Thomas A. Heinz:
No Place Like (This) Home
Working Drawings at the Click of the Mouse
Heinz found it easy in Archicad to identify all of the requirements — such as the different materials that make up a wall — and coordinate the plans and elevations.
While Heinz raised virtual walls, laid floors, and built roofs, he used Archicad’s Building Information Modeling capabilities to store all information about the design in a central database. Changes Heinz made to one view were updated instantly in all others, including floor plans, sections, elevations, 3D models, and bills of materials.
Using Archicad to describe plans, sections, elevations, and construction details, Heinz could eliminate the tedious job of drafting with a pencil. “I also didn’t have to worry about the integrity of the working drawings because Archicad coordinated even the smallest changes right in the database,” Heinz says.
“It was very easy to turn the Archicad plans into working drawings because the database always stored the current state of the plan,” Heinz adds. “I could print working drawings that I could submit for permits, sometimes with just a click of the mouse.”
Virtual Deconstruction
After building the virtual house, Heinz deconstructed it. He stripped away the roof, copper fascia, and ceiling layers to expose the basic concrete structure for general contractor Lidia Wusatowka and her concrete form setters.
“Frank Lloyd Wright would bring out a trade, like concrete, masonry, or carpentry, and the contractors would do their work and never have to come back,” Heinz explains. “The surfaces are the finishes. For the Massaro home, we had to pour the foundation in a single session, so it was crucial for the contractors to understand what they needed to do.”
In one 36-hour session, a revolving crew of 80 poured nearly 200 cubic yards of concrete for the cantilevered floor. To get the tons of concrete, sand, and gravel to the island — there are no roads or bridges — Wusatowka waited until winter and then drove the materials over the frozen lake on sleds made of oil tanks.
The Color of Design
Heinz also relied on color tools in Archicad to show building officials and contractors critical aspects of the construction.
“The thing I love about a Mac is that there’s this flexibility in getting things done,” Heinz says. “There’s not just a one-line-one-mind approach — not just one way of doing things — and the Mac’s flexibility translates to the Archicad software.”
Working in black and white had bothered Heinz for years. “In black and white, you do a cloud bubble. With colors, I can highlight critical parts and critical dimensions, so everybody knows what they’re looking at. I can change the colors through the drawings to show an existing wall, a wall with tile on it, or drywall. It’s so much clearer.”
Heinz also used Archicad’s library of symbols for materials and assemblies instead of traditional cross-hatches or triangle to achieve a new level of clarity in the drawings. “Archicad also lets you modify or compose your own symbols,” he points out. “It took me about 20 minutes to adapt a symbol for a stone wall that had to conform to the energy code. Not only would it have taken hours to draw by hand, I would have had to erase and redraft every time I made a change.”
A Look at the Work in Progress
In October 2005, more than 120 architects, architectural students, and Frank Lloyd Wright scholars took the 10-minute boat ride to the island to inspect the work in progress.
Camera shutters snapping, visitors explored the home’s spaces and its iMax vistas, created as if Frank Lloyd Wright had just left the building. Simultaneously hugging the shore and floating over the water, the Massaro home illustrates Wright’s genius for organic design and for changing how we live in homes, work in offices, even how we relate to art.
Standing below the entry’s 1500-square-foot hexagonal skylight, Heinz remembers the hair on the back of his neck stood up when he first saw the actual building. “It was such a déjà vu experience,” he says. ”I had seen it exactly before in the Archicad 3D drawings, and here it is in real life in three dimensions.”
More Variety
Heinz first thought buildings designed with computer software would be boring because the ease of repeating elements. But since he started with Archicad, he’s never used anything else.
“There’s a lot more variety now,” he says. “I just moved from Evanston to an area where we have five acres, and I’m going to use Archicad to create new shapes and design a house that’s fun and economical and a little different.”
Heinz, who also uses his Mac to write and design his own books, including a new one on the Massaro home, says, “Sometimes I can’t wait to get on my Mac to do whatever I want. It’s not a chore when you’re able to create all these things, and the Mac and the software are so easy to work with, you don’t have to overcome problems. I don’t have to sharpen a chisel to get back to carving.
“And so I create something from nothing. I have an idea for a building or a photograph or for a book, and it becomes something. Who can have more fun than that?”
