ArchiCAD Used to Design Steel, Glass University Structure

What are the results and constrictions of combining steel and glass? Robert Olson of architecture firm Robert Olson + Associates, recent recipient of the AIA New England Design Excellence Award, knows the answer after designing the mediating structure between two historic buildings on Wesleyan University's campus. Using design tools and techniques including ArchiCAD and photogrammetry, Olson and his team were able to develop a pavilion that carefully positioned glass curtains against structural steel beams to mediate two historical buildings.

“The new building leverages the usability of the two historic buildings,” says Olson. “The historic buildings couldn’t be used to capacity for a number of reasons — they didn’t have lobbies, they didn’t have audience services, they didn’t have fire egress, they didn’t have accessibility, they didn’t have building systems, ventilation, air and so forth.”

The design of the pavilion features a complex geometry that required precise construction. Olson used Graphisoft’s ArchiCAD software to determine the placement of the cantilevered beams that supported the glass curtains, all of which had to be dimensionally controlled and modeled.

“The modeling capabilities in ArchiCAD were good because we could model the structure and we could quantify all the points where these things had to meet, which in this building was really critical because you had different disciplines coming together,” he says.

Photogrammetry was used to determine which parts of the two historical buildings needed to be restored. “Photogrammetry is a way of taking a measurable photograph that has two-dimensional accuracy,” says Olson. “Its images are taken from multiple points of view and then rectified digitally. It’s done for mapping from airplanes, but there are ways of doing it on building façades.”

Frazier Associates of Staunton, VA performed the photogrammetry process, which according to Olson was a key element in the restoration of the stone exterior. “What you get from this is a scaleable photograph basically of the façade, which you then can import digitally into a drawing program,”he says.

	The pavilion on the Wesleyan campus features steel beams supporting glass curtains that were precisely designed in ArchiCAD with even the reflection of the sun in mind.