3d art

Architecture
costs less. McHugh’s firm is a small one, and it
recently partnered with a medium-sized
architectural firm on the pitch for the $13 million
expansion of the Lucky Eagle Hotel. “We
participated in a competitive design contest
against a much larger architectural firm. I
produced interior room designs with SketchUp
and Artlantis. I collaborated with another designer
at the architectural firm which had just introduced
its staff to SketchUp. He primarily focused on the
building exterior. We produced some very
impressive presentation materials in a three-week
period.” Needless to say, they won the bid.
Of course, the great thing about working with a
program like SketchUp is that you can tailor it
precisely to your needs by making use of all its
Ruby Scripts and plug-ins. “If you combine the
native tools with several of the great scripts
written by talented developers on the SketchUp
forum, you have a pretty powerful arsenal of
modelling tools at your disposal,” notes Warner.
But perhaps the real reason that SketchUp has
become the de facto tool of architects and set
designers alike is that by being first and foremost
3700 Bigelow Blvd
© Adam Warner/Desmone & Associates Architects
an intuitive program, its users can forget about
how they create things, and concentrate solely on
creating them. Wadsworth says, “If I have an
architectural project in mind, the first thing I do is
open up SketchUp on a PC and start modelling
stuff. I almost said ‘sketching stuff’, but really with
SketchUp the one is the other. The software’s
name is not inappropriate.” Sloat adds that the
program is “unbounded by the need for constant
technical input (like most BIM programs require)
for free-flowing idea generation.
“It’s powerful enough to do professional work
but not so powerful that it bogs down one’s ability
to get fast and ‘friendly-looking’ results.”
SketchUp on the job
Architectural firm Lowney explains how it used SketchUp to
design a new Safeway store in Oakland, California
Oakland Safeway
© Tim Sloat/Lowney
Architecture
Lowney Architecture (www.lowneyarch.com) is a full-service architectural
company based in Oakland, California. Senior designer Tim Sloat has been
with the firm for five years, and works closely with the boss Ken Lowney, and
the architects to “tackle the concept and schematic design” of their projects.
The firm specialises in commercial and mixed use projects, as well as
restaurants, and one of its largest clients is the grocery retailer Safeway Inc,
which has employed them to “design new stores and expansion/remodels in
more urban areas and in communities especially sensitive to the need for
creating architecture that relates directly to the community.”
Oakland Safeway
© Tim Sloat/Lowney Architecture
The design for the new Oakland Safeway (pictured) was primarily created
in SketchUp. Expressing his views on the app, Sloat says, “It allows us to
quickly experiment, explore and experience design possibilities in three
dimensions, almost as easily as drawing by hand. The intuitive and immediate
connection between the tip of a pen and one’s mind is something that CAD
technology has been striving towards for years for the every-day architectural
designer; SketchUp has come the closest yet to re-creating that experience.”
And that ease of use was needed, given that Lowney “not only constructed the
proposed project in SketchUp, but also used surveys, aerial imagery and site
visits to construct the immediate surrounding context.”
Lowney also uses Revit for site plans “and for studying the complicated
grade and floor level changes as they related to the project along its block-long
length. Sloat admits, “Workflow is a challenge between Revit and SketchUp
[since] we can easily export 3D information from one into the other, the state
of that information is not always ideal.” The team also made use of 3ds Max
and Google Earth.
The creation of images to show the community was vital throughout the
project, and Sloat notes, “Our SketchUp-generated walk-through movies are
our most powerful presentation tool when it comes to communicating the
experiential aspects of our designs to clients or the public.” The proposed
design has been well received and is currently “in the process of being entitled
for construction by the city.”
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