Human Oriented Architecture

Building Information Modeling (BIM) is a relatively new approach in the field of architectural design. Its emergence became possible only at a certain stage of development of IT-technologies. Perhaps, the full potential of BIM not yet disclosed to the end, but it is already clear that the body of works that are carried out today with the help of PC, has a fundamentally different character than ever before. Wide range of Information Modelling options allows solving the problems that have quite recently would have seemed overwhelming. Futher on, Tomohiko Yamanashi, Senior Executive Officer and Deputy Head of Architectural Design Department explains about the architectural design practice utilizing Building Information Model (BIM) at Nikken Sekkei.

Before getting into the main subject, I would like to introduce a little about Nikken Sekkei. Nikken Sekkei is the so-called organizational design office in Japan, while its scale is always at top three level among those architectural firms in the world. Total number of employees throughout Nikken Sekkei Group is more than 2,500.

Our business practice extends beyond architectural design, including structural design, mechanical equipment design and urban design in the civil engineering field. We Nikken Sekkei are working on various types of buildings, while we are specialized in large-scale, multipurpose complex in urban areas. We are also strong in designing super tall tower structures, as we designed some of our representative works such as Tokyo Tower and Tokyo Sky Tree.

As these examples demonstrate, our architectural works play important roles in forming the urban scenery of Tokyo. Another example is this “Tokyo Mode Gakuen Spiral Tower”. This is one of the earliest examples of utilizing BIM in our design process, while it appears to have a complex shape. The complex shape is actually generated by a very simple algorithm. This algorithm gives instructions for the design, by rotating each upper floor at 3 degrees in counterclockwise orientation, while its floor size is reduced by 1%.

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Text: Tomohiko Yamanashi, Senior Executive Officer,
Deputy Head of Architectural Design Department
Materials are Courtesy of Nikken Sekkei