BY BRIAN BARTH
One practitioner defies the handicaps of building Information modeling for landscape, determined not to remain an exception.
FROM THE AUGUST 2017 ISSUE OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE.
Meghen Quinn, ASLA, has a secret. BIM?an acronym that puts moonbeams in the eyes of architects, but makes some landscape architects cringe?is her software of choice. BIM, shorthand for building information modeling, is the 3-D, data-rich software platform embodied by Revit, a product launched in 2000 by Charles River Software and acquired by Autodesk two years later. By 2012, 70 percent of architecture firms in North America reported using BIM, and in 2016 the American Institute of Architects reported that BIM was used for nearly 100 percent of projects at large firms. It seems that so few landscape architects use BIM, however, that no one has ever bothered to collect the data. Its reputation in the field is as a clunky, building-centric, overly complex tool that has put up yet another barrier between landscape designers and architects.
Yet Quinn, who merged her San Francisco practice with the Office of Cheryl Barton in January, is all moonbeams. Well, mostly. ?I never want to use CAD again,? she says. ?Moving to BIM is like entering a 3-D world from a 2-D world?though the limitations for landscape architects are a bit frustrating.? Despite the software?s limitations, Quinn has used Revit from start to finish for her past several projects: a drought-tolerant landscape at the...