Best Tall Building in the World Documented on Revit

One Central Park in Sydney recently won the "Best Tall Building Worldwide (2014)", awarded by the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (Chicago).

Designed by Ateliers Jean Nouvel, in association with PTW Architects in Sydney.  All the architectural documentation was done by PTW using Revit in Sydney.  This was an extremely complicated Revit model to work on, partly because no two floor plans were identical.  The building consists of a six storey mixed-use podium with a partially underground retail level and several levels of basement parking; and two towers of different heights.  The lower tower has an array of heliostat mirrors mounted on top - these track the sun and bounce its rays up to the underside of a massive cantilevered roof garden;  the cantilever supports another series of mirrors, which reflect the sun back down into the public garden behind the building, and also into the shopping atrium in the podium.

Array of mirrors cantilevered from the upper tower

Cantilevered mirrors viewed from inside the podium atrium

A series of fixed green walls are located in varied positions and heights around the building;  the residential zones also have planter boxes which are arranged in a pattern that repeats every three floors.  The combination of the repeating pattern and the varied height green walls gives an overall irregular look to the building;  it also means that no two floors are exactly the same - an unusal feat on a building of this size.

Green planters on the balconies

The cantilever structure not only supports the mirrors but also a roof garden for the penthouse apartments.  From this roof garden is visible another building successfully documented on Revit by PTW Architects:  the Channel 7 studios and offices at the Australian Technology Park - visible through the glazed railing.

View of Channel 7 headquarters from the cantilevered roof garden

The roof garden is linked to the penthouse floors by a red-glazed bridge, which is not for the faint-hearted to walk through.

Link bridge to cantilevered roof garden - with red glazing

The documentation was started in Revit v2009 and completed in version 2011, on computers that only had about 8 to 12Gb RAM, so they really struggled with the large file sizes.  The size of the project and the differing floor heights of the towers meant that it was modelled in a series of linked Revit files - with all its attendant problems of linked views and tagging elements in linked files.  Worksets were an invaluable tool for handling all the different links on computers with limited RAM.

We also used RTV Tools "Drawing Manager" to handle Revision control and the complex sheet numbering system required by the building contractors.  It was invaluable for handling revisions across sheets on multiple linked files; and for batch generating PDFs and DWGs with the appropriate file names for uploading to Aconex.

Although this project was basically done as "Lonely BIM", there was some collaboration - particularly with the steel fabricators.  This project was a successful testing ground for how to handle such a large and complex project in Revit.  Many people worked on the project over the years, and are now applying that gained knowledge in different locations and on varied projects in Sydney and around the world.