Designing a new project for the country with a unique concept is always a difficult task for a team of architects, engineers, constructors and designers. An important role is played by the software environment in which the specialists work. To simplify the work, provide unique tools, improve the quality of working documentation, speed up the project implementation time - these are constant tasks that ARCHICAD can solve. ®.
The material was formed on the basis of interviews with Igor Alexandrovich, creative director, and Svyatoslav Alexandrovich, architect and general director of the architectural studio "Kramall Studio" (Ukraine, Kiev).
To implement the architectural part of the project of the first "green" business center in Ukraine, ARCHICAD was chosen, which helped the specialists to create a project that became the winner of the Eastern Europe and Asia (EEA) PROJECT AWARDS 2016 in two nominations: "Innovation of the Year" - as the first in Ukraine " green "BC, certified by BREEAM, and as" Office Project of the Year ".
Project card
An object: Business center ASTARTA
The address: Kiev, st. Yaroslavskaya 58
Development: 2009-2011
Staging: project, working documentation
Project developer: FEC "Energoinvest" (Ukraine)
Category: New construction
Land area: 8 325 m2
Total area: 62,685 m² (3 stages)
Effective area: 45,741 m2
Number of storeys: 9
About 15 architects participated in all stages of the project. Now 5 architects are working on it. The ARCHICAD proficiency level of architects and technicians is from 60% to 90%.
BC ASTARTA is a retail and office complex, which is being built in the Podolsk district of Kiev at st. Yaroslavskaya, 58. The business center is divided into 3 sections, corresponding to the number of construction phases. It provides for underground parking (150 spaces), overground parking lots (56 spaces) and recreation areas. The area of office space is 35,500 m², retail space is 6,500 m².
The infrastructure of the business center was created in accordance with the concept of “city within a city”: with a zone of public services, a bank and post office, a notary, a travel agency, a restaurant, a coffee shop, a canteen and a car wash. One of the main highlights of the ASTARTA business center is the green plate. This is a recreation area with sun loungers for the work of the business center employees.
“The customer made a difficult choice, abandoning 120 additional parking spaces in favor of landscaping. At the moment, the levels have been raised there and indirect plastic areas for grass and trees have been cast,”says Svyatoslav Aleksandrovich, architect and general director of Kramall Studio.
Green building pioneer
BC ASTARTA is the first facility in Ukraine where design documentation is certified according to the international green building system BREEAM. BREEAM certification is carried out by BRE Global (UK) with the involvement of accredited appraisers. During the examination, specialists assess the building's environmental impact, the environmental friendliness of the materials used in construction, a systematic approach to reduce operating costs, the convenience of employees and visitors, and many other parameters.
Compliance with BREEAM standards is already bearing fruit for the business center. Even before the commissioning (which is scheduled for autumn 2017), lease agreements were concluded for almost the entire area - such buildings are not only convenient for people, but also attractive to many companies.
Historical values
There were certain difficulties in the project, because one of the sides of the ASTARTA business center is located on the street. Lower Val, along which the border of the "Ancient Kiev" reserve passes. Because of this, the requirements for the conformity of the architectural style were extremely high.
“We needed to fit 300 running meters of the façade plane into the development of Podol. To do this, we applied parceling and divided the building into certain façade portions, each of which has its own plasticity and color, so that each building seems to be separate. The idea was approved by the mayor's office, and most importantly, our customers also liked it, who asked to transfer the model to the drawings and observe the progress of the construction, so that the idea would come true one to one, Igor Aleksandrovich, creative director of Kramall Studio, shared with us.
Benefits of BIM
“The first thing we come across at the birth of a project, and where we cannot do without ARCHICAD, is the primary urban planning analysis of the site and the estimated cost of the object. If earlier, on paper and in flat programs, calculations took up to a month, then for the ASTARTA business center we provided the basic data in 3 days,”says Igor Aleksandrovich.
The ASTARTA business center was planned as a mixed facility, including offices, a hotel, retail space, parking. Putting it all together is a very laborious process that required a lot of analytics. For its implementation in the architectural studio "Kramall Studio" they used ARCHICAD, which made it possible to solve really difficult problems, get rid of the human factor and routine, and deal with engineering.
“The main challenge that Kramall Studio faced in the design of the ASTARTA business center was to meet the record-breaking deadlines. Only three months were allotted for the reconciliation part. Working with the BIM model helped me to do everything on time. Thanks to automatic recalculations and prompt changes, a large chunk of work has been reduced. Thus, in three months we prepared two versions of the project, which would have been impossible without ARCHICAD,”said Svyatoslav Aleksandrovich.
During the development of the project, architects worked in ARCHICAD and 3D Max, engineers and designers - in their programs. With such a fragmented approach, of course, it was not without problems.
“The customer provided his specialists for the development of engineering systems. Moreover, under one system there were some contractors, under the other - others. As a result, it was necessary to make a summary diagram of engineering networks to track collisions, and for this it is not enough just to overlay drawings. We have combined all the data to see the system in volume and look from different angles,”says Svyatoslav Aleksandrovich. “ARCHICAD 21 announced automatic collision tracking and it's really handy. The contractors provided us with their own drawings, so we had to independently bring together the data of engineering systems, structures with architecture in ARCHICAD in a BIM system, connect the model and only after that look for collisions,”concluded the architect.
Teamwork
“In our work on both the ASTARTA business center and on our other projects, we used such ARCHICAD tool as Teamwork. Without it, not a single project is possible today, especially with tight deadlines. The ASTARTA business center is huge: besides the fact that each of the three stages has its own model, they have underground and aboveground levels, reliefs, and roofs. Before Teamwork, each of them would have to be broken down so that all architects had their own model, and then structured gigabytes of files to find the latest version. That is, without Teamwork, a tremendous amount of time was spent on managing the model. Now we don't think about it - all roles in a single model are distributed, and Publisher allows you to print a book of layouts in 1 click. Thanks to multiple backups - a model on the BIM server, a local model for each user, a double backup on the PLN server and a backup copy of the server file - the highest level of security is ensured,”says Svyatoslav Aleksandrovich.
ARCHICAD implementation: saving resources by 30%
When the project was just starting, the question of choosing a software product was not before Kramall Studio. At that time, everyone in the company already worked in ARCHICAD, although the transition to BIM in the pre-crisis 2007-2008 was not easy in the architectural workshop. The company understood that this would be a rather painful process, because employees are used to working in different programs. ARCHICAD was chosen by the management as the best tool for working with BIM. Not all employees were ready for such radical changes, some of them left. For those who stayed, but were not familiar with the product, the company organized training. As a result, after six months, the work process was fully adjusted, in which all employees of the company worked fully.
“For us, the main advantage of ARCHICAD is avoiding routine, process automation and wide customization possibilities. That is, these are the so-called undocumented features that you can sharpen for yourself. Thanks to two of these elements, we have saved a huge amount of time and resources. We programmed them ourselves, we hung a huge number of functions on each element. It's hard to believe, but in this way we have avoided about 30% of unnecessary waste of resources,”says Svyatoslav Aleksandrovich.
Working on a project using ARCHICAD helped Kramall Studio really experience the economic benefits of BIM. Thanks to customization and an automated work scheme, the designers met the deadlines, avoided a huge number of mistakes and saved a lot of time. As a result - a satisfied customer, whose facility is being commissioned in the fall of 2017 and a significant part of the premises has already been rented.
“We used ARCHICAD not 100 percent, but 200 percent. When the customer sent changes to the project, we immediately made them into the digital model, invited him and looked at the result from all sides in volume and proportions. And after that they decided where the object needs to be decorated, and where the new form looks organic. I cannot imagine design without volume and I think that ARCHICAD is just a treasure for architects,”added Igor Aleksandrovich.
About Kramall Studio
Kramall Studio LLC is a Ukrainian architectural company founded in 1994 as a design and construction organization. From 2004 to the present, architectural design has been a key area of activity for the design bureau. The portfolio of "Kramall Studio" has many successfully implemented projects - residential buildings and residential complexes, business centers, hotels and other objects of urban development, including the business center "Senator", BC "Domino", apart-hotel "11MIRRORS", RC "NobelHomes ", RC" BonApart ", UNIT. City, etc. The studio collaborated with well-known international architectural workshops - Hugo Boss (Germany), Monti Di Rovello (Italy), Global Architectural Development (Turkey), APA Wojciechowski (Poland), SCG International (Great Britain).
Company website:
Site of the project BC ASTARTA:
About GRAPHISOFT
GRAPHISOFT Company® revolutionized the BIM in 1984 with ARCHICAD® Is the industry's first BIM solution for architects in the CAD industry. GRAPHISOFT continues to lead the architectural software market with innovative products such as BIMcloud ™, the world's first real-time collaborative BIM design solution, EcoDesigner ™, the world's first fully integrated energy modeling and energy efficiency assessments of buildings and BIMx® Is the leading mobile app for showcasing and presenting BIM models. Since 2007, GRAPHISOFT has been part of the Nemetschek Group.
