial savings they will make.
The model took more than 20 ‘man’ years to create over a period of two years at a cost of about 1% of the capital cost, but with a saving of at least 10% on capital cost and even more on operational costs over the building life cycle.
Largely, the savings were on clash detection (2,000 discovered before start on site and 150 potential clashes every week during construction). The cost of these clashes was potentially enormous.
The modelling approach was driven by an enlightened client, Stephen Fong of Swire Properties, who is now bringing his experience and drive to improve the whole of the building supply chain.
It is interesting to note that the Hong Kong team of client, consultants and contractors agreed at the end of the contract to continue with this approach on future buildings because ‘they could not see why they would want to go back to old methods with all the difficulties they incur’.
The technology is now proven, a goal which many of us have yearned for in our lifetime. But it is not yet adopted at the general level for all sorts of reasons (not least because the industry skill level needs upgrading).
While the technology is there, can it be scaled down to small- and medium-sized projects which make up the majority of the annual build programme? This still needs work and until it can be proved, the industry will be sceptical, to say the least.
Our view is that it is possible and implementation research should be a priority for all those who wish to see better quality buildings, less waste, speedier manufacture and a decrease in the management demands on contracts.
It is worth noting that in the MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) building the contractor, Skanska USA, only employed young management personnel (mostly under 30) because “the older management came with too much baggage to make the project work.”
No doubt there are teething troubles but the progress is significant.
Professor Peter Brandon FRICS is director of the University of Salford Think Lab in the School of the Built Environment
