BDP's design for the Bridge Academy, Hackney has won the Bentley BE Award for the Best Use of BIM (Building Information Modeling) in a Multi-Disciplinary project.
The BE Awards of Excellence, which are presented at the annual BE Conference (www.be.org), honour the extraordinary work of Bentley users improving the world's infrastructure. These projects set benchmarks for their industries, and showcase the imagination and technical mastery of the organisations that created them.
The judges commented "BDP serves as architect, structural engineer, and building services engineer for the Bridge Academy, a new school in London. The project is similar to a piece of origami, with elements folded over each other on this small site providing a building of 10,000 square metres on a site of only 6,500 square metres. Teaching spaces are accessed from open balconies, allowing light to flood through the building and improving the sense of community and security"
Civil & Structural Engineering Director Michelle McDowell said "This award recognises that BDP is leading the way in inter-disciplinary building information modeling. BIM gives us the competitive edge in concept forming, analysis, design and adds value for our clients and the supply chain."
The Bridge Academy is a unique 'vertical' school with a strong educational ethos providing the best possible organisational arrangement in this dense and deprived urban setting, on a brownfield site alongside the Grand Union Canal. The scheme builds on BDP's successful 'schools without corridors' concept which maximises social cohesiveness and develops the idea further to provide a 'school without columns'. The social heart of the seven storey school is suspended from the outside walls providing flexibility across the floorplans to allow the school to develop and alter to meet the changing needs of education into the future.
The multi-profession design team used Bentley products to deliver the design information for the project. The combination of visualisations, Building Information Modeling and traditional Microstation 2D drawings cut from the model developed with Bentley Structural and Bentley Mechanical Systems, enabled the team to inspire the client and investor and assist their understanding of the building form. These Bentley tools made the definition of the complex geometry fast, accurate and efficient and empowered the team to design a tight fit building with architecture, structure and building services fully coordinated before starting on site.
BDP is appointed by the DfES and UBS Investment Bank as architect, structural and building services engineer and landscape architect. The quantity surveyor is Davis Langdon; Harris Grant is acoustics consultant; Tribal Property Services is construction project manager and Place Group is overall project manager, running the project for the sponsor.