When Bank of America set to work on the design of its new headquarters in New York, it had specific requirements in mind. The new structure would be state-of-the-art, with the striking profile of a marquee building and internal systems that met the best practices for environmental sustainability. What Cook+Fox Architects came up with was a design that was visually complex, with a curved glass-clad exterior, and environmentally responsible, complying with the strictest LEED requirements. When completed in 2008, the Bank of America Tower at One Bryant Park will be a showcase for elegant and sustainable design and a beautiful addition to the New York skyline.
To capture the drama of the proposed crystalline-shaped towers, Cook+Fox hired consulting company dbox to create realistic, 3D renderings of the tower at different times of the day. Using 3ds Max® software from Autodesk®, dbox completed a light study that placed the architectural design in the skyline and illuminated the facets and angles of the building’s unique façade. The 3D visualizations informed the creative design process and brought the building to life, years before it would be built.
Building an Icon
One Bryant Park is no ordinary building. “Our goal was to design the most environmentally responsible building possible and at the same time create an icon for the Bank of America,” says Serge Appel, senior associate at Cook+Fox.
To make the structure an icon for the bank, Cook+Fox designed a dramatic, crystalline-shaped tower. “It begins as two rectangles that slide off each other; as you move upward, the façade angles inward, creating two crystalline shapes on the skyline,” Appel explains.
To make the unique structure sustainable, the firm followed guidelines established by the U.S. Green Building Council and its LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Green Building Rating System, a voluntary, consensus-based national standard for developing high-performance, sustainable buildings. To that end, the team devised several methods for conserving water and other resources. But the largest single solution they utilized was a cogeneration plant within the building that will produce 5 megawatts of power, which Appel says is enough to power about 70 percent of the structure.
To present their design to their clients, as well as to New York city officials, the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, the Empire State Development Corporation, and the public, Cook+Fox turned to dbox, which created about 15 photorealistic 3D renderings of the building in its proposed setting, from different angles and at different times of the day.
A Foundation in 2D
To begin, the architects created 2D drawings in AutoCAD, and gave the 3D and 2D files to dbox, which used the 3D images as reference and the 2D images as underlays when building the 3D model of the structure in 3ds Max.
The lofting tools were particularly helpful during modeling. “They let you extrude complex shapes along complex paths with an unusual degree of control,” dbox partner Bomely says. “The building’s design is complex because of its facets and angles, but we had no problems modeling it in 3ds Max.”
Because the building’s exterior will be constructed primarily of glass, seeing how it would react to natural sunlight was important to the clients. To show this, Bomely took photos of the site throughout the day from the same location and used them as backdrops in the renderings. Then he used the daylight system in 3ds Max to accurately depict how the sun would reflect off the building throughout the day.
Managing Complex 3D Data
“This tool works great,” Bomely says. “I note what time we take each photo, input the geographic location of the site, and the software combines that data and puts the sun in the right place. Years ago we did all this work manually.”
dbox rendered all the finished images in SplutterFish LLC’s Brazil, a highly integrated rendering system used with 3ds Max and Autodesk® VIZ software. Although most of the renderings depict the building’s aesthetic qualities, dbox also created an image highlighting the mechanics of its “green” ventilation system.
“We needed it to show how the raised floor and underfloor air system would work,” Appel says. “The rendering dbox created was informative and beautiful.”
“In fact, all the images dbox produced in 3ds Max were beautiful,” Appel continues. “They were exactly what we were looking for.”
Gibbs and Bomely share Appel’s enthusiasm regarding 3ds Max. “We couldn’t have shown this building in 3D as it should be shown without it,” says Gibbs.
“3ds Max is a great tool for representing architects’ designs,” Bomely says. “With it in our arsenal, we feel comfortable tackling any challenge.”
