Revit vs. Modernist
Spodeck - Maciej Gintowt & Maciej Krasinski - 1971 - Katowice, Poland. Modelled by Lukasz Lipke.
Training for Autodesk® Revit® can be incredibly mundane. With fat textbooks filled with grey images and online videos featuring clunky, long-winded examples, motivation to self-teach is low. Particularly when the user has obtained just enough experience to get by in the workplace, pushing to that next level of knowledge and efficiency is left somewhat to the “BIM experts” (AKA “non-architects”). So as a BIM Manager, how do you encourage your architects to engage further with Revit and be better than just okay?
The Challenge
When working in an architectural practice it becomes quickly apparent that there is an awkward gap between the designer and technology. When a tool becomes too intelligent, it demands more information, appearing less creative and thus is hindering the creative workflow towards achieving those all-important deliverables. It is quickly forgotten that Revit is actually specifically designed to help us create and deliver architecture better than we could before. Instead, it is associated with the work that follows after the architecture has already been sketched out by your design director, leaving you to battle with the tedious detail Revit requires.
With demand for skilled Revit users steadily increasing, and not enough hours in the day to prepare meaningful CPDs and tutorials, it had become clear that there was a need for a new approach to passive training across the board. Training had rapidly become one of the biggest challenges in adopting Revit, and in the search for answers, reflecting on architecture school provided some useful insight. In high school we sat in classrooms and were force-fed subjects we had little interest in because (unknowingly) it was for our own good, in a similar fashion to how training and protocols are pushed upon Revit users. In our design studios at architecture school, however, no one forced you to be there. Rather than one teacher instructing class, every student presented, shared ideas, and engaged in discussion. The true learning came from a mix of one’s contribution and participation, rather than their ability to be a sponge. With all of these ideas in mind, the RA (Revit Architecture) Studio was founded.
Villa Savoye - Le Corbusier & Pierre Jeannerett - 1931 - Poissy, France. Modelled by Lucien Glass.
The RA Studio consists of weekly open training sessions, where users take part in an informal environment of collaborative learning rather than the typical instructor-classroom scenario. Studio members are engaged to share project experiences, test new software/plugins, or try out advanced features in Revit and report back to the group. Combine that with a steady amount of tea and biscuits, good discussions, and quite a few laughs at the BIM Manager’s expense, suddenly training isn’t all that bad. Now there is not only motivation to learn, but motivation to contribute and share knowledge with others. The incentive to get hands-on and experiment, it seems, compels users to literally train themselves. What we discovered was a certain positivity and confidence around sharing knowledge rather than accepting knowledge from a single source.
The Competition
To set off a year of collaborative learning, the RA Studio held its first in-house competition: Revit vs. Modernist. The brief was simple: choose an example of modernist architecture and reconstruct it in Revit. Eight Revit users took up the challenge, setting out to compete for prizes donated by EPR for Best Overall Model, Most Innovative, and Best Visualization. The competition was yet another opportunity to add to the learning culture in the office, and to showcase to others not only what can be achieved by the software, but the potentially lesser-known design and presentation skills of the Revit users.
In a somewhat worrying fashion, all of the entrants kept their cards close to their chests until the very end. Whether this was done deliberately to enhance the “wow factor,” or just leaving everything to the last minute in typical architectural style it cannot be said, but the results were truly impressive. In just four weeks of “dabbling” in their own time, the eight solo entrants had produced eight convincing representations of modernist architectural masterpieces and visualized them on presentation boards. Upon closer inspection of the models, the work was equally impressive. There was all the evidence of frantic experimentation, endless reference planes, sketches, and image inserts all over the place. Utilizing only the limited photos and drawings available online or in journals, these eight contenders found themselves searching for the rationale in these historic buildings and reverse engineering the architect’s designs for reconstruction in Revit. Each respective scheme had varied focal points of detail; the modeling work was on par with projects in the office that had been developed for months. The exercise went a long way in showing what can be achieved by a single Revit-user allowed the freedom to experiment.
Niteroi Contemporary Art Museum - Oscar Niemeyer - 1993 - Rio de Janiero, Brazil. Modelled by Cara Crossland.
Garcia House - John Lautner - 1962 - Los Angeles, United States. Modelled by Timothy Gale.
Conclusions
The general feedback from the entrants was overall very positive. As a whole they were not only generally surprised at what each had achieved, but in facing a new challenge had also pushed their Revit knowledge and skills well beyond what they thought themselves capable of. Revit was not the only winner however, as it was generally felt that other skills gained, or old skills dusted off, in order to research, interrogate, and present their chosen buildings.
Comments from EPR’s Managing Director and Senior Design Director who formed the judging panel also reflected a very positive response to the work of each individual, reinforcing the success of the competition. The efforts of all were celebrated at a Friday night exhibition of the work, where EPR’s staff gathered for drinks and announcement of the winners.
So what has reconstructing modernist architecture in Revit taught us exactly? It shows that a simple training idea can evolve into a permanent social fixture of the office environment and help improve the perception of Revit amongst architectural users. EPR Architects has a strong design culture and social agenda that can be leveraged as a training tool. In a creative workplace, by mixing training with additional elements such as design, collaboration, competition, and social interaction, training in Revit can become ingrained into the culture of the office and less of a mundane chore. As a BIM Manager or Revit trainer, do yourself a favor and let the shared knowledge of your Revit users help you to make the most out of valuable training time and passively increase knowledge across the entire team.
