Hotson Bakker Boniface Haden:
Urban Designers Integrate Business, Craft Excellence
Planning a dinner party?
Placesetting is the host’s way of combining people and place in a fun and functional event, one that is socially productive and sustainable (at least for one night).
Planning a new urban environment?
Placemaking is the architect’s way of integrating people and place into a functioning urban community — one that is socially productive and sustainable (at least for the foreseeable future).
Placemaking is also the underpinning ideology for the success of Vancouver, BC-based architects Hotson Bakker Boniface Haden (HBBH).
Internationally-renowned for its remarkable redevelopment of Vancouver’s Granville Island, converting it from an industrial wasteland to a thriving arts-oriented waterfront community, HBBH applies an integrated approach to all of its architectural design and urban planning activities.
Photo by Kent Wingerak
“One underlying thread connects all of the work we do,” says Leah Nyrose, Director of Marketing + Communications. “Each project has placemaking at the heart of its design. Our work relates to the neighbourhood and its environment, the people and the streetscape. It’s a concept that has guided our work for 35 years. In today’s world of developing smart, sustainable neighbourhoods, placemaking is seen more and more throughout the industry as a really important component to help solve the complex urban issues we are all dealing with.”
HBBH has worked hard at placemaking for itself, too: combining its artistic architectural abilities and on-going business requirements in a way that is simple, productive and cost-effective. For some time now, the firm has successfully integrated imaginative vision and sound technical infrastructure.
How? HBBH is a fully integrated Apple environment, utilizing Apple hardware, software and third-party partners.
HBBH was established in Vancouver in 1973 by Norm Hotson, with Joost Bakker joining the partnership shortly thereafter. Since that time, the firm has grown to 45 professionals working under the leadership of principals Hotson, Bakker, Alan Boniface and Bruce Haden.
The firm has a unique approach to the often-separate crafts within the architectural discipline — one that combines them into a unified and integrated workflow. Drafting, design, technical, and even the presentation aspects of a project are tied together in the all-Mac work environment, describes Associate and all-round IT guy Stephane Laroye.
“We’re not the type of firm that has separate design and drafting departments,” he explains. “Our approach allows for the design to permeate all levels of the project. In other situations, say where a technical department resolves its details separately, or in a way the designer did not anticipate, you can have problems. The original design goals can get lost when they’re handed off like that to different departments.”
But, tied together by functional technology, this integrated approach ensures that the content and the context of HBBH projects are not lost.
All of their people work together, with design and technical teams working closely throughout the entire design process with the client. Supported by powerful technology, HBBH is able to work in smaller, more responsive teams, in which communication and cooperation are more effective.
HBBH staff and principals use computers daily for client communications, corporate connectivity and specific project related activities, whether in the office or when working off-site and accessing the firm’s VPN (virtual private network).
There are 45 staffers at HBBH, and Laroye can quickly tell you how many computers — 45! “We’re entirely a Mac office,” he says with some noticeable satisfaction. “Forty-five staff, forty-five workstations — well, five are on MacBook Pro. All the rest are desktops, and most are Intel-based Macs with 23-inch screens.”
“One major reason we like Apple so much is that we are using so many tools, and Apple supports them all: we use the Adobe suite of creative design tools, the Microsoft suite of office productivity tools, as well as our main architectural software package, VectorWorks, for 2D and 3D modeling. We also use Google SketchUp, among others.”
VectorWorks has been one of the leading CAD (computer-aided design) programs for the Mac for many years. Combining a powerful 2D drafting environment with integrated 3D modeling functionality, VectorWorks users can take a project from planning to simple drafting to complex, photorealistic renderings.
What’s more, VectorWorks 2008 has made workgroup management much easier, allowing users to manage content, resources, and preferences in external custom folders. Laroye can control where object libraries, symbols, details, textures, and hatches are stored, and who has access to them.
All relevant project resources can be exported back to the standard office-wide library file, so staff has access to them anywhere, anytime.
Vectorworks is able to take advantage of several OS X features, including multiprocessor rendering, image map display capabilities within Finder, even the Sherlock search function, within its files.
Vectorworks can be customized beyond the feature set that comes out of the box, to add company specific templates and support office standards, describes Geoff McBeath, whose company, Resolve Software, is the Canadian distributor for Vectorworks and a significant consulting partner to HBBH and other architecture firms.
