The dense crowds of Hong Kong’s nearly 7 million residents are not what some people would describe as an opportunity for poetry. But by using Building Information Modeling (BIM) to create the city’s train stations, MTR Corporation engineers and architects see this urban swarm as an opportunity to create color, feeling of space, and dynamic designs that shape crowd movement.
“Trying to shape the behavior of the crowd is key to our job,” says William Lam, Engineering Information Manager of Operating Engineering Services Department (OESD) within MTR Corporation. ”We need to be real close to the reality, as much as possible, during the design and planning phase.”
The MTR Corporation transport operator carries an average of 4 million people through Hong Kong’s extensive railway system and beyond. In recent years, they began using BIM to build up confidence, trust, and precision around new station designs.
“We’ve done a few stations using BIM models, and we show it to our construction colleagues, and this is the first time that they can visualize the station as a station, before it’s built,” says Philip Leung, Architect of OESD at MTR Corporation and one of the company’s pioneer Revit users. “And it’s so interesting to look at their expressions; they are smiling, because they can actually see it.”
With the opportunity to simulate their design vision in BIM technology, MTR’s engineers and architects are able to create effective design for comfort that stands out of the crowd.
