Yu Tsuji
California College of the Arts, San Francisco
BS Architecture, May 2007

Internship: Anshen + Allen, San Francisco

An international architectural practice dedicated to the design of healthcare, academic and research buildings.

Favorite thing about his internship:
Yu: "The responsibility given to me-I have become the BIM expert on the project."

Greatest lesson from his experience:
How efficient BIM models can be when you use them correctly

Yu: "At the last firm I worked at we always separated 2D from 3D. We never really worked in a BIM fashion. If we made 3D models, it was only as a reference tool for our 2D drawings. Here, we generate sections and elevations from the BIM model without having to draw a single line."

His greatest contribution:
BIM and 3D modeling knowledge

Daniel Grandy: "Having worked with 3D modeling ahead of time enabled Yu to understand how buildings went together better. He understood the verticality of them, and he understood some of the issues about how connections are made floor to floor, and how windows fit within a wall. He's still learning, but he already got the basics down. And that's been a real asset to us."

How well he performed:
Exceptionally well

Daniel Grandy: "Yu might be an exception to the intern rule because he has been able to grasp things very quickly. I've been able to explain something briefly to him and let him run with it. He has very quick understanding, and moves the process along instead of sitting and waiting for help."

Featured Project:
Medical Office Building, Loma Linda, CA

The project was a 4-story, 142,000 sf, medical office building with a heart specialty center. The client requested a landmark building that would emphasize the medical university's mission-oriented vision, create community awareness of the great benefit of advanced academic critical care, and attract and retain the best doctors & staff available.

The Challenge: Generate high-quality 3-D presentation design and 2-D documentation from the same model, while integrating early design studies implemented in a variety of software packages, all generated by a smaller team than normally staffed for a project of this size and complexity.

The Solution: An ArchiCAD 11 compatible software was used to directly create virtual photography snapshots from the earliest design model. We used a variety of rendering techniques with relative ease and speed that appealed to the client's & communities sensibilities, showing vibrant exterior perspectives & informative sectional building views.The firm found that experienced project leadership to oversee design studies & monitor time management, strong internal team collaboration & communication, and an advanced user training methodology that 'teamed' disciplines of practice (planning, design, technical), empowered the team and built confidence in building information modeling. We confirmed that a motivated, small project team can be highly efficient and productive, even surpassing what larger project teams had accomplished in the past.