Evolution of Process, Part 2: Current Practice
We specialize in collaborative design for communities. This means we often work on design teams for large-scale projects. These teams include engineers, architects, landscape architects, and public art coordinators. Being able to communicate with all players is key to successful cooperation on a design team. We use physical models, project renderings, digital models, and physical prototypes, as seen with Meadowood, below, to help show what a final project will look like.
Because communication is important, we work with many tools and can accept and deliver many file types. Engineers and architects often supply us with the digital plan drawings, as DWGs, that they work with in their offices. However, these plans are not always the best way to communicate our intent with public art coordinators or the community involved. Because of this, we generate project visualizations of our digital models, which show our intent. For Cary, below, different iterations of the design were modeled allowing the client to provide feedback on the direction of the work.
We use form and pattern to transform space, designing and visualizing in 3D. We take the plans and transform them into 3D digital models, in SketchUp and Rhino. We can then use these models to understand the space and explore the opportunities of each site. These digital models allow for us to make and examine many possible solutions and then share these ideas with the team. We can take the models back into drawings to give to the engineers and work with them to figure out the details. With Tulsa, below, the expedited process had us working closely back and forth with the project engineers and there is a strong connection between our process models and the fabricated work.
Being able to represent our ideas digitally allows us to understand the site and come up with the best fit for the site. We can also share these ideas with our client and the community. This allows us to integrate their feedback into our designs and come up with a solution that meets their needs. We can be responsive earlier in the design process yielding a stronger final product. This iterative design process can create very powerful work that is the best fit for the client, the site and the budget. At Kellogg, below, having a digital spatial understanding of the site and the aesthetic enhancements we were proposing allowed for the design team to work together to guide the project toward success.
