Holistic Design
Permeating. Threaded. Unified. Penetrating.
These are all words that describe our design objectives. Although safety, function, and aesthetics are the typical goals of building design, we strive to go far beyond these attributes so that the inhabitants and users will have an all-encompassing experience that affects their body, mind, and soul.
So how does this happen? We focus on the user experience of the building, the economy of the building, and the ecology of a building.
User Experience
Increased Productivity
With better indoor air quality and more day lighting, it has been well-documented that user productivity increases in a holistically designed building. This is true in all building types, but can best be measured in schools. A study in Chicago and Washington, D.C. found that holistically designed school facilities can add 5 percentage points or more to a school’s standardized test scores. In some instances, test scores improve 15% or more with better day lighting, more efficient temperature control, and better indoor air quality.
Better Health/Less Absences
Because a holistically designed building is designed with environmentally friendly materials and uses low VOC (volatile organic compound) materials, the data is overwhelming that people are more healthy in these spaces. In fact, a recent review of five separate studies found an average asthma reduction of 38.5% in buildings with improved air-quality.
Retention of Quality People
For the same reason that workers are healthy, an owner or developer can expect to retain people longer in a holistically designed building. Statistics show this fact throughout the country. Let your building help you hold on to your good people.
Building Economy
Buildings cost a lot more to maintain than they do to build. Life-cycle costs have a much greater economic impact than initial building costs. Holistically designed buildings use an average of 33% less energy than those more conventionally designed. While continuing to curate efficient construction costs, we also embrace design that emphasizes savings over the life of the building. Typical energy performance enhancements include more efficient lighting, greater use of day lighting and sensors, more efficient heating and cooling systems and better insulated walls and roofs. Depending on the size of the building, the savings could equate to vast savings every year.
Building Ecology
One of the most common reasons for a holistically designed building is because it’s simply better for the environment. CO2 emissions are lessened, water runoff is reduced, fossil fuels are conserved due to energy need reductions, site and climate concerns are addressed. All of these attributes are designed as solutions in the building from the ground up, providing the users with a tangible example of environmental conscientiousness.
BIM Technology
Imagine if someone asked you to produce drawings of your brain so that they could build one just like it. How would you do that? Would you sketch black lines on a white sheet of paper that showed your brain from the side, top, etc.? How would they build the inside of your brain? You'd have to draw more drawings with more complexity to show different "slices" of your brain. But would it still be right? Would your drawings reflect the different neurons paths and blood flow?
Now imagine if you were given that same assignment, but you were given a tool that could reproduce your brain in full 3 dimensions in a model form, and you can choose to peer into every nook and crevice within it. It is clear that this model would be much easier to build the new brain with, simply because it's an exact replica..there's no need for interpretation of drawings.
This is what architects are faced with every day when they are asked to produce drawings that represent a finished building. Fortunately, technology has given us a tool to model everything before it is built. But most architects aren't even using these tools because of the steep learning curves and the investments in the technology.
Building Information Modeling (BIM) is relatively new to architectural design and construction, but it is transforming the industry in a way never seen before. In the past, an architect drew lines, arcs, and circles on paper or on the computer that abstractly represented the physical building. It was up to the contractor and the owner to interpret those abstractions and make a building out of it. Many times they were negatively surprised with the results. At a minimum, there were surprises in the field that resulted in costly change orders.
The promise of BIM is that an architect now "builds" the entire building on the computer before it's physically built. Instead of an abstract representation of a door or a window, BIM software draws the actual door or window with all of the intelligence associated with that object. A door knows it's a door. It also automatically coordinates sheets and schedules so that all cross-references are always reconciled (a common area of mistakes for architects).
TriArch designs every project with BIM tools. What does this mean to the owner?
- Less time coordinating drawings and more time designing the building
- Mistakes are minimized and change orders reduced or done away with entirely
- An owner can see every angle of every space in the building in full 3D before construction has begun so that they can tell exactly what they are getting
- Cost estimates are based on accurate quantities, and if the design changes, new and updated quantities and budgets are generated
- Analyze the life-cycle costs or energy use of a building before it is built
- Plan and implement sustainable design principles for an overall greener project
- Design and produce projects with more quality, lower fees, and with a faster turnaround time
Through management, design, and production, BIM helps build client certainty and ensures that your building follows expectations.