STEERING, ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN
From the drawing board to reality, the PAD service (Pilotage, Architecture et Dessin, or Steering, Architecture and Design) plays a crucial role in the organisation of any event.
“BIM IS NOT JUST A PHENOMENON, IT’S THE SOLUTION OF THE FUTURE”
Drawing up plans is a major step in the creation of an event that guarantees an optimal use of space, facilitates communication and coordination with the various services of Palexpo by making sure everyone’s expectations and duties are clearly understood, ensures the safety of participants, and offers customisation and flexibility options to exhibitors to meet their specific requirements. Three years ago, Stéphane Moine, head of the PAD service, decided to use BIM (Building Information Modelling), a new management model for design and construction projects based on a 3D digital model, to draw up the plans for artgenève.
He analyses the benefits and gives his vision for the medium term:
“There are tools that you don’t see at first glance and that are nevertheless essential for the proper functioning of a company… BIM is one of those, and it has considerably improved our methods of working and our results, especially with artgenève which required a combination of creativity, strategic planning, and technical skills to create a space to show the works of art to their best advantage by offering the public a unique immersive experience. Our service must therefore be able to translate the staging intentions of the organising team into technical terms, and imagine a spatial configuration that highlights contemporary design but that also takes technical and safety conditions into consideration. From the inception of the exhibition until its opening, we adapt a vast number of plans for the various services of Palexpo to ensure an efficient organisation and successful execution.
Thanks to its integrated approach that uses 3D digital models to represent the physical and functional characteristics for example of of artgenève in an extremely precise manner, BIM allows us to visualise our designs in a much more realistic and immersive way. We can create extremely detailed digital models to show its structure, mechanical and power systems, and even things like furniture, objects, and finishings.
Besides optimised visualisation, BIM significantly improves coordination and collaboration with other members of the project. We can now share our BIM models with all the stakeholders, which facilitates communication and potential problem-solving even before we start putting up the exhibition. Another revolutionary aspect of BIM is its capacity to facilitate the management of changes and updates throughout the life cycle of the project by means of a collaborative work mode.
During the 2023 edition of artgenève, we once again saw to what extent BIM enabled us to avoid assessment errors and helped the organisers, galleries, and artists to have a better end-to-end understanding of the project thanks to the 3D visualisation; we were even able to give them a virtual tour of the exhibition! This technology has literally transformed the way we conceive, communicate, and manage our projects, and I am convinced that it will continue to play an essential part in the future for all events that take place at Palexpo.”