Congratulations to Joseph Wyman, AIA, the second winner of a Wacom Intuos5 pen tablet in our Vectorworks: From Sketch to BIM giveaway. As we mentioned in our story on Monday, this project will demonstrate how to transform a hand-drawn sketch into a Building Information Model (BIM). Members of the public can help determine the project’s scope by voting on key details for each phase. Wyman was entered into the drawing by casting his vote in Phase 1 to select a project type.

About the Winner

Joseph Wyman

Wyman is owner of ARQEON architecture in Sydney, Australia. His firm is primarily a residential architecture practice, with a focus on high quality, innovation, and energy efficiency.

“My design philosophy is based on the basic principles of good architectural design taught at my architecture school,” says Wyman. He cited the following five principles in detail:

1. Good architecture should aim to provide an interesting, varied, and stimulating spatial experience and transitions of mystery and surprise moving through and around the building.
2. Views should be controlled and designed as part of the spatial experience of moving through the interior and external spaces of the building.
3. Considerations of aspect and orientation of the building’s siting are paramount to achieve the principles of passive environmental comfort in terms of daylight penetration in winter and shading in summer, maximize heat gain in winter and minimize heat gain in summer and to capture and create views from within the building.
4. Contextualize the building in terms of the surrounding landscape or urban fabric and, importantly, relate the building and its components to human scale.
5. Reflect the client’s personality, style, family, or organizational culture and structure and comprehensively achieve the functional, budgetary, and time program set out by the client brief.

An elevation drawing of a recent award-winning beach house project at Whale Beach, New South Wales.

“I begin a design concept by analyzing the orientation, aspect, and levels of the site and considering the basic relationships of the spatial program,” he added. “This can be in the form of very loose sketches on paper, which are then followed up by loose thick colored lines on a sketch layer in Vectorworks software. These sketches are developed in more detail using more precise layers and initial client presentation plans and elevations rendered in Sketch mode to give the impression of being hand drawn and preliminary to generate further discussion in a more relaxed nontechnical mode with the clients.”

A photo of the completed Whale Beach house.

Nemetschek Vectorworks is giving away Wacom Intuos5 pen tablets at each phase of the Vectorworks: From Sketch to BIM project. Visit the site today to vote and enter for your chance to win!

Congratulations to Carolina Garcia, who won a Wacom Intuos5 pen tablet in the Vectorworks: From Sketch to BIM giveaway. Through this project, the Vectorworks design team is demonstrating how to transform a hand-drawn sketch into a Building Information Model (BIM). Members of the public can help determine the project’s scope by voting on key details for each phase.

Garcia was entered into the drawing by casting her vote in Phase 1 to select a project type. An Eco Resort was the winner. Currently, visitors to the Sketch to BIM site can vote on Phase 2 by selecting the conceptual sketch they’d like to see designed.

Carolina Garcia

About the Winner

Carolina Garcia, PLA, LEED AP BD+C, is both the owner of Culturelle3 Designs, Inc. and a career services advisor at Harrington College of Design in Chicago, Illinois. Her firm offers services in landscape architecture, architecture/design consulting, and research for residential, commercial, civic, and institutional facilities markets.

“My design philosophy is to create spaces inspired by history, culture, and nature,” she says. “I focus on multiple dimensions in order to create spaces that offer a variety of experiences for the user. My design concepts always begin with research, either for inspiration or finding out what was on the site before.” She specialized in cultural landscapes while in graduate school at U of I Urbana-Champaign. “I’ve taken that interest and applied it to my projects in such a way that cultural and historical components are part of the early research and design phase. This also gets me thinking about sustainable ideas for the project so the site is revived and reconnected to its cultural values.”

Garcia says she sketches design concepts by hand but also uses software early in her design process. “Having a 3D massing model or simple rendering really explains to the client what the designer’s vision is and it helps to solve issues or see details that 2D drawings don’t convey clearly,” she says.

Garcia joined a team of architects and engineers earlier this year to develop a design for the Infill Philadelphia: Soak It Up competition, which illustrates sustainable alternatives to stormwater treatment in a commercial site.

How does she balance her design practice with her role at Harrington College of Design? “As a career advisor at Harrington, I assist students in developing their career goals while in school and once they graduate,” she says. “Being a designer myself allows me to share my experiences with them and provide some insight into what’s trending in the design industry. The beauty of being a designer is having the ability to adapt. For me it’s been a nice balance because while I don’t get to sketch or design on a daily basis, I still get to learn and apply my knowledge to both my career advising and design projects.”

Nemetschek Vectorworks is giving away Wacom Intuos5 pen tablets at each phase of the Vectorworks: From Sketch to BIM project. Visit the site today to vote and enter for your chance to win!

Beginning May 18, visitors to Jacksons Fencing in Kent in the U.K. can view seven award-winning gardens at Jacksons 4th Annual Show Gardens Opening. Displays include the Seaside garden, winner of the first Jacksons Fencing garden design competition and designed by Joanne Winn of Joanne Winn Garden Design.

Rendering of the design for the Seaside garden.

The Seaside garden has undergone a slight redesign and will be called the Sanctuary garden for this display. The garden features a large deck and a retreat made with slatted material that allows light into the building. As the competition website describes the plantings, “the garden is softly swathed with layers of tall, lacy flower heads, aloft the shimmering drifts of grasses. Box cubes add structure to the airy planting, emphasizing the form of the building and accentuating the geometry of the garden. The shade is lightened by the pastel and white planting beneath the delicate canopy of a Birch tree.”

Other gardens on display include a preview of the new Whitefriars Show Garden by Lisa Feurtado, which will be installed in Canterbury city center in June, and the Float garden, previously designed by Royal Horticultural Society medal winner Heather Appleton with a new planting scheme by competition winner David Magner.

Nemetschek Vectorworks was proud to be involved in the competition as a sponsor. And, Vectorworks users might recognize some of the Jacksons products from the Jacksons Fencing content library available as part of their Vectorworks Service Select membership.

On May 22, architects in Switzerland will have the opportunity to attend BIM im Klartext at the Architekturforum Zürich. “BIM im Klartext” simply means “BIM in plain language,” and attendees of this event will learn what BIM (Building Information Modeling) is, what the benefits of BIM are, and how BIM is used in Switzerland and other European countries.

The event will feature four presentations by industry educators and professionals, as well as an opening welcome and a summary with moderated questions at the end. The agenda includes the following:

1. Welcome and opening words by Prof. Fritz Häubi
2. “What is BIM? An Introduction” by Prof. Dr.-Ing. Odilo Schoch
3. “Collaboration with BIM in Practice” by David Gubler, Dipl. Arch ETH
4. “From CAD to BIM Planning in Five Steps” by Andy Hängärtner, CAD Expert
5. “Quality Assurance by Building Analysis with Solibri” by Andrés G. Damjanov, Dipl. Architect
6. Summary and concluding questions by Prof. Fritz Häubi

Sponsors of the event include Bern University of Applied Sciences, the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland, Swiss-Architects.com, Solibri, ArchiMedia, and Vectorworks distributor ComputerWorks.

For more information and to register for BIM im Klartext, please click here.

Here is a roundup of Vectorworks tech news from the past month.