Gehry Partners Case Study.

[beegee]

Lachmi Khemlani has written an interesting Case Study of Gehry Partners in the latest AECbytes.

The practice's reliance on physical models and the use of RHINO / CATIA are well known, but it was surprising to read that they do not make great use of rapid protyping.

Even more surprising is the use of the TIFF format instead of PDF or DWF for information exchange.

In many ways, the firm appears very low tech, despite the image created by the cutting edge free form designs.

The use of 2D drafting to generate construction documents, widely regarded in the AEC industry as being on the way out, is very much in evidence at the firm and shows little sign of being replaced by the new BIM applications any time soon. Hand sketching continues to be very much a part of the conceptual design process, particularly by Frank Gehry, and tools such as Autodesk Architectural Studio and SketchUp have been tried, but are yet to make a mark. Tablet PCs are nowhere in sight, and except for the high-end machines needed to run CATIA, the rest of the computers have average to low-end specifications.

They also prefer the phone and FedEx to project collaboration websites.

Gehry is a true contrarian.