POLANTIS PARIS BIM CONTEST
Prize Achieved: Finalist
Project Location: Évry-Courcouronnes
Group or Individual: Individual
Submission Date: 01.09.2019
Competition Website: Here
Project Code: 2019572
The publisher of BIM objects, Polantis joined forces with Évry-Courcouronnes Municipality to propose to the candidates to work on a mythic site: the district of the Pyramids. Candidates were asked to design and deliver a digital model of a socio-cultural centre. Together with the design proposal, participants were also expected to deliver documents from BIM implementation process.
Illustration by Ömer Varol
THE CONTEXT
The Pyramids district counts 3500 accommodation for 10 000 inhabitants, over a total area of 41,6 hectares. The fact that the district was built on a slab made the management of the underground parts complicated. Those particularities have led to different management methods, as well as a severe degradation of some buildings, public and private outdoor spaces. By and large, the district today lacks visibility and urban readability with the introversion of buildings, large parcels due to lack of entrants, public transport system making a real physical division, many unused empty spaces of inferior quality.
PROJECT SITE - MAIN APPROACHES
While starting the design process, a few questions were raised. Is a cultural centre out of just a building structure? How can spaces of a cultural centre be interpreted innovatively, in a way that the people could have a warm connection with and the sense of belonging on them?
INTERPRETING THE MEANING OF A CULTURAL CENTRE
Community Shell is a hub which does not create a boundary between the interior and exterior. The shell of this hub establishes the concept of “roof” which is like a frame of spaces and activities inside. People approaching this hub does not see a building but see a frame which presents a joyful cinema of these spaces and the activities. Therefore, Community Shell can be experienced even by the people just passing by.
Along with the hierarchy provided between the circulation areas, public and private spaces are distributed in a harmonic way while strongly defining the internal and external links.
Site Plan
Ground Floor Plan
Visual connection to the activities as an attraction
Experiencing the Cultural Center
even from outside
Creating Dynamic Transitions
Providing private spaces without causing introversion and strengthening the relationship between public and private spaces
GENERATIVE DESIGN - FACADE AND LIGHTING ANALYSIS
Generative Design tools were used in order to investigate the aperture and layout options in terms of sustainability and aesthetic value. Additionally, lighting analysis was carried out to experiment if every unit gets sufficient light.
BIM APPROACH AND EXECUTION PLAN
Before starting to design the project, a BIM Execution Plan was prepared, and all of the stages and resources had been defined, like software and analyzing tools to be used, model breakdown and linking strategies, naming protocols. Content libraries out of sponsor products had been created and tested with analyzing tools in terms of sustainability and thermal performance.
IFC exporting process is carried out simultaneously with the designing and modelling process to test and be sure that all of the geometry and the parameters are properly exported. In this way, exporting issues are detected very early, and precautions were taken accordingly. Therefore, the loss of data has been terminated or minimized.
In this project, besides the architectural goals, it was aimed to exploit the benefits BIM presents, to discover new workflows, to get out of the box and think in a multi-disciplinary mind, to prepare a consistent data-flow, most importantly, to be aware of the evolution in our industry and to be in the pursuit of further developments in order to shape our future and our young generations!