How Nikken Sekkei Uses BIM to Drive Design
Despite the unprecedented power that Building Information Modeling (BIM) offers architects and designers, most employ only a fraction of its potential. While the typical approach is to treat BIM software as simply the latest means for documenting design, Japanese architecture firm Nikken Sekkei is channeling the latest capabilities of ARCHICAD — the dominant BIM software in Japan, as well as Central and Eastern Europe — to develop an entirely new design process. By running real-time simulations to support collaborative work, utilizing environmental analysis tools to generate building forms, and centralizing project data to effectively implement lessons learned, working methods at Nikken Sekkei resemble a fundamentally different approach to the way architects design buildings. Nikken Sekkei's collaborative , cross-disciplinary approach to the real-time testing of design iterations for the Toho Gakuen School of Music exemplifies a process that’s both highly efficient and hi