BIM software company Tekla just announced the winners of its North America BIM Awards, honoring North American companies it believes has done extraordinary things with its software. The company grants awards in the domains of precast concrete, multi-material design, smaller projects, steel, cast-in-place concrete and innovative structural design.
Read on for an overview of the winners, and check out Tekla’s website if you’re also interested in seeing the runners-up.
Precast Winner: Statue of Liberty Museum (by High Concrete Group)
The museum, which is being constructed on Liberty Island, is meant to teach visitors more about the Statue of Liberty than they would learn from just looking at it. When its completed, the museum will feature precast concrete panels around the building’s outside walls, with glass sections that face the statue to give visitors a view of her from inside of the museum. For the concrete walls, High Concrete made large insulated precast concrete panels, with a vertical ribbing pattern that makes it appear as though the panels rise up out of the rocks surrounding the museum. The firm modeled them in Tekla Structures to a Level of Detail (LOD) 400.
The structure is set to be completed in 2019.
Multi-material Winner: University of Wisconsin’s Music Performance Building (by JMT Consultants)
The Music Performance Building is a long-overdue specialized performance center for University of Wisconsin’s (UW’s) music programs. When completed, the building will feature a 650-seat concert hall, a 320-seat recital hall, and a rehearsal room for the orchestra. To make a beautiful (and acoustically correct) space, the structure has been built from a combination of steel, concrete and glue-laminated beams, with stone for part of the façade. Steel framing comes up from the basement to support the floor and roof, and the walls surrounding the hall are made from self-consolidating concrete, as are the acoustical chambers on the building’s second floor.
The building construction is scheduled to be finished in early 2019, with several months for fine-tuning the acoustics before it opens.
Small Project Winner: Nestle USA Headquarter Monumental Stair (by Crystal Steel)
The Monumental Stair may be smaller than some of the other projects on the list, but what it lacks in scale, the staircase makes up for in complexity. The oval staircase features a lighted plate railing that runs down the whole length of the stairs, which was difficult to model, as the railing has a vertical slope and is also curved to follow the irregular helix of the stairs. They also had to model the steel underside cladding on the bottom slope of the stringer.
Steel Winner: Foniles del Nuevo Aeropuerto Internacional de la Ciudad de Mexico (by Constructora Terminal Valle de Mexico)
The new Mexico City International Airport will be modeled entirely in the largest Tekla model created on a global scale. When it’s complete, the entire terminal will be covered in one continuous steel-and-glass Space Frame. The most striking part of the frame will be the funnels, 21 hollow columns that will help support the walls and roof, and allow rainwater to flow from the roof into the building’s own water systems.
Construction is expected to be completed by 2022.
Cast-In-Place Winner: 727 West Madison (by Pepper Construction)
727 West Madison is a luxury apartment tower in the shape of an elliptical cylinder (a cylinder with oval bases). The upper floors of the building will contain studio and 1- to 3-bedroom apartments, and the lower floors will house retail space, a banquet hall, fitness centers and a business area, to be shared with a nearby hotel. Between May 2017 and May 2018, Pepper Construction’s Self Perform Group acted as the concrete subcontractor for the project, using cast-in-place concrete techniques.
The building is scheduled to be finished in fall 2018.
Tekla Structural Designer Winner: Cincinnati Tennis Center Court South (by Lawson Esler)
The Lindner Family Tennis Center’s new South Building will house regular seats for spectators watching the game, a restaurant and a bar, and 252 air-conditioned box seats (a first for an outdoor tennis facility). The structure is complex, as it has to provide all spectators with a clear view of the court while maintaining structural integrity.
To accomplish that, the building stands on 70 drilled shaft foundations dug 30 feet into the ground. The second-floor seating is supported by prestressed concrete beams spanning 95 feet, to support the structure while allowing everyone in the box office seats below a clear view of the court. Two steel trusses support the fourth and fifth floor, giving the building a clear floor span on those levels.