Recording and retaining creative integrity through to the build, while optimising the design around multiple analysis criteria, has become possible for SOM architects since the introduction of Gehry TechnologiesÝ Digital Project software. By Nick Lerner

Al-Rajhi Bank Headquarters is an office complex located in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Reminiscent of the ancient monuments of the Middle East, the monolithic concrete piers respond to the harsh desert climate by creating an internalized oasis within the central space.

Recently Skidmore Owings Merrill Architects, (SOM) announced their purchase and planned global rollout of 100 seats of Gehry Digital Project (DP) software. This commercially available development of Dassault SystemesÝ Catia software, which was developed at Frank GehryÝs famous architectural practice, brings the design and production efficiencies, normally associated with auto and aero manufacture, to architecture. Digital Project (DP) is supplied and supported in the UK by Desktop Engineering, which with 21 years in the industrial design and production software business is the UK agent for DP.

Although DP will be new to most of SOM, one part of the practice has been using it for nearly two years with some remarkable results at all stages of its work.

Aybars Asci, design assoc. partner at SOM, explains how his studio operates within SOM. ýThis practice has many different studios, ours recently relocated from New York to London under the mentorship of SOM NY Partner Gary Haney. Part of the reason for the move was to be among, and work with, the talent and culture that can only be found in London. We work as a group of ten exploring our identity and ideas as architects. We are the opposite of a signature architect there is no single genius here; but togetherͯ

Exploring concepts

The group has international commissions and is currently working for Middle East clients in Dubai, Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Riyadh as well as for others in New York and London. The Kuwait project is a 412 m tower, the same height as SOMÝs nascent, Freedom Tower. Their other work is remarkable for its completely fresh optimised forms and novel and surprisingly beautiful aesthetic. On these subjects Aybars has very strong views. ý We do not start out with an aesthetic vision or a preconceived typology. We look at our work in stages, the first being conceptual. At this stage we consider different layers of culture from vernacular dwellings to local customs. We learn from culture by looking in the Middle East for example; at rammed earth walls, the meaning of water, the labyrinth as a metaphor and other social, geological and ethnic symbols. We investigate plans of existing cities and the buildings within them. We write and I encourage our studio to use this and other non-visual techniques to explore the concepts that our work embraces.¯

Because each of the studioÝs commissions is different, Aybars sees its work as similar to that of a bespoke jeweller. The work is clich? free yet contains ideas and forms based on a deep but somehow innocent cultural understanding, which is almost naÈve at the conceptual stage.