Dynamic Facades with Design Options

[iliana kella]

Dynamic or movable facades have emerged as a captivating architectural element, enhancing both the visual appeal and functional efficiency of modern buildings. These adaptable designs introduce motion and versatility, contributing to energy efficiency and creating a favorable micro-climate for occupants. Archicad 27 introduced a powerful new tool for architects to bring these dynamic concepts to life. This article explores the innovative use of Archicad’s Design Options, showcasing a creative project scenario and offering practical tips for effective implementation.

Key Learning Outcomes

• Discover how Archicad 27’s Design Options tool can streamline the design process for projects involving motion and change.
• Gain insights into efficient workflow strategies, including useful tips for copying elements between Design Options, duplicating and modifying design elements, and organizing the Design Option Manager for better project management.

By the end of this article, you will have a deeper understanding of how to leverage Archicad’s Design Options to create versatile and dynamic architectural designs, enhancing both the functionality and aesthetic appeal of your projects.

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Design Options as a new creativity tool

Archicad 27 introduced an innovative tool for architects and designers to better showcase concepts involving change and motion as key elements of their design. In my experience, I often needed to design and present environments that adapt to users' needs, such as foldable furniture, movable shading elements, and seasonal vegetation growth. Previously, workflows involved managing project layers with various priority numbers or creating duplicate .pln files, leading to possible inconsistencies and complicating the cleanup of the final version.

Design concept

Dynamic or movable facades have long been an inspiring architectural element in modern times. Their contributions range from enhancing a building’s aesthetic appeal and enriching its surroundings to significantly improving energy efficiency and creating a friendlier micro-climate for the end user. These facades introduce motion, versatility, and adaptability to the architectural vocabulary.

The design scenario involves creating the entrance canopy for a chocolate factory, providing an opportunity to use Archicad Design Options creatively. The concept combines a simple, clean canopy design with movable signage panels that convey messages related to marketing strategies and offer sun protection by adjusting their orientation on the south facade. The goal is to visualize changes to the building facade through the moving panels, showcasing various rotations, signage, and color combinations.

The canopy and the panels highlighted with red

Modeling strategy

The project's main model is the existing building. Each variation's added elements have been designed in two Design Option Sets, corresponding to the main color combinations. Thus, I ended up with two Design Option Sets that hold the canopy's basic structure and multiple Design Options in other Sets to organize the panels' movement and signage.

The final Design Option Combinations integrate the basic structure with the instances of the moving panels.

Useful tips: copying the elements from one Design Option to another

As this was my first trial using the new Archicad feature, I experimented with various methods to copy all or selected elements between Design Options within the same or different Sets.

1. Duplicate the selected Design Option and modify the newly created elements within it:
   
   

   This method was handy for populating the panel rotations.
   
   

2. Copying and pasting in place selected elements of a Design Option, then relinking them to a different one:
   
   

   This approach is ideal for quickly testing ideas based on existing designs. The Find & Select tool was helpful in this process.
   
   

3. Using “Delete” after creating the new Design Options and Sets, then linking elements to them, as you cannot directly move a Design Option between Sets:
   
   

   This approach helps organize elements and achieve a clearer structure in the Design Option Manager, especially after initial brainstorming has caused file inconsistencies.

Final Outcome

Since loading each Design Option Combination can be time-consuming, creating animated GIFs is an effective way to present the concept:

Example 1

Example 2

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About the author

Iliana is an architect based in Greece and a graduate of the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA), School of Architecture. She holds a master’s degree in Urban and Regional Planning NTUA. As an Archicad enthusiast since her studies, Iliana has participated in a wide range of architectural projects varying in type, scale, complexity and design phase maturity. She is also a Certified Archicad BIM Manager by Graphisoft.