Doer's Profile: Dan Bankhead, AIA Houston

by John Gendall

Volume 16, AIArchitect, Dec. 4, 2009

As president of the AIA’s local Houston chapter, Dan Bankhead, AIA is closely invested in the organization and in its capacity to respond to the recession. When he was elected president, he set out to expand local AIA membership both in terms of numbers and diversity. Then Wall Street cratered. Despite financial challenges facing architects and design firms, the chapter has grown. And for good reason, argues Bankhead, since the chapter provides tools and the venue to practice amidst a recession.

Asked about the value of joining the AIA when finances are strained, Bankhead, an AIA member for more than 10 years, says, “I definitely think it is important to do so—absolutely. In this kind of economy, the AIA has so many resources.” He cited the larger, more systemic efforts at the national level to stimulate the industry, but he emphasized the critical role that all the local chapters play. In Houston, like in many local AIA components, the AIA has responded quickly and assertively, organizing business symposia, networking events, and making available resources directed at economic concerns.

To this end, Bankhead assembled a series of business seminars this year aimed at addressing many of the questions architects are facing in this current economic climate. “We developed this program to help teach firms to become more economically sustainable,” he explains. They cover issues ranging from business practices, marketing, and project acquisition.

He has also tailored the program for the local market. “Houston has one of the largest healthcare centers in the country, so this forms a significant part of the architectural business here,” Bankhead explains. “Earlier this year, the local AIA held a meeting about the healthcare market, and over 400 people attended. This was a case of the AIA giving practical tools to help with an important market.”

Though the session was informative and well received, its benefits went beyond the opportunity for education. “There was a lot of great material discussed in the meeting, but it also put architects in front of potential clients,” explains Bankhead.

For Bankhead, the AIA offers a clear competitive advantage for job seekers. “When there are just a few jobs that everyone is chasing, and if someone is looking at a stack of resumes, it’s going to help to have the ‘AIA’ behind your name,” according to Bankhead. But it goes beyond credentials: “The AIA network will put you in front of potential employers,” he elaborates.

He has organized a series of networking forums, including a “Speed Networking Event,” where firms that are looking to interview are matched up with interviewees in rapid fire succession. The event was a big success, with more than 200 people participating. “The event went very well, but what we noticed,” explains Bankhead, “is that people got a chance to network outside of the program itself. We got people together, and we hosted the program, but people had a chance to meet folks on their own, too.”

Bankhead is committed to the architectural profession’s vigor not only as an architect and local AIA chapter president, but also as an educator. He also teaches courses in professional practice and construction services at Prairie View A&M University. There, he reminds his students to get active in the profession and to chase down opportunities.

“There is an entire generation of architects that we can’t afford to lose,” he cautions. For this reason, he considers it important for younger, emerging practitioners and students to get involved with the AIA—and for more established professionals to encourage and mentor them. “The Assoc. AIA is a great way to get into the network early, and to get access to folks.”

“It’s been a tough year,” concedes Bankhead. “But altogether, it’s been a great ride. We just need to stay involved. And the AIA has a lot of resources to do that.”

Austin Event: Open Architecture East

Join the members of AIA Austin, Saturday, Dec. 12, from 1-5 pm, for the first annual OPEN ARCHITECTURE event, an "open house" of architects' studios.

See inside these creative East Austin businesses, hear plans for future projects and developments straight from the architects themselves, and experience the unique styles and personalities of each studio.

Maps will be provided so you may tour the studios at your own pace. Refreshments will be served.

For more information, click here

Digital Fabrication Education: The Tex-Fab Initiative

Digital parametric design is the linking of variables to geometry within 3D CAD software relative to constraints defined by the designer of a project.  The control of dimensional criteria within a part of a system can be associatively linked to the entire model.  A modification to the whole project has its repercussions on the constituent parts of the design without rebuilding the entire model. 

Digital Fabrication is the ability to cut and form materials directly from digital information extracted from virtual models.  Laser cutting, water-jet cutting and CNC routing are just some of the processes readily available to the designer to go directly from file to physical reality.  These techniques are not new to the automotive and industrial design where rapid-prototyping is used in the design process and increasingly in the production of products.  The application of digital fabrication to architecture appropriates and transfers technology from the petrochemical and aerospace industries as it scales up.  Its has to potential to drastically increase the accuracy and efficiency of the construction process as well as open new territory for innovative structures and patterns in design.

The confluence of these techniques of design thinking and making is driving the innovative work in schools of architecture and is becoming a pervasive part of practice with the proliferation of BIM software and integrated project delivery practices.  Texas is uniquely positioned to become a leader in the application of digital technology to building processes due to its pervasive and atomized light industrial manufacturing capabilities and the relative ease to get things done through its “can-do” attitude.

The New Harmony Grotto, a digitally fabricated reimagining of Frederick Kiesler’s design for the Grotto for Meditation currently under construction at the University of Houston College of Architecture, image by Metalab.

TEX-FAB Initiative

A new initiative called TEX-FAB seeks to elucidate these processes to a wider audience and create a forum for networking between allied Texas designers applying digital fabrication in practice and academia.  The first TEX-FAB event will be the Parametric Modeling Workshop planned for February 5^th and 6^th of 2010 to be held at the University of Texas Arlington School of Architecture. The workshops, featuring some of the leading software developers, designers, and instructors in the field of parametric design, are open to current architecture professionals, faculty and students.

In addition to the workshop, two public lectures will be presented on the top of digital fabrication. Axel Paredes from the Universidad Francisco Marroquín will speak on February 3^rd at the University of Texas Arlington and Scott Marble of Marble Fairbanks in New York will speak as part of the Dallas Architecture Forum at the Magnolia Theater in Dallas on February 4^th.  On February 5^th the exhibition entitled “Partial Architectures” will open concurrently with the workshop and provide a venue to exhibit work done by designers from the region who have utilized digital fabrication in the design process.

For more information or to register for the workshop you can go to www.tex-fab.net.

-Andrew Varna

2009 TSA Convention a Great Success

Over a thousand TSA members attended the 2009 convention in Houston, Oct. 22-24. Total attendance was close to three thousand, which made the event a great success. Thanks to all the volunteers, exhibitors, speakers, sponsors, and attendees. We hope to see you next year at the 71st Annual Convention in San Antonio.

Photos courtesy of Britt Stokes, Acme Brick Photographic Services.

Koolhaas and Foster in Dallas for Unveilings

by Stephen Sharpe, Editor of Texas Architect

Once in a generation, if not a lifetime, do architectural events occur such as 

those that took place on Oct. 15-16 at the Dallas Arts District. Two Pritker Prize-winning architects – Rem Koolhaas and Lord Norman Foster – were on hand to help unveil their long-awaited additions to the Arts District. Both made individual presentations to gatherings that filled their respective buildings. A third lecture was presented by Josua Prince-Ramus, who designed the Wyly with Koolhaas before departing Koolhaas’ firm OMA (Office of Metropolitan Architecture) and completed the project through his own firm, REX (Ramus Ella Architects) .

(Photo of the Wyly Theatre at right by Stephen Sharpe.)

Media tours during the morning on Thursday, Oct. 15, allowed architectural journalists to walk through the completed projects with the three architects. Texas Architect was represented by Willis Winters, FAIA, who serves as one of the magazine’s contributing editors. (Also on the tours was Michael Malone, AIA, a member of the TSA Publications Committee who covered the events for TheaterJones.com, an online collaboration of two theater critics based in Dallas. In the photo of Koolhaas on the right, Malone stands in the background.)

(Photos below by Daylon Walton courtesy TheaterJones.com.)

On Thursday afternoon I joined the celebrations, arriving from Austin in time to catch Koolhaas’ lecture in the main performance space of the Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre. Deedie Potter Rose, a member of the search committee that selected Koolhaas for the project, introduced Koolhaas. Rose, well known for her largess within the arts community in Dallas and statewide, and her husband, Rusty Rose, have given $10 million to the Dallas Center for the Performing Arts (now called the AT&T Performing Arts Center), the umbrella organization that funded the construction and operations of the Wyly and Winspear. Their gift led to the naming of the Wyly’s main performance space as the Potter Rose Performance Hall.

Koolhaas, adorned in a bright green long-sleeve knit shirt, filled the 600-seat theater. Having burst on the international stage with 1978 book, “Delirious New York,” Koolhaas pretty much stuck to the same script he has presented to audiences for the past three decades—how he was seduced by the vertical city after he moved to NYC in the early 1970s. While he included a few slides of the Wyly, Koolhaas only spoke about the project as it adhered to his interest in stacking a project’s programmatic elements. I was not the only one who was disappointed that Koolhaas did not engage the audience in a question-and-answer session following his speech.

While some pundits report that Koolhaas and Prince-Ramus do not speak to each other, observers said there was no obvious tension between the two designers during the tours earlier that morning.

Prince-Ramus, who served as OMA’s project architect for the Wyly and then continued in that role after leaving Koolhaas’ firm and opening REX in 2006, had his turn on Friday afternoon to speak about the Wyly to a packed house. Prince-Ramus spent more time on the Wyly than Koolhaas, even answering a few questions at the end of his talk. 

Earlier on Friday, Norman Foster (both a “Sir” and a “Lord”) spoke to a large group in the main performance hall of the Margot and Bill Winspear Opera House. Unfortunately for everyone except those at the very front, the first half of his lecture was almost completely inaudible due to a poorly synched public address system—a distressing malfunction for the opening of such an otherwise exquisitely crafted fine-arts project. Alerted by audience members of the snafu, Foster, resplendent in an orchid-hued sport coat, seemed unfazed despite the echo that reverberated through the room as he clicked through slides illustrating his collaborations with Buckminster Fuller and the early projects of Foster + Partners. The problem was fixed by the time he reached the topic of the Winspear, which he discussed only slightly in the context of his firm’s latest work.

Extreme Collaboration: Working With Subcontractors

by Dean Barnes
Associate Principal
Morris Architects, Houston

We're designing a lot of projects in BIM. That's proven valuable within the design team. Architects, mechanical engineers, and structural engineers are working together better, creating a coordinated design model. But then, for the most part, we're printing 2-D drawings because that's what most general contractors are looking for. It is frustrating to be unable to share all your efforts as the project is bid and moves into construction. You find yourself trying to find someone- anyone- to take the model.

On the recently completed Rice University South Plant project we found, for the first time, a subcontractor who wanted our model.

On a central plant project, the mechanical systems are even more critical than they are on a typical building. MEP doesn't support the program; it is the program. During the design process, we used the mechanical engineer's model to make sure the systems fit in the building. That was invaluable. But the designer's model will always be a design intent model. Without all of the equipment selected, without the detailing of pipes completed, it’s a useful approximation, but still an approximation.

When we found that the mechanical contractor WANTED the model, we were, of course, eager to share it. We thought it would help with the coordination drawings and the submittals, making our job easier. Little did we understand, they intended to model the entire mechanical system. Their goal was to create a highly detailed model of the mechanical components including specific equipment, valves, gauges, pumps and other accessories. We understood this level of detail would enable the mechanical contractor to fabricate as much of the system components off site as possible, reducing their field assembly, modification, and adjustments. The BIM model became a three dimensional shop drawing.

What we learned was this level of detailed modeling also provided the opportunity for the University’s operators to review and understand where different components of the mechanical system would be located, as well as how components could be accessed for repair and replacement if needed but also for operation. The University knew how to operate the system before any piece was fabricated or installed.

We brought not just the university’s planners and architects but also the central plant operators into the process. We walked them through the virtual model and discussed the details of operating the plant: ladders and catwalks, access to valves and gauges, and how components could be changed out. That feedback lead to several design changes, including a new catwalk in the boiler room.

But, thanks to the precision of prefabrication, that did not impact schedule or cost. The university got a better building, on time and on budget. It also had the early knowledge to eliminate the “Not what we expected” experience upon completion of the construction.

Because BIM is a fundamentally different way of designing a building and its components, we should continue to seek collaboration with contractors, subcontractors and fabricators. As the South Plant project shows, that will lead to better buildings. Architecture is ultimately about the building- the space people will experience and use- not about the plans, which are just a way to get there.

Countdown to TSA Convention in Houston

Boxes are packed and are stacking up as the TSA office prepares to head to Houston in anticipation of the 70th Annual TSA Convention, Oct. 22-24.  Awards ceremonies, continuing education sessions, tours, and a host of other activities are planned during the three-day event. Click here for more information.