Life on the digital frontier

“Where there is an open mind, there will always be a frontier.” Charles Kettering, inventor, engineer, businessman.

I am often asked what platform or format we work in, to which my usual response is “all of them”! Renowned as design innovators in the built environment, Buro Happold uses model based, integrative design to deliver the highest quality projects. We promote a highly collaborative approach tethered with appropriate technologies; by combining talent, technique and technologies we deliver high performance, value and efficiency while reducing waste and embodied energy.

We remain software agnostic; we respond to a challenge with a process rather than a software package. We are never cornered by the current capabilities of digital world; at Buro Happold we employ associative, parametric and computational design techniques to optimise design quality through efficient iterative analytical experiments.

Often we require custom negotiators to move geometry, and design intelligence between appropriate modelers, solvers and documentation tools. Proprietary tool development is a daily activity on our digital frontier. Coupled with IP development we also nurture relationships with major software vendors, as well as participating in industry alliances, and supporting community building through groups such as the Los Angeles Design Technology Forum (www.ladesigntech.org).

The Los Angeles Design Technology Forum is a collective organization representing a wide cross-section of architecture and engineering firms and academic institutions around the Los Angeles basin. It serves to increase awareness of technological innovations in design and construction, and to foster their application throughout the city’s design community. By connecting a diverse audience of designers, engineers, builders and owners who have widely varying conceptions of technology in their work, we hope to create new opportunities for efficiency and creativity.

ARTIC Tools Utilization (partial list):

Buro Happold Proprietary tools:
BH SMARTForm – ETFE pillow inflation formfinding for design development
BH Revit tools – custom interoperability tools for generating complex geometry in Revit
BH CATIA tools – custom toolset for automated geometry generation specific to ARTIC
BH Rhino tools – custom toolset for automated geometry generation

Commercial tools:
Revit (Structural/MEP) – documentation, coordination, visualization
Gehry Technologies Digital Project and CATIA – geometric drivers and fabrication models
Rhino – design studies, visualization, translation
Grasshopper – parametric development of design geometry
Robot – structural analysis
inTENS – (Tensys) dynamic relaxation fabric tensile analysis
ANSYS – FEA structural component design
ANSYS CFX – CFD environmental simulations
EnergyPro – energy modeling (California Title 24)
IES VE – thermal analysis and LEED energy modeling
Ecotect – shading, daylighting
Radiance – illumination