ARCH 653 Building Information Modeling Notebook: Midterm Project: Allianz Arena

I chose the Allianz Arena in Munich, Germany as my template of choice for the parametric modeling midterm project for ARCH 653. The stadium has a capacity for around 70,000 people and was designed by Swiss architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron. The interesting part of the design is the intricate paneled exterior facade of the structure which has full-color changing capabilities, giving the structure a truly unique look.

I planned to imitate the structure with a Revit model, that can be varied by size, shape and color parametrically. The modelling process began with the layout of the stadium, and an axonometric section of the structure that would be used with the Sweep function in Revit to create the Building Mass for the model. This building mass would be assigned parametric values to allow for variation in the size and shape of the model parametrically.

Rectangular Shape with 0.5*Length as Corner Radius

Square Shape with 0.33*Length as Corner Radius

The length of the stadium was taken as the main constraining dimension, and the width was taken to be a fraction parameter multiplied with the length. Similarly, the corner radius also uses a fraction parameter multiplied with the length to get the radius. These two parameters allow for a manipulation of the shape of the structure as a whole as well as in relation to other parts of the stadium. The shape of the axonometric section was taken as more or less constant for the sake of simplicity due to the time constraint involved in the project. The Sweep function was used to create a building mass including both the exterior facade and a simplistic interior structure shape.

The exterior surfaces of the Building Mass would be converted into Curtain Wall Systems using the Divide Surface tool. A panel would need to be created to ensure that the pattern of the actual structure would be imitated correctly. The closest I came to finding a method was using the half-step pattern to generate a panel with a curved shape. The middle offset and the facade material were assigned to parameters, the facade material to a instance parameter so that they could be individually changed, and the middle offset was a type parameter, so that the panels would change uniformly to the same height.

The panel was loaded into a family which already had the mass previously mentioned placed, and the facade was created using the curtain wall system. The final family was loaded into a project and the remaining pieces of the mass were converted into walls and floors to finish the structure. Some renderings were also taken to better depict the final structure. The interiors as well as the landscaping outside the structure could not be completed due to the time constraint on the project.