SUSTAINABLY MINDED

When it comes to energy-efficient, sustainable designs, today’s residential consumers are more interested in including these features in their homes. As such, BIM is a useful tool for supporting such designs.

Taking a look at the American Institute of Architect’s 2015 Home Design Trends survey, the energy-efficient features reported as increasing the most in popularity include smart thermostats, extra insulation, ENERGY-STAR rated appliances, water-saving fixtures, and tankless water heaters.

Furthermore, 62 percent of those surveyed see energy management systems as increasing in popularity; 59 percent observe a growing popularity in wireless systems; backup power generation is viewed by 51 percent of respondents as popular; 45 percent identify more automation controls as growing in popularity; and 43 percent see solar panels as an increasingly popular choice for today’s homes.

As a point of interest, Murphy has observed his firm’s sustainably minded residential owners as falling into two camps. The first group are those who are very excited about sustainable design and may be interested in options, like Passivehaus certification or energy tracking, while the second batch is more concerned about design and takes it for granted that Murphy and his colleagues will prioritize sustainability in the design.

To be fair, Murphy points out that Washington state, where the vast majority of his firm’s projects are done, has one of the most restrictive energy codes in the country, so merely meeting minimum code requirements generally exceeds the standards for LEED or BuiltGreen.

Meanwhile, in Southern California, Beckmann reports that her clients often request geothermal, solar panels, living walls, and green roofs.

“BIM helps us to locate and coordinate the spatial, structural, and mechanical requirements for these elements and to communicate the aesthetics to the clients,” she says. “We also create sun studies with the model to study overhangs and shade structures.”

Similarly, Ogrydziak’s firm places a special emphasis on daylighting, capitalizing on simulation programs. “We will often go through several iterations to identify areas of glare, progressively refining our projects, in terms of daylighting, until we reach the final design.”

In addition, Ogrhdziak frequently brings in energy consultants to further enhance energy efficiencies for its residential projects. To fully support the consultants’ analysis, 3-D models are critical to support various simulations—be it lighting, energy, airflow, etc.—based on architects’ models. Naturally, this approach is much more accurate than traditional purely math-based analyses.

“With BIM, we can enter environmental and climate data specific to our site and orientation and define building systems, as well as evaluate energy source factors and costs,” explains Peterson. “All of these built-in tools allow us to refine our designs to best optimize our buildings’ passive design strategies.”

Along these same lines, Hertz relates that his firm’s designs always begin with a deep green-systems-thinking approach with respect to sustainability, and ideally toward a restorative building that gives back more than it takes. With the aid of BIM, not only are important variables such as building and operating costs more effortlessly determined, but embodied energy and life-cycle cost can be better established, in addition to providing a metric for the building’s offsets in carbon or net-zero budgets.

With BIM’s near real-time energy evaluation capabilities, more qualitative value decisions can be vetted out and incorporated into the design before actual construction begins. Then, at the commencement of construction, additional efficiencies can be gained through the use of fewer materials and less waste.

“We often share models with fabricators to get design elements produced off site to reduce shipping of raw materials and the wastefulness of manufacturing in the field,” explains Lee.

As a result of BIM’s precise, detailed, updated, and visually graphic information, fabricators, and suppliers are better equipped to provide the building team with exactly what they require, virtually eliminating change orders in the field.

“I firmly believe that increased BIM use will graphically and numerically support better designs, healthier environments, and more efficient energy consumption,” states Harris.

MOVING FORWARD

With BIM already proving its worth for a wide variety of commercial, industrial, and institutional project types, more and more residential architects are discovering that their smaller residential projects stand to benefit just as much.

“There’s no doubt that BIM helps us to resolve complex designs and conditions and limit surprises in the field because we’ve explored almost every square inch of the model,” confirms Beckmann.

In addition, smaller residential practices benefit from decreased manpower requirements, as the software’s automated capabilities take care of many formally tedious tasks.

“Mies van der Rohe would be a big fan of BIM, as it truly is ‘less is more!’” quips Harris.

While residential firms who have yet to embrace BIM will still have to navigate a learning curve, particularly when it comes to figuring out how to get to a model that looks great on-screen and generates good documents with appropriate levels of detail, it will only be a matter of time until those firms get up to speed.

Furthermore, Chapin suggests that the reward is great, and that it will only be a matter of time before they master how to easily create beautiful renderings and extract construction documentation with varied level of detail.

“I think that we’ll continue to see a rise in the use of BIM in small and mid-size firms as architects and clients alike become more aware of its value, and as young designers are coming out of school with the BIM mindset and skills,” predicts Beckmann.

In a similar vein, Harris concludes, “The future of BIM with small firms is bright. As more small firms prosper and become more competitive because of their use of BIM, more will embrace its use.”

GRAPHISOFT® ignited the BIM revolution in 1984 with ARCHICAD®, the industry first BIM software for architects. GRAPHISOFT continues to lead the industry with innovative solutions such as its revolutionary BIMcloud®, the world’s first real-time BIM collaboration environment; EcoDesigner™, the world’s first fully BIM-integrated “GREEN” design solution; and BIMx®, the world’s leading mobile app for BIM visualization. GRAPHISOFT is part of the Nemetschek Group. www.graphisoft.com