Not really an aftermath.The role of actual construction in the design process of the Sydney Opera House roof

For the past 50 years,the Sydney Opera House has been the subject of a prodigious hagiography of the personalities involved in its realization and their legendary querelles.Yet it remains paradoxically unexplored when it comes to its operative construction decisions,particularly those that relate to the erection of its renowned superstructure.Through the analysis of a newly discovered set of shop drawings prepared for the innovative formwork system of the iconic roof sails,the paper contributes to the construction history of the building whilst shedding light on the hitherto unacknowledged role of the general contractor in the design process.In doing so,it questions the validity of conventional assumptions about the technical division of labour in complex projects,where construction and project management tend to be kept separate from architectural and structural design,furthermore suggesting the need for broader design exegeses,combining project-based and production-based concerns.In reflecting on its import for contemporary practice,the study suggests that the revealing picture of the Sydney Opera House project,as it emerged from the cumbersome archive-based crossanalysis of the manual documentation produced for it,is in principle much easier and perhaps important to obtain today.This is due,on the one side,to availability and diffusion of digital project collaborative platforms;on the other side,to the merging and the blurring of professional and non-professional design contributions.

Overview and problems of BIM implementation in Japan

This paper aims to overview Building Information Modeling(BIM) implementation and problems of BIM implementation in Japan. First, BIM implementation guidelines and pilot projects are introduced. Then, some popular BIM software together with typical implementation cases are provided. BIM implementation in Japan is not always encouraged via a top-down consensus in architectural firms and general contractors, as the client and architects can reduce the project risk inherent in design and drawings by transferring these tasks to a general contractor.The paper finally discusses the problems in project management to present a strategy to develop a new version of BIM that will provide value to all of the stakeholders of a project.