From Michael Carroll:

I don’t think Helsinki has a design yet, but I would imagine it’s going to be something less exuberant and more “Dutch” given the culture of the country. Let’s say Bilbao captures the flash and bravado of Spain, and the Abu Dhabi iteration, whatever the design is metaphorically speaking, captures the excesses of oil wealth purely on it looking expensive (it looks excessive, even by Dubai standards). I would think Snohetta would be a prime contender for the building since they’ve done a lot of work on that scale and it’s right in their backyard.

Specifically I’m thinking of the Oslo Opera House in Norway as a point of comparison. There is a whole confluence of style in historic interpretation within a building that’s geared mainly toward solving large programmatic challenges, which is in my opinion not so different from a museum. For example, the use of wood on the interior, true of most architects brought up in Scandinavia, draws a clear line from Aalto. But reaching out to the mainland, their fascination with buildings as “5-sided” draws on Corbusier’s adamancy about reclaiming some of the outdoor ground space you’re occupying by making the roof accessible. In both cases, their interpretation and inventiveness make them an excellent choice for the Guggenheim Foundation.

Bilbao and Abu Dhabi are designs give to excess, but much of the culture of Scandinavia is, and has always been about doing more with less. I think a firm like Snohetta would be an incredibly potent juxtaposition for the portfolio of galleries the Guggenheim foundation has, but I can’t quite decide if it would fall in line with the obsessive perfectionism of Frank Lloyd Wright, or if it would be another animal altogether. I’m hoping for the latter.

From Pierce Reynoldson

New Yorker critic, Paul Goldberger, once wrote that the Guggenheim Bilbao was, “truly a signal moment in the architectural culture.” In the world of Tocci it was a signal moment for VDC, as well. Ghery Partners’ daring formal feats with Catia (a software, prior to Bilbao, used mainly for fighter jets) not only showed architects what was possible with parametric modeling, but also pointed toward a new process for design. A process in which the architect begins working directly (albeit virtually) with the construction materials in a way that the reductive conventions of orthographic drawing simply did not permit.

In the new (let’s call it Gherian) paradigm the architect works iteratively, feeding form to a modeling staff that develops ever more complex parameters based on increasingly comprehensive aesthetic, material and constructability information. These parameters translate the architect’s form into validated possibility. The Gherian paradigm is one of constructive dialogue between design intent and the (virtual) realities of building. Because of Catia and a brilliant staff, Ghery knew how structural steel, titanium cladding, and stone would comply, or resist, his forms.

Guggenheim Bilbao exemplifies the success of a brilliant designer and a brilliant VDC department. Ghery Partners created a VDC infrastructure capable of translating the Ghery napkin sketch and sketch model into buildable reality.

Best of all it worked. Not only did the museum cement Frank Ghery’s status as an icon of contemporary architecture, it was also famously on schedule and within budget ($300/sf). All in all, a pretty good ROI for VDC.

From Moises Berrun:

Architecture is a luxury of experience.  The train ride down green slopes toward Bilboa remains vivid.  The impact of seeing the Guggenheim lofted on the city’s shadowed rails remains fresh.  The moment was singular and the building could not be imagined elsewhere.  The singularity of the Guggenheim Bilboa is manifest through several distinctive features, from the celebrated curves to the articulation of the building’s surface.

The Guggenheim Foundation is proposing to recreate such an experience in Helsinki and add to their collection of signature art centers around the world.  The challenge is to produce an experience that is one of a kind, but also reliable.  Guggenheim Bilboa developed a standard for reinventing a city and also cemented the genius of the museum’s architect, Frank Gehry.  Can this be repeated?

As a construction manager, I’m most interested in the specifics of building, especially when it comes to predicting the sequence of operations.  What is interesting is that the complexity of the Guggenheim Bilboa seems to belie anything predictable.  Of added interest are the reports that the project was built on time and budget.

I don’t know first-hand about the specifics of the Guggenheim’s construction and of the reliability of the cost projections.  My account comes from Ben Flyvbjerg’s paper, “Design by Deception:  The Politics of Megaproject Approval,” in which he describes Frank Gehry’s “organization of the artist.”  Throughout the discussion between Ben and Frank, Frank describes how the use of digital design models demystifies the building elements.  The power in using digital design tools such as Revit, and in the case of Frank, CATIA, is the ability to record the design, categorize the building elements and develop a system of notation so that all of the building elements remain visible.  The ability to see the model and predict the end product is inherent in these digital design tools.

Sophisticated architects and contractors employing digital design tools see the building elements more clearly and are able to experience the building virtually before any ground breaks.  I, for one, am waiting to see the digital tools learn those baroque curves that are characteristic of Gehry’s oeuvre.

Professor Pierce responds:

Interesting.

Neither building looks very Roman. The Romans were engineers. They liked straight lines and simple shapes; you don’t see too many skewed trapezoids. The post building could have been a temporary basilica, but once again the lines are a little wobbly by Roman standards. Both look more like the kind of organic buildings from ancient Turkey.

Which, of course, circles us back to a Turkish archaeological find – the ancient town of Bathonea.

From Monarch on the Merrimack’s Senior Project Manager VJ Tocci:

Tocci is actively utilizing geothermal heating and cooling at the Monarch on the Merrimack apartments. By drilling 14 separate wells, each 1500 feet deep, we are able to access water that is preheated naturally by the earth’s natural heat source and thereby provide temperature controls for a 400,000 SF, 200 unit apartment building.

Geothermal heat is a naturally occurring process where the Earth produces heat from the original formation of the planet, radioactive decay of minerals, and solar energy warming the earth’s crust.

The building is able to be conditioned by circulating this earthbound water source to heat exchangers and then to individual heat pumps at each apartment. The Earth maintains a 50 degree temperature on the tapped well water. The heat exchangers then mixes the well water with the water contained in a glychol loop (glychol is a chemical used to keep the water at a relatively controlled temperature) which circulates around the entire building. This loop is then able to be custom heated or cooled to each unit through a heat pump which separately services each apartment..
This system is an efficient method for utilizing both economic and environmentally aware solutions to supply comfort to hundreds of tenants.

The Monarch on the Merrimack is a remarkable project that is conserving materials both by its reuse of an enormous and functional antique building to create unique and dramatic living spaces, and by it’s state of the art heating and cooling system to reduce it’s dependency on oil, gas, and electricity.

The concept of “the most sustainable building is the one not built” has been floating around the industry for a bit, but it only works when one takes the 100-year view. The use of the building must be viable. And despite the renovations, Javits is not. At the same time, it isn’t a loss that  Bruce Fowle and team have dedicated so much time to the renovation. Although  seems inevitable that the Javits Center will meet its maker, the demolition is likely years away.

Read more about the groundbreaking.

BIM

In his introductory essay, Phil highlights several examples of firms that are “stretching the role of the architect, and in some ways reshaping practice itself”:

“Tocci Building Companies, like many digitally enabled contractors, has begun to hire architects to bridge the cultural, technical, and aesthetic gulf between design and construction. While these modeling teams act as intermediaries today, can it be long before they are converted to full architectural practices?”

It isn’t that we’ve had similar conversations in house. As the number of degreed or licensed architects and engineers increases, how could we not? However, our dialogue always ends at the same note: for the most part, we are more passionate about being design-enablers than designers.

To be honest, we were more impressed with Peter Gluck and Partners Architects’ architect led design-build strategy:

“…assign their project architects as job superintendents, shipping them to the field to lead construction on their projects. Legally, this architect works for two distinct companies, but in practice, design and construction are seamless.”