BDCuniversity.com |BUILDING DESIGN+CONSTRUCTION | 29PROOF BEYOND THE RULE OF THUMB
Richard Tyson, Director of Gensler’s Intelligent
Places practice, says his fi rm uses data “to cre-
ate better outcomes, driven by feedback.” Jacobs
relies on data to add “context” to a project’s design
process, says Shannon McElvaney, the fi rm’s Global
Director of Geodesign–Advance Planning Group.
It doesn’t hurt, either, say AEC fi rms, to have
good data in your back pocket to substantiate a
project’s design ideas, costs, or programming,
both internally or in conversations with clients,
vendors, or building partners. “Data goes beyond
the rule of thumb,” says Andrew Carruthers,
Project Manager with ZGF Architects in Seattle.
“We are now able to answer questions that we
previously only had feelings about, to clients and
to ourselves.”
Arup has installed accelerometers in seven
buildings in New York City and London, whose
output gets piped into data sets that can be
merged with weather data to determine, for
example, whether the fi rm’s assumptions about a
building’s stiffness are correct.
Lori Coppenrath, Principal and Planner in DLR
Group’s Justice & Civil practice in Seattle, says
her fi rm has found pre- and post-occupancy data
to be motivating factors when pitching criminal
justice projects to government offi cials, especially
those in “small counties in the middle of nowhere
that don’t want to do anything.” In turn, those
ZGF Architects has developed an urban daylighting tool that it fi rst tried out on a
high-rise building in British Columbia to position the building’s outdoor courtyard
for optimum daylight exposure. The analytical tool told the design team that the
courtyard needed to be smaller and elevated by one fl oor to achieve that goal.ZGF ARCHITECTSZGF ARCHITECTS