DISRUPTING THE PROCESS GENERIC STUDY
Miranda and Jonathan have decided to investigate the mechanisms and process of building realisation. In their professional experiences, they both became interested in the frameworks that prevent or enable clients from making decisions.
By investigating at a strategic level, this body of work attempts to address the question: How do we ensure that client- developers think about sustainability before the architect is involved?
Often by the time an architect is engaged onto a project, many decisions regarding budget, scale, scope and programme have been made; sometimes relegating an architect to the entity engaged to increase the building’s aesthetic value.
The work has been an exploration of scales, and structured as a running conversation between Miranda and Jonathan. It is an attempt to abstract and visualise an already abstract and highly complex process and construction culture; in attempt to understand where efforts should be placed to compel clients to care about their building’s impacts on the planet.
BIM & SUSTAINABILITY CONTEXTUAL STUDY
This report investigates the potential opportunities and risks to the use of BIM as a tool to assist designers in achieving more ambitious carbon-conscious architecture.
Initially the report utilises BIM itself; using Autodesk Revit, Agisoft Metashape and Microsoft Excel as an industry typical example to explore best practices and workflow. These workflows are applied to St Cecilia’s Museum- part of the University of Edinburgh campus- as an methodology to gesture at how BIM could be integrated into a large estate body.
This technological exploration is followed by interviews conducted with representatives of four entities who interact- or interacted- with St Cecilia’s Museum: the project manager, architect, client and services manager. These interviews provide insight in how BIM could be embedded more seamlessly at early design stages, construction and post-completion, in addition to the challenges using a BIM model pose.
Finally, recommendations are made with reference to the precursor Architectural Technology Research: Generic Study (Pérez & Pilosof, 2020) for government, clients and architects; with a specific view to creating a culture of sustainable practice in the UK construction industry.
A VOID ARCHITECTURAL THEORY
In this time of great uncertainty, of great politicisation, can the current perception of the “salesman architect” proceed business as normal? Should it? If not, is a new approach to architecture forming? The following can be considered to be a journal of introspection through the observation and understanding of the paratextual field.which weaves across Davidson’s Log, and how these might be key to discovering the pitch of the new architectural timbre.
