Two great interviews/articles with some audio clips about SOM (Skidmore, Owings and Merrill’s) using BIM in professional practice...
From Architect Magazine:...Documents for 1 WTC were completed in 2007, and now BIM is used on 85 percent of all SOM projects. Integrated modeling changed how the firm works, but, according to Paul Seletsky, senior manager of digital design in the New York office, adopting BIM requires adopting "BIM culture"—a new way of thinking about building design based on performance, not just form. It also requires a different kind of practitioner, one who can shape-shift between the design and technical demands of any project. Digital Design Specialists, as they are called in SOM parlance, reside on several project teams at a time. They are architects (not "operators," Seletsky stresses) who know the tools: Revit, Digital Project, Rhino 3D, Ecotech, and a host of simulation software. Most important, they can think critically and holistically about a design...Read More....From Architectural Record:Carl Galioto, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill’s partner-in-charge of the firm’s New York Technical Group, and Paul Seletsky, SOM’s director of digital design, are two of the architecture profession’s leading experts on BIM: building information modeling (also commonly referred to as virtual design and construction).
The pair discuss how BIM facilitated a major redesign of the Freedom Tower; assess the technology’s strategic impact on the profession; address common misperceptions; explain BIM’s potential benefits for smaller practices; point out how BIM can lead to increased compensation for architects; and lay out the potential ramifications of BIM—both positive and negative—on the architect’s overall role in the realization of buildings (“I believe this moment is a very critical hinge in the history of the practice of architecture—and that architects do have the ability to take a much greater responsibility in the implementation of their designs”)... Read More...
Audio Clips:
