Last year, Hoare Lea was one of the runners up in Project Soane, an ambitious competition to digitally recreate Sir John Soane’s Bank of England, and on CIOB’s BIM+ service, their free to air, independent and professional resource for BIM, Karam Bhamra and Dominic Meyrick explain why the company took part and what they learned.
CIOB’s BIM+ writes (extract): What was the business justification for taking part in Project Soane?
We took part because as a firm, we are committed to innovation and this competition allowed us to explore VR in an historic building, the likes of which will not be built again.
3D modelling is crucial in the construction world. Its early adoption at the design stage allows users to experience, and therefore sign off, design details which can only be understood visually.
In Project Soane, Hoare Lea wanted to explore the impact on visual impression of direct sunlight penetration into an interior and how it changes over the course of a day. A chance to do this in a building designed by one of the world’s legendary daylight architects was an opportunity not to be missed.
We believe there will be a payback in the future because of what we have learned through this process – knowledge which can be applied to live project work. There is also the PR value – as well as press coverage, we have taken part in Project Soane events and made valuable contacts.
Why was it important?
In the past, there may have been, on occasion, some tension between the architectural and engineering communities. However, BIM forces the two communities to work collaboratively, by bringing the engineering world into the BIM/3D environment.
At its core, Hoare Lea is an engineering firm, but we are keen to show our architectural sponsors and fellow construction professionals that the BIM/3D world is also our world. The BIM/3D world allows the consequences of architectural and engineering decisions to be understood, or ‘seen’, more clearly to ensure that these decisions improve the environmental quality of buildings and spaces.
Soane is recognised by the architectural community as one of the greatest architects of all time. We therefore felt that by “inhabiting” one of his buildings, with a medium close to the hearts of both communities – daylight – we could show our commitment to the BIM/3D world and the environmental quality it encourages.
What were the challenges?
Though we are experienced architectural visualisers of still images and had been experimenting with creating immersive VR visualisations prior to Project Soane, this was the first time we had created a complete interactive environment to run on a VR headset – in this case the Oculus Rift DK2.
We discovered early on that generating 3D model scenes for VR is very different to traditional 3D still images, when the frame is restricted to the chosen camera view and the detail is kept within this frame – much like a film or theatre set.
For VR, the viewer can look anywhere, and so every part of the 3D model must be complete and spot on, there is no room for error, especially as it is not so easy to correct mistakes in post-production.
Read the full BIM+ story
Read the initial award story
Read the NewsBlog about a new digital model of the Sir John Soane’s Museum
