Jeanne Tan
With the new Rhino and Forma integration, complex geometries modelled in Rhino (left) can be easily sent to Forma for environmental analysis. On the right, Forma’s predictive rapid wind analysis immediately shows how the volume reacts to wind conditions on the site.
Executive summary
* Japan’s largest architectural firm Nikken Sekkei is accelerating its efforts to lower the environmental impact of its projects, recognizing that its architectural designs ‘are expected to account for nearly 4%’ of greenhouse gas emissions from Japan’s commercial and residential sectors.
* With the new and evolving Rhino + Forma integration, the team sees potential in using Autodesk Forma to help shift the implementation of sustainability strategies to early-stage design and eliminate existing bottlenecks of relying on computational design specialists to run technical environmental analyses.
* Complex geometries created in Rhino, the main tool in the firm used for early-stage modelling, can be easily sent to Forma for analysis. This means architects of all skill levels can be empowered to run analyses themselves from day one, and with that, scale up their impact across more projects in the company.
Architects are no strangers to these numbers when it comes to the built environment’s impact on climate change: Buildings are responsible for 40% of global energy consumption and produce one third of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. As such the work of architecture firms connects closely not only to the causes of the climate crisis but also contributes solutions. Buildings and communities still need to be built today and, in the future, but they must be designed to tread more lightly on the planet. Architects are always searching for new ways to leverage their skills to prioritize sustainable design in their work. In Japan, the country’s largest architectural firm Nikken Sekkei is doubling down on its efforts to help combat climate change. And it’s a significant step given the practice recognizes that, ‘architectural designs by Nikken Sekkei are expected to account for nearly 4%’ of greenhouse gas emissions from Japan’s commercial and residential sectors.
Ranked in the top five largest practices globally with over 3000 employees, Nikken Sekkei works on some of the world’s largest and most complex structures. The firm has committed to net-zero emissions from their corporate activities by 2050. So, any initiatives to further improve the sustainability of their projects will be hugely impactful in terms of reducing carbon emissions, energy- and material use to help meet this goal. One such change is shifting the implementation of sustainability design strategies much earlier in the design process with the help of new digital tools such as Autodesk Forma. Nikken Sekkei has always been pioneering new technology being experts in the design of high-performance, resilient buildings that need to weather complex climates and natural disasters; implementing Forma takes this further to empower more architects with new skills to make greater impact from day one.
Seizing new opportunities in the early stage
Traditionally in a project, architects collaborate closely with sustainability teams who are engaged later in the process when the design is more advanced. However, the major decisions made at the start of the project have the biggest impact on sustainability outcomes; think building form, volume, and orientation. This is when it’s easiest to test options and make changes but it’s also when the time and resources are often in short supply. “Day one can be when the biggest mistakes are made, and the further along in the process you get, the harder it becomes to undo the decisions you’ve made. Figuring out the massing from a sustainability point of view should not be an extra chore but an essential part of design,” says Kevin Walsh, architect at Nikken Sekkei in Tokyo. “We need to be aware of issues as early as possible, otherwise that opportunity to easily identify and mitigate any problems will just be lost.”
Walsh’s expertise with complex projects, especially in the early stage, means he knows full well the pressure of having to rapidly produce design ideas, which, Walsh explains, would be impossible to do today without using computational design techniques. In the early project phases, he began to see a difference between qualitative and quantitative decisions: “For example the quality, and hence efficiency, of an HVAC system is a qualitative decision that’s made later in the process and is often determined by cost. But the big, quantitative decisions about the size and volume of a building have huge impacts on HVAC and energy needs. A building designed with many double-height spaces and atriums contains more air inside that needs to be conditioned by the HVAC system, and hence requires more energy and cost. These types of impactful quantitative decisions are generally made early in the design process.” The weight of these decisions is significant in another way. “For international projects, sometimes our scope of work covers only concept- and maybe schematic design, and not the subsequent phases which are done by the local architects,” he says. “It means that we spend comparatively more of our time on the early stage, so we try to define the design as much as possible and ensure the highest quality before it’s handed over to the local architects.”
So how can architects unlock this potential that lies in early-stage design? And what role can new digital tools play here?
Rhino as a connector between team members
This is where Walsh and his team see potential in the new integration between Autodesk Forma and Rhino–the Rhino-Forma plugin is currently in beta. Walsh has been leading the team at Nikken Sekkei testing Forma and is working closely with Forma’s developers to refine the integration as it continues to develop. “The idea is to find more ways to help us achieve our sustainability goals,” Walsh explains.
The team sees potential in implementing Autodesk Forma to help eliminate the existing bottleneck of relying on computational design specialists to run technical environmental analyses.
For early-stage modelling, the architecture team mainly uses Rhino which allows them to create intricate, complex geometry, and Grasshopper, its integrated visual scripting language for parametric design and automation. Walsh explains that often in a team, architects’ skill levels using software vary from novice users to computational design specialists, like himself, and everything in between; often the specialists are asked to run early-stage environmental analyses. “Sometimes only one team has the capability to conduct these analysis, particularly if there are specialized tools required. This creates a bottleneck as everyone starts relying on a single individual or team for all the analysis work. The risk here is that these crucial analyses might be postponed or ignored altogether, missing out on the opportunity to refine the design in its formative stages.” At the same time, this puts the specialists at risk of spending more time running analyses instead of designing. “I always want to spend as much time as I can on design and as little on everything else,” Walsh says. “So, anything that gives me more time for sketching or developing the design is very useful.”
Check out the Forma+Rhino session at Autodesk University 2023 led by Kevin Walsh and Krzysztof Jedrzejewski for a deep dive into the Rhino +Forma workflow.
Easy-to-use and data-driven
Analysis tools for architects have seen a jump in development which Walsh and his team have been closely following. “In recent years, these tools have changed how architecture is made, enabling architects to link building form or building details to environmental conditions in a data-driven way,” he explains. “But we need to use technical software carefully as it requires expertise and technical knowledge.” In that sense, mistakes can be easily made by novice users. Forma appealed to the team for its ease of use and suite of evolving environmental analyses. With the Forma and Rhino integration, complex geometries modelled in Rhino can be easily imported into Forma and analyzed for various factors from sun, wind, noise and solar energy to operational energy. Designs can be continuously iterated in Rhino and rechecked for impact in Forma.
“Using Forma minimizes the risk of errors. For example, you can’t go wrong with the location, the north direction, nor type of analysis. It is straightforward to use, even for those who are not experts at 3D modelling.”
Kevin Walsh, architect at Nikken Sekkei
This study shows that incredibly complex geometries which were created in Rhino can be analyzed in Forma–here it’s the sun hour analysis.
Adopting a data-driven approach allows the team to now gather valuable information about a project and visualize it much sooner. “This not only accelerates the initial phases of design but also enriches the quality of the deliverables from those phases,” Walsh says. “Specifically, our use of parametric design and automation enables us to transition rapidly from the massing phase into schematic design faster than ever before. This means we can anticipate how early design decisions will impact later stages in much greater detail, enabling us to explore many more iterations within the normal early-stage timeframe.”
Helping the team work more effectively
Bringing the best of Forma and Rhino together, the team hopes to use its resources more efficiently by leveraging everyone’s different skill sets to scale up sustainable design in their projects.
“It’s about making Forma’s analyses accessible to everyone and having the ability for them to run the analyses easily and quickly as early as possible. The promise of Forma is to eliminate this bottleneck of relying on the specialists, enabling all teams to conduct these analyses early in the process without any obstacles.”
Kevin Walsh, architect at Nikken Sekkei
The implementation of Forma will happen in phases, starting with Walsh’s team and expanding to other architecture teams within Nikken Sekkei. As new cloud-based tools like Forma are constantly evolving, Walsh suggests that there needs to be a continuous culture of learning to keep teams informed of the latest developments. “If we can scale the expertise to just beyond myself and my team, we can significantly increase the impact we’re making on more buildings in the whole company. As architects, we need to be able to easily visualize the environmental impacts of our buildings, especially when it concerns carbon. And we need to figure it out quickly because it’s becoming urgent; that’s a big challenge for architecture everywhere now.”
All images courtesy of Nikken Sekkei.