:)

Leon did not expect at all that I would take his words seriously and actually write to his boss and complement on his presentation on "issues around a central model for the entire project".

I too did not expect such a facsinating and inspiring reply from the head of TNO, Jan Mengelers:

Dear Pouriya Parsa, 

On behalf of TNO I thank you very much for passing the compliment you have for Leons presentation to Leons ‘boss’. I appreciate this, because if any, I mostly get complaints and seldom the compliments.
Not about Leons contribution, of course! Nor about the other 4500 employees, but only on my own performances. Your last remark about “mission completed” may be correct for this small mission, but for the real stuff it takes a bit more. 

Maybe another well-known mission, I sometimes like to refer to, is that of Starship Enterprise of Star Trek “Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise, its 5 years mission… to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before”. 

I believe all scientific research should contribute to a better world and to the benefit of mankind. This is an everlasting mission. I hope Leons presentation was a contribution to that. It is a pity that I am not familiar with Leons presentation. I will ask him to send it to me in order to confirm your judgement.
Thanks again for your compliment!

Kind regards,
Jan Mengelers

I, in turn, appreciate Mr. Mengelers's attitude. One does not recieve such letters every morning!

BIM Repository Workshop

On 28th and 29th June, BIM Repository Workshop was held at KTH. Arto Kiviniemi (Salford), Chuck Eastman (Georgia Tech), Vladimir Bazjanac (LBNL), Robin Drogemuller (Queensland UoT), Bob Owen (Salford, IDDS), Jacob Beetz (TU Eindhoven, BIMserver.org), Robert Amor (University of Auckland, IDDS), Patrick Houbaux (Eurostep, BIM servers), Jiri Hietanen (Datacubist, MVD, BLIS), van Berlo (TNO, BIMserver.org) and Väino Tarandi (KTH) participated, presented their works and contributd their points of view to the group during the workshops. Nick Nisbet (AEC3, COBie WP in the UK) and Thomas Olofsson (Luleå Technical University) were not able to attend.

A variety of topics were discussed and potential solutions for ambigious areas in the field were brainstormed. Requirements management, versioning and change management, partial model exchanges, server query facilities, system and service integration throughout the whole lifecycle, model responsibility, data ownership, long transactions and consolidation and data integrity in BIM were among the topics. The outcomes will be soon published as a white-paper. 

Jakob, me and Vladimir in Rökeriet, photo by Arto

OK, I am not here for a long post this morning. Just found it worthwhile to quote Brian Lighthart's golden statement which truely holds when addressing use of an integrated lifecycle-supporting collaborative Building Information Model by all actors in AEC/O. He has nonetheless articulated this in a general way also encompassing traditional formats such as dwg files:

I suppose the logic is "Why should I redraw this when that work is already done?". That logic is sound, but it ignores the contracts and the money involved.

... and the ensuing questions are not less stimulating and pertinent to contemporary debates in the field:

Do the agreements say anything about sharing drawings? Who decides what layers are visible, or included in the dwg as furnished? Who pays for the time to vet, assemble and convey the files, and deal with any communications problems or misunderstandings as to the content of the files?

Here is another piece of uncomfortable truth put forward by Dominic Seah (I can not confirm it):

At the moment, standard contracts in the UK, and i suspect in the US as well, prioritise the delivered 2D info over the BIM model.

I would like to come back to this later on. This is about somewhere in the industry where the boundaries are being pushed forward on a daily basis; and need to be done so, even at a faster pace in near future.

Source: LinkedIn

NKS: hopes and scruples

Now, it can be said with no hesitation that reconstruction of Slussen can no longer be entitled as the most spoken-about construction project in Stockholm. The New Karolinska Solna university hospital has recently been the source of a mass of both news and gossips, acclaiming, scrutinizing, criticising or harshly dissenting.

The New Karolinska Solna project (NKS) is defined as a public private partnership (PPP) with an integrated project delivery (IPD) approch: Swedish Hospital Partners (SHP) has undertaken design, construction, administration and maintenance of the buildings and facilities until 2040 together with the construction firm, Skanska and the British finance company, Innisfree. The County Council has assumed to pay a total amount of 52 billion Swedish Crowns in return. The project covers an area of 320 000 sqm. and will be completed by 2016.

According to recent news, the Stockholm County Council is considering possibilities for abolishment of the contract. This has triggered a complete state of shock, confusion and denial among those who are either engaged in or concerned about the project. As far as I am concerned, that will be pity and disappointing if a state-of-the-art and multi-disciplinary construction project as such is halted for any reason. NKS can in fact be a milestone in application of BIM in Swedish building industry. Ramböll consulting company is the administrator for provision of BIM strategies for NKS. Ramböll's representative and a promoter of Open BIM, Hans Lif, hopes this project would be a breakthrough in shifting from inefficient paper and PDF specification documents and drawings to standardized modern forms of data management in building industry.

We strongly subscribe to this point of view here at BIM Collaboration Lab!

Sources:

http://www.dn.se/sthlm/sll-overvager-saga-upp-sjukhusavtal

http://di.se/

http://www.svd.se/naringsliv/branscher/bank-och-fastighet/bygget-av-karolinska-kan-stoppas_7072151.svd

http://www.nyakarolinskasolna.se/

http://byggvarlden.se/nyheter/byggprojekt/article3092570.ece

http://www.netcommunity.se/201201165093/BYGG/BIM/Press/NVS-installerar-i-Nya-Karolinska-Solna-5093/menu-id-858
https://www.vardforbundet.se/Vardfokus/tidningen/2011/Nr-9-2011-9/Uppdrag-Byggaframtidens-vard/

SIRAP's Pakistani night

It was about two years ago when I joined SIRAP's (Stockholm International Researchers' Association) board since I had found the group an amazing multinational team with members from different universities, scientific backgrounds and nationalities. I was keeping an eye over their activities these years and even planned  to rejoin them several times but could not make it until quite recently.

My first collaboration with the group at Pakistan Cultural Evening last night was incredibly joyful and rewarding. Guys from Pakistan Student Association joined us at Studentpalatset with impressive presentations on Pakistan, its people, art and nature followed by superb Pakistani dishes. I met a dozen of friends from school and got a glimpse of Pakistan's culture, past and present; things that you never notice if you just follow the news.

I am sure about and also look forward to having immense opportunities of fun and delight in the future by contributing to SIRAP's ensuing educative and recreational activities. You are all also welcome!

BIM Collaboration Lab

KTH BIM Collaboration Lab is located at Stockholm, KTH main campus, Brinellvägen 1, 1st floor. Here are the initial sketches for the lab that I made according to Väino's drafts and how it looks like at the time. The interior will be completed in near future and the number of seats will be increased to ten during workshops. The lab will be transferred to a more spacious room when the basic activities are practiced for a while and further requirements for an ideal functionality are determined.

The lab will be a meeting place for all interested actors in ACE/FM industry and BIM experts for sharing their points of view and experiences on application of BIM, gains and losses, opportunities and hinders also for contributing to discussions on standardization of data formats used within the wide variety of ACE/FM branches.

SUCH -, the Sustainable Urban Collaboration Hub - will be developed here based on empirical requirements for an integrated, standardized and neutral information system that facilitates smooth and steady flow of information through different phases of program, design, construction, administration and recycling of the building also among the variety of participating groups. To explain the aim of such a platform in a clear and concise way: SUCH is expected to help optimizing planning and design procedure, minimizing loss of information and redundant work, increasing the profit, reducing design and construction time and promoting an integrated and environmental-friendly approach towards planning and design.


The aforementioned are in fact often mentioned as advantages for use of BIM - Building Information Modelling in general. Nonetheless, those objective would have never been fulfilled unless ubiquitous adoption and seamless application of BIM  is realised. This is in fact the main inducement of the escalating tradition of establishment of BIM labs by schools and ACE firms.

To build or not to build, is this the problem?

Quite much has been said recently about the shortage in housing supply specifically in larger cities of Sweden. Hans Lind, professor of Real Estate at KTH alleges that the four major construction corporations deliberately strangle supply of housing. Researcher in housing, Rune Wigren, also thinks that those four giant construction firms in the country are not competitive enough with each other. The prices of building materials have increased more than the salary of construction workers. This should have not been the case had production of buildings experienced a corresponding growth.

During the last decade, the average number of residential units per thousand inhabitants constructed in Sweden has been approximately half of that in other Nordic countries. The National Housing Credit Commitee (BKN) has evaluated that 35000-40000 new appartments should be built in Sweden every year. This used to be realized before the financial crisis in 2008. The amount was then reduced to 15000 houses per year during 2009 and 2010. The figure for the year 2012 is estimated to be 2500.

The amount of investments in residential buildings is naturally influenced by both house prices and production costs. It is however an almost established principle an increase in house prices yields in an increase in construction rate. Bengt Hansson, analyst at BKN believes that such high prices as those of today is thus a very suitable situation for construction. The International Collaboration Organization (OECD) asserts however that this is the high prices of building material has slowed down the construction pace. 

Jonas Granström, head of housing development of the Swedish headquarter of Skanska (the biggest construction corporation in Sweden) blames the economic situation for decrease in housing construction despite huge demand in the market. Granström recognises that the prices for houses have had no change for a long time. He believes that this is a result of well-thought initial prices.

Source: http://www.dn.se/ekonomi/de-vill-inte-bygga-bostader

The passion of the BIM

For me industriously struggling with inefficiencies of AutoCAD for almost a decade, possibilities brought about by BIM technologies (Building Information Modeling) have been astonishing, tempting and irresistible since I got to know it. Here are only some examples of typical difficulties in architectural design and producing construction drawings using traditional CAD: tedious and  iterative drafting jobs when something is being changed at a late phase in design, difficulties with incorporating construction details from manufacturers' catalogues to drawings of various scale and absence of the time factor in workshop drawings which in turn resulted in a rupture between design and construction procedures. Nonetheless, I was mostly occupied by studio-based design jobs at the time and had thus no idea of the most substantial strengths of BIM.

As part of my role in a research project at KTH, I have now the opportunity to dig deeper into the contemporary challenges on use of BIM and its prospects and risks. 

A shallow study led me to the following conclusions regarding hinders and hesitations of the practitioners (mostly AE firms since they are those in the forefront of acknowledging, implementing, using and promoting BIM):

• Segregated use: while it is not feasible to leap into BIM in full capacity due to logistics, learning curves, market inertia, etc.), using BIM in a limited way and with limited staff is in contrast with the nature of this tool.
• Lack of content: a BIM model is hungry for being filled up with detailed and accurate information to deliver the optimized output it is expected to produce. This, however, requires adoption of the tool by other partners or time- and cost-taking manual work which is not always affordable. 
• Using BIM in full capacity: the very eventual goal of BIM technologies is to realize an integrated design and construction procedure, while practical problems hinder free flow of information required for this purpose and limits the use of BIM to some secondary areas e.g. conceptual massing and clash discovery. 
• Legislative limitations: documents required for bids and project delivery are not updated. Required formats should thus be extracted from the BIM repository or simply specs and BOM's sould be used for the purpose of submission for bids,contracts, etc.
• Market inertia: this one of course applies to all new software and even new versions and variations of an existing software family. Actors in various fields, scales and economies require time to comprehend the added-value of using BIM in their specific area of expertise, examine, adopt and master it and in turn spread the word to others within the huge community of building and design.

Undoubtedly, the list can be complemented with many more items depending on location on earth, building styles and user groups. 

TO BE CONTINUED...

Karlsson & Co. II

First, happy 2012! Wish each and everyone a prosperous year!

Next;
During vacation, I had the opportunity to complement my previous post on refurbishment of Karlsson & Company and develop a set of past/present/final combinations of the photos and plan drawings of rooms which you can see here.

PS.  Owners have recentl y decided to change the name of the restaurant-bar to "Cristal". This will certainly have its implications when contemplating on interrior in more details I assume.

Karlsson & Co. I

It has now been a while that I have been feeling like I should write a couple of paragraghs about SIGRAD conference on computer graphics and visualization and some more on what I have recently been into in Länsstyrelsen Gävleborg (Gävleborg County Administration). At this moment, however, I feel a stronger urge to report on what is happening in Karlsson and Co. restaurant (Stockholm, Kungsgatan). Below you can see how the place looks like at this time when the owners and I keep on discussing placement of lights, speakers, smoke dispensers, etc. using interactive and collaborative media. Here you can see a re-organization plan over the entrance level followed by a number of shots:

VIP section with a separate entrance will be here.

Here is the view through where is going to be the main dance floor. The upper left side of the photo is where the central scene will be established.

This photo depicts the location of the dance floor in the pub  located in the basement.

the scene in the pub will be attached to the wall illuminated by the light.

and finally, where the bar for the pub will be placed quite close to a lounge .

I will keep an eye on the project and hopefully come up with updates. SIGRAD and LST are also on the agenda for further blog posts.

City Engine

As an introduction: CityEngine® is a standalone software and a conceptual design and modelling tool for professional users in entertainment, architecture, urban planning, GIS and general 3D content production. It is primarily aimed at time-efficient creation of 3D cities and buildings. The main concept of CityEngine is the "procedural" approach towards modeling. The computer is given a code-based "procedure" which represents a series of commands - in this context geometric modeling commands - which then will be executed. Instead of the "classical" intervention of the user, who manually interacts with the model and models 3d geometries, the task is described "abstractly", in a rule file.

Coming across Bekerman's experiments with City Engine on his VenICE project, I was wondering whether Procedural Inc.'s approach for further development of their flagship product goes to city modelling or city planning. The example mentioned above is a modelling practice, while recent cooperation among Procedural Inc. and ESRI is a true evidence of their interest in stepping more deeply into the planning realm.

That is in fact the choice that many other practitioners such as Agency 9 have also made in recent years. Agency 9 AB which is a privately owned Stockholm-based visualization firm was founded in 2003. The firm started as a game design group and then shifted to production of online 3d maps and visualization tools. Their planning application, City Planner is a user-friendly and web-based tool for creating, sharing and communicating of future urban plans. The inputs to the program are 3d models of planned urban entities constructed in SketchUp, Maya or 3D Studio Max. Proposals are located in their surroundings and are made available to all stakeholders. This software provides the infrastructure required for adding geo-referenced feedback to a developing urban plan.The most dominant characteristic of CityPlanner is user-friendliness, simplicity and ease of communication through web. The tool has its focus on providing 3D visualization for planning procedures and does not include so many analytic functions or data-processing capabilities.

Sources: 

City Engine Help manual

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJLvawS_5lA

Academia

In September, I had the opportunity to share outcomes of my recent studies with students of the master program "Sustainable Urban Planning and Design" in two occasions:

5th September, an overview of use of visualization in participatory planning was presented. This was in fact a revised version of my thesis work complemented by more background information, less focused on web-basedness and altered to better reflect the entire picture rather than my personal approach.

On the 14th of September, I gave a speech on 3d city models and 3d city modeling titled as: "An Overview of Three-Dimensional City Models; Historical Perspectives and a Contemporary Debate: Beauty vs. Brain". This was a summary on - among all - basic concepts in the field such as DEM(1), DSM(2); DTM(3), LOD(4), a history of creation of digital city models, different approaches, the vanishing borderline between digital maps and digital models and contemporary debates namely semantic city models and widespread use of CityGML.

In addition, an introductory lab session was held on use of the digital urban creation tool, City Engine, and implementation of procedural routines and grammar-based modeling. This was mainly focused on getting acquainted to the interface, experimenting basic functions of growing a street network from a scratch with help of shape files, creating urban lots, rendering those lots and streets into photo-realistic urban features based on the rules imposed by CGA files and customizing individual buildings by manipulating a set of parameters...

The above-mentioned were parts of the course AG2119 (Applied Analysis and International Planning Practice), year 2011, KTH.

1) Digital Elevation Model
2) Digital Surface Model
3) Digital Terrain Model
4) Level Of Detail

Do it all again!

The new plan for Slussen is a true evidence of the fact that city planning is not intrinsically consulting firms' business. The pen is trembling in planner's hand with each single stroke on the paper in fear of harsh criticism from high-ranked decision-making authorities and public now and then.

Social Democrats are not satisfied with the proposal for new Slussen and this means that the construction will be postponed again. SD is looking for a more functional and spectacular Slussen. So many stairs will cause problems for handicaps and women with baby strollers commuting between Gamla Stan and Södermalm, they assume. They also think that there is too much room for motor traffic in current proposal considering the vision for a car-free Gamla Stan. SD will therefore ask the City Planning Board not to approve the proposal. Christian Democrats condemn SD's decision for being irresponsible regarding the delay it will cause also for speaking out so late just a couple of months before decision making.

Social Democrats put forth three major arguments for their opposition to Nya Slussen:

• Existing serene skyline will be obstructed by new additions.
• Future underground transportation route to Nacka is not taken into account.
• There is too much room for car in current plan.

Nevertheless, the problem with the 3-year delay in the project required for planning a new solution is how to cope with threatening rise in Mälaren lake's level of water. In current plan, a new water-circulation system has been devised to transfer greater amounts of water from Mälaren to the Baltic Sea ...

The thing is that planning is all a matter of prioritizing. This does not entail that an urban plan can by no means be functional, visually appealing, economical, eco-friendly and collaborative at the same time; but that the necessity for making sacrifices on some aspects in favor of some gains somewhere else should always be perceived when judging final outcome of an urban planning procedure.

Source:
http://www.dn.se/sthlm/s-domer-ut-slussenforslaget
http://www.dn.se/sthlm/s-far-inget-medhall-om-slussenforslaget

Back to the topic

While searching avidly for pioneer practitioners in the field of visualization as part of my thesis work, I came across the visionary product of the Brisbane-based infrastructure visualization company, Urban Circus. Urban Circus is a powerful tool for real-time visualization of large-scale multi-disciplinary urban projects. Its interface is ideally user-friendly and to a great degree interactive. Base models are imported from 3DSMax, Maya, ArchiCAD, etc. Outputs range from 2d rendered scenes, 3d panoramic views, 3d videos and 4d planning environments to interactive web pages featuring all the above-mentioned. Created scenes are fairly realistic and delicately detailed. Urban Circus Company was founded by an urban planner, Dr. Ben Guy in 2004.

As part of a recent conversation among Dr. Ben Guy and me and in response to an inquiry on my opinion about key centres for 3D visualisation study and analysis around the world and where we are standing here at KTH, I made an effort to conclude my findings in the field as followed: 

Diagram 3

Diagram 4

Firstly, the definition and delimitation of 3d visualization is not fully agreed upon among scholars and practitioners. So, I try to delimit the term and clarify in which sense I would prefer to use it before proceeding. As depicted in diagrams 3 and 4, visualization may address the transitory process with an input from the modelling phase and an output for the simulation phase. The term can also be used in a wider sense describing the entire process. Throughout my studies, the latter definition has proved to be more appropriate when mentioning visualization as a means for participatory planning. 

Secondly, contemporary practitioners in the field take different approaches to the very nature of visualization tools and techniques. The variety of categories can - in my opinion - be summarized to two major groups. These two classifications are in turn derived from Raper, McCarthy and Williams' (1999)* categorization of virtual reality tools: Some institutes such as MIT Media Lab are mainly equipment-oriented which can correspond to Raper and others' immersive (egocentric) VR. Batty, Longley and others at UCL's CASA, on the other hand, are more focused on the through-the-window or exocentric definition of VR tools. Again, I find the latter better addressing contemporary needs for 3d visualization and more compatible with participatory approaches. 

Sweden is a pioneer in visualization in Scandinavia and among top ones in Europe with a number of active visualization centers such as those in Norrköping and Göteborg. They are however still more into immersive VR approaches and somehow more specialised in other uses of visualization such as medical applications rather than planning. In recent years, KTH has been offering various programs on visualization which are unique in the sense that they are closely linked to satellite imagery, semi-automated modeling and GIS utilities from one side and visualization of social aspects of planning using Space Syntax, Place Syntax, etc. on the other hand. 

There are in fact vast grounds and potentials for further developments, but still much to be done for integrating the variety of visualization-related activities and research programs within the department before strengthening our links with pioneers in the field. I have much hope and enthusiasm in our recent activities for better embracing the topic at our planning school in the future.

Sources:

Raper, J., McCarthy, T., & Williams, N. (1999). Georeferenced four-dimensional virtual environments: principles and applications.Computers, Environment and Urban Systems , 22 (6), 529-539.

Ball, J., Capanni, N., & Watt, S. (2008). Virtual Reality for Mutual Understanding in Landscape Planning. International

Journal of Social Sciences , Volume 2 Number 2 2008 ISSN 1306‐973X.

Parsanezhad, P., (2010). Towards an Optimal Web-based Visualization Tool for Planning : A Comparative Analytical Survey over Visualization Techniques for Enhancing Stakeholders’ Participation in Planning. Master thesis report, KTH, Stockholm.

http://www.circus3d.com/

Beauty out of Beast





Current KTH School of Architecture

No one is cheered up by an abrupt fire on a stately edifice in a reputed neighbourhood of the city. Burning of KTH School of Architecture in Stockholm, however, triggered ambivalent feelings for many who had longly suffered this arrogant, obstructive and gloomy mass of concrete boasting right in the middle of delicate harmonic urban environment of Östermalm and in the vicinity of the elaborate structure of Engelbrek Church.


After the fire

The catastrophe paved the way for realizing the 10-year dream of integrating the two isolated bodies of KTH through establishment of an accumulative building accommodating both the entrance to the campus and architectural school. It is planned to be located where the three streets of Osquarsbacke, Lindstedtsvägen and Drottning Kristinas vägen meet. Currently, Info Center and administrative units are located there.



The new KTH School of Architecture designed by Tham & Videgård will be a round building with a glassy-steel facade. As part of the project, the building located south of KTH library will be ruined and greenery and artworks in the surroundings will be transferred to other places around the campus. The new school of architecture is expected to be ready to use for spring semester 2014 and will also serve as a meeting place with a number of mini galleries.



New design

Sources:

http://www.akademiskahus.se/index.php?id=487&lProjektID=181
http://www.google.se/imgres?imgurl=http://mobil.svt.se/content/1/c8/02/41/65/20/arkitektbrand-370.jpg&imgrefurl=http://mobil.svt.se/2.33538/1.2416520/pa_vippen_att_hela_skolan_brann_ner&usg=__HMTHfzbqvC390RfiTzDc6jMBKxA=&h=208&w=370&sz=31&hl=sv&start=8&sig2=ycbe3EVFajKYL_5NZzokag&zoom=1&um=1&itbs=1&tbnid=m6mKPcGP6MI52M:&tbnh=69&tbnw=122&prev=/search%3Fq%3Darkitekturskolan%2Bbrand%26um%3D1%26hl%3Dsv%26biw%3D1070%26bih%3D772%26tbm%3Disch&ei=FsQ2Tu-gDo_TsgbUkcS6Ag