CASE STUDY | Community Insight and Feedback key in design of Shirebrook Academy

Community Insight and Feedback key in design of Shirebrook Academy

Did you know that the ‘Academy’ was originally named

after an olive grove outside Athens in ancient Greece?

It was the site of Plato’s school of philosophy. The term

Academy is now used worldwide to describe centres of

learning providing environments designed to enhance

student performance in art, science, literature, music

and other cultural areas of endeavour.

This aptly describes the vision of Shirebrook Academy and co-located Stubbin Wood SEN School in Derbyshire, which is designed to accommodate a total of 1080 students, from primary to sixth form. The 11,000 square metre project, designed by Bond Bryan Architects, was instructed by Derbyshire County Council and is currently being constructed by Bowmer & Kirkland for completion in April 2013.

The Academy will provide first class learning opportunities, involving

collaboration and partnership between students and teachers, which will encourage students to actively engage in the learning process, enabling them to develop beyond their personal horizons. The ultimate aim of the Academy is to provide young people with work-ready and life skills, and to endow them with a strong sense of personal and social responsibility.

The vision for the co-located site is one where people of whatever needs come together as equals – learning,

sharing and enjoying the company of their peers, challenging themselves to improve their lives, and where the wider community takes pride in the expression of a common ideal. It was a challenge for the design team to understand such a complex brief and join both schools requirements together, achieving a building that will transform and improve its end-users, all within a tight budget.

For the students, their parents, the teachers and the rest of the community - who will have opportunities to use the Academy for local and cultural events – their differing interests and uses created a variety of design challenges for Bond Bryan Architects. It was clear Bond Bryan Architects needed to share the vision of each and be able to demonstrate that these individual visions had been accommodated within the overall design.

A Building Information Model of the Academy was created using GRAPHISOFT® ArchiCAD®. This model combines all of the building information, showing the relationships between different elements of the Academy, and as the Academy is being built on a sloped and hilly site also their levels and the surrounding terrain.

This site and building model is used to share construction details between Bond Bryan Architects, the structural engineers – RPS Burks Green – and other contractors, by using industry standard IFC formatted files to share the selected model details between different software applications.

Engaging meaningfully with non-professionals – students, teachers, the community – typically is very difficult. For these people it is difficult to interpret traditional drawings and whilst BIM models offer unprecedented opportunities for visualisation often these are only snap-shots or, at best, predefined movies. As these people are not familiar with CAD, or other technical applications, they require a different way of viewing the building model. They need to interact simply with the model, moving through the building at will, understanding how the building works, and how individual spaces are used. And with such a diversity of personal technology available their view of the model needs to be accessible through a variety of devices, from computers and workstations via the Internet, or from iPads, iPhones and similar mobile devices.

CASE STUDY | Community Insight and Feedback key in design of Shirebrook Academy

“ BIMx is an incredibly powerful tool. It enables anyone to explore the building model, to understand what it is all about – and to share their thoughts and ideas with the rest of the community. Isn’t this the best way to achieve the best design?”

Rob Jackson, BIM Manager, Bond Bryan Architects

CASE STUDY | Community Insight and Feedback key in design of Shirebrook Academy

“ BIM Explorer, allows anyone to explore a building, switching details on and off to get better visibility of individual rooms or components and take measurements – even calculate areas – so that they can understand the building more fully. This information enables them to provide feedback and make more realistic plans for its use.”

Rob Jackson, BIM Manager, Bond Bryan Architects

Choosing such a viewer was easy. As users of ArchiCAD for concept design and building development, Bond Bryan Architects were able to use GRAPHISOFT BIM Explorer™ (BIMx). BIMx enables users to interrogate a 3D building model, but not to make changes and annotations – this is more related to technical discussions, and is usually the domain of building professionals. As Rob Jackson, Bond Bryan’s BIM Manager explained, “BIM Explorer, allows anyone to explore a building, switching details on and off to get better visibility of individual rooms or components and take measurements – even calculate areas – so that they can understand the building more fully. This information enables them to provide feedback and make more realistic plans for its use”.

BIMx can be used at an early stage in a project allowing architects to quickly build concept models for clients and any stakeholder to review. For architects not only does this provide valuable feedback and validation of the design but it ensures stakeholders are engaged and actively contribute their comments at the earliest possible point of input. In addition ArchiCAD models can be saved in a number of formats, suitable for PC or Mac computers, mobile computers and other communication devices, or in web formats – and can even be enhanced and displayed as true 3D models for the latest 3D TVs!

Trees and people can be added to building models, and, although they add realism to the model, they are more useful to non-professionals by adding a visual scale to a model.

Complementing the overall vision for Shirebrook Academy are the individual visions created for students, teachers and the community by BIM Explorer. For both the construction professional and the non-professional stakeholder BIM Explorer illuminates the scope and ambition of a building project, before it is constructed. It draws contractors and users together in an integrated community where each member has the means to put forward ideas and share solutions. Rob Jackson summarises the potential of the software, and its value to the Shirebrook Academy by commenting “BIMx is an incredibly powerful tool. It enables anyone to explore the building model, to understand what it is all about – and to share their thoughts and ideas with the rest of the community. Isn’t this the best way to achieve the best design?”

CASE STUDY | Community Insight and Feedback key in design of Shirebrook Academy

For more information, please contact:

GRAPHISOFT UK Ltd. 21-25 Church Street West, Woking, Surrey GU21 6DJ Tel: +44 (0)1483 263 150 Email: mail@graphisoft.co.uk www.graphisoft.com

About GRAPHISOFT

GRAPHISOFT® ignited the BIM revolution with ArchiCAD®, the industry first BIM software

for architects. GRAPHISOFT continues to lead the industry with innovative solutions such

as the revolutionary GRAPHISOFT BIM Server™, the world’s first real-time BIM collaboration

environment, and the GRAPHISOFT EcoDesigner™, the world’s first fully integrated building

energy modeling application. GRAPHISOFT’s innovative solutions have fundamentally

changed the way architects around the world design and collaborate.

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For more information, on this project:

http://www.bondbryan.com