Digital Practice

SAMOO, a pioneer to introduce and apply BIM to architectural design, has BIM specialized organization in-house. We hereby introduce the "Digital Practice",a BIM Team, an organization engaging in BIM-specialized design, which leads the BIM technology of SAMOO through in-person execution of Full BIM from the early stage of design through completion of working design. BIM = Process, Collaboration Many people tend to rely on conventional wisdom believing “BIM=Revit”; however, Revit as BIM software actually represents only a part of it. We need to realize the fact that BIM is not 3D, data or software but a ‘process’, and in order for the use of BIM to be fully maximized, collaboration under various meanings is very important. The BIM Team accepts BIM as a new way of doing business, establishes processes for each phase of design through direct execution of Full BIM and fulfills the role of professional design group leading the improvement of design work efficiency by fully utilizing diverse tools as well as exploring expanded use of Revit.BIM-based Design ProcessWe will examine potential usability of BIM by presenting cases utilizing BIM by each phase during the projects recently performed by the BIM Team.Schematic Design PhaseComplex Utilization of Various Tools, i.e. Revit2019 + Dynamo, Fuzor The team performs examination of escape distance using Dynamo script, examination of MHS system using Fuzor, inspection of design error and cross-sectional review through synchronization of Rvit and Fuzor. The use of innovative BIM technology offers a variety of possibilities, including reduction of design hours and removal of design error through 3-dimensional cross-validation.Expanded Utilization of Revit2019: “Create a Single Source of Truth”[QR code above enables experiencing VR without any additional equipment]There are negative thoughts with regard to the limits and usefulness surrounding the use of BIM during the early stage of design, such as design competition or SD; however, since this project has characteristics where no atypical sections exist while all modules are constant, the usability of BIM during the SD phase of early design was verified through the process where the scale and area were promptly examined after a family in a box shape was built and the vertical and horizontal width were connected.Design Development PhaseExamination of Elevation Alternative Using Revit & Simplification of Workflow through V-ray Render[QR code above enables experiencing VR without any additional equipment] Examination of alternative during the stage of basic design is conducted using various 3D tools suitable to each design, but for the examination of elevation details following a decision on final alternative, further simplified workflow was applied utilizing the design option feature within Revit. [QR code above enables experiencing VR without any additional equipment]We perform rendering of 3D View prepared within Revit without separate Export works at Revit by using V-ray for Revit and use it to verify and modify the selection of materials and design errors with virtual Mock-up through VR.Innovation of Design Process Utilizaing VR (virtual reality)[QR code above enables experiencing VR without any additional equipment]VR can be widely used for many purposes. First, when used for reporting to clients, it induces satisfaction to ordering companies, enables virtual communication among team members and also bring quality improvements. VR programs directly connected to Revit are currently being used, including real-time spatial review using Fuzor VR and Occulus equipment, Revit LIVE and ENSCAPE (TRAIL).Construction Documentation PhaseArchitectural Construction & Utilization of Revit2019The number of cases where architects and construction companies are closely working together continues growing in recent years. The below is the cases where 4D works on construction sequence are being conducted based on BIM.Whereas architects work on modeling based on the type of structures during slab modeling, construction companies require information on casting concrete to slab. In this project, we engaged in construction sequence works by inputting information through the use of PART function instead of performing a separation of modeling.[4D Construction Sequence through Part & Filter Functions without Separation of Revit Model]  [Case of Applying Step-by-Step Construction Sequence through Collaboration with Construction Company Using Parameters]4D processes are mostly performed through the use of Navisworks or Fuzor, but construction sequence works can be also accomplished within Revit through the use of Parameters.Latest Trends of BIM and Competence EnhancementUnlike other countries where BIM is being applied with wide variety both in public and private sectors, the market in Korea is led by the public sector, which incurs diverse discrepancies in BIM needs depending on the project owners within the private sector. But no one denies the fact that the market is destined to change into BIM-based environment. Katerra succeeded by presenting a new business model that supports the entire processes from design to construction through combination of BIM and ERP/PreFab; and in Korea, an automatic architectural design solution using AI-based Deep Learning technology is being offered to the design of apartment complex in recent years.The BIM Team learns the latest information concerning BIM through collaboration with in-house professional teams, various conferences and seminars. Unlike conventional research organizations, the team strengthens its presence as a BIM-specialized design execution group that leads the industry through first-hand experiences accumulated from application and implementation of these innovative processes into projects.  

Winning the 10th Korea Landscape Culture Awards

The Seoul Botanic Garden Project, designed by SAMOO, won the Presidential Award, the highest award, at the 10th Korea Landscape Culture Awards.[View Related Articles] 

SDA : SAMOO Design Awards 2019

SAMOO Architects & Engineers, hold SDA (SAMOO Design Awards) in October every year to encourage continuous design excellence and technical innovation. SDA is the annual event, which has been hosted on the anniversary day of SAMOO with full of interest and celebration of employees. In this event, SDA Committee selected outstanding projects and teams in five areas:  Planning, Completion, BIM, Advanced technology and Best Partner. In 2019, total 12 project teams awarded SDA and 8 best partners selected for successful cooperation with SAMOO. From continuous education and employee motivation such as SDA, We SAMOO always do our best to meet client’s ambitious expectations.▲Winner in design, ‘Design Competition of Hangang Hotel Site’▲Winner in completion, ‘Keimyung University DONGSAN Hospital’    

2019 SAMOO Works + Process

SAMOO published an annual book, 2019 SAMOO Works + Process. The book contains 43 works of recent built and proposed projects.This year, we have included the course of 'Designing' in our Process Part. It's been an opportunity to sort out the ideas of the past year where and how they came from. In addition, this book covers the 'KIA Motors SI 2.0' project, which has been recognized for its ability to design and planning beyond architectural design areas, in the 'Special Issue' part.SAMOO are committed to transparent communication to fulfill our client's value, and constantly innovate to provide the best service. SAMOO expresses our gratitude to those who have been with us and supported us. SAMOO invites you to join us in our next steps forward.  

Bio & Healthcare Group

It is said that the brand SAMOO pops up first in people’s mind when it comes to “hospital design”. We would like to introduce Bio & Healthcare Group of SAMOO Architects & Engineers (“SAMOO”), which is the only design team in the Korean architectural design industry that is dedicated to Bio & Healthcare sector, leading this specific field based on its top performance result from home and abroad.  ExpertiseStarted as Hospital Design Team in 1999, Bio & Healthcare Group (“B&H Group”) has grown into the biggest expert organization in Korea for hospital and bio-facility design with near 40 employees in the team. Based on its abundant and diverse amount of project experiences and accumulated know-hows from design data, as well as through in-house training programs and R&D activities including seminars and web-magazine publications, the Group is establishing its concrete foothold as an expert organization. B&H Group: Areas of Expertise B&H Group is providing all-round services from pre-design activities to working design, CA and further to PM. It continues to expand its field of design to cover not only medical facilities for patient examination and treatment, but also R&D facilities, GLP-compliant pre-clinical animal test facilities, GMP-compliant medical device and drug manufacturing facilities, and GCP-compliant pre-marketing clinical trial facilities for efficacy testings. < Areas of Expertise: B&H Group >HealthcareHolding an unrivaled dominance in medical facilities sector, B&H Group has been providing specialized design services to all sectors of the healthcare industry based on its experience of project delivery for more than 22,000 patient beds over the past 30 years, covering a wide spectrum of facilities from tertiary hospitals with over 1,000 patient beds to specialized centers for specific disease and treatment such as cancer centers, rheumatoid arthritis centers, children’s hospitals, and trauma centers, and further to medical R&D centers and clinical trial centers. Based on its accumulated know-how and data, it provides speedy and professional services from a pre-design stage, being involved in medical planning works such as master planning, future extension planning, calculation of patient beds, demand estimation for clinical spaces, and space program planning. Then, the design stage is carried out by a dedicated project team that consists of experts including medical planner, medical designer, project architecture and etc. One of the strength points SAMOO boasts is that it can provide the optimal services to the clients based on its close cooperation and collaboration with internal expert teams such as ENG Team, Interior Design Team, Sustainable Design Part and etc. It is further expanding its areas of service to medical planning for special fields (clean room/Proton, Particle Therapy facilities) as well as specialized consulting for medical equipments/vertical transportation systems/POE (Post Occupancy Evaluation). < Relationship Map by Department/Team >                                             < Space Program Analysis & Recommendtion >Bio & ResearchStretching out from its original focus of clinical research and trial facilities, Bio & Research of B&H Group is providing services to virtually all spectrum of bio industry including pharmaceuticals, Food & Beverages, Cosmetics, Heteroplastic Transplant, Brain Science, Medical Devices, and etc. based on its accumulated know-how and experiences.In designing bio industry facilities, it is important that the design team is involved from the very initial stage of the project, working side-by-side with research field set-up and planning, in order to achieve the most effective result. B&H Group participates from the initial concept design stage, providing through-out and all-round integrated service across the whole construction process including equipment selection and installation by GMP and GLP planner and Equipment Coordinator.< Example: Bio Facilities Design >Green & BIM TechnologyDue to the high usage of energy by medical facilities and bio facilities, it is all the more important to apply sustainable design technology in these kind of constructions. SAMOO is leading this area by applying the SAMOO Sustainable Design Guidelines it has developed through extensive research works in building environment analysis, air flow analysis, energy simulation, and etc. < Example: Sustainability Review for Medial Facilities >B&H Group is also highly recognized by its technological excellence, in that it applies BIM (Building Information Modeling) in the whole process of design from the initial schematic design to working drawing in order to achieve the best possible result while using VR technology in user meetings to allow the client better understand the design plan.Training ProgramB&H Group provides systematic and sectoral training programs such as beginner’s trainings, expert seminars by external lecturers, intensive research sessions for specific sectors, and etc. in order to nurture in-house expert professionals such as medical/GMP/GLP/LAB planners, designers, and equipment coordinators over a mid-to-long term period.Data Collection/ApplicationB&H Group operates an exclusive server to classify and store data such as project materials, training programs, seminar materials, laws & regulations, research papers, and etc. The data server is managed and organized by a dedicated server manager, who is taking care of the server beyond simple data collection, allowing B&H Group to accumulate the highest-quality expert data in medical and bio facilities sector of Korea. It also pays much attention in studying overseas medical and bio facilities projects, design methodologies, and research works, while maintaining close and robust network with relevant academia and industry, so as to read the latest trend of the industry and promptly cope with changes. VisionBio-health industry is rapidly growing as a leading industry of the future, encompassing Bio-medical sector, which develops products and technologies for prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of disease based on its innovation hub of hospitals, as well as Digital Healthcare sector, which measures and manages individual health status using informtion and communications technology. In order to support such new growth engine, it is necessary to build and secure medical and bio facilities. B&H Group is exerting its utmost efforts to provide a whole-new level of services in this field with its differentiated and innovative technologies and design.< Bio-health Policy & B&H Group’s Vision >  

The 16th SAMOO Design Workshop (SDW)

The SDW (SAMOO Design Workshop) celebrated its 16th anniversary with prospective architects to provide the opportunity for challenge and growth and help them discover their key architectural talents. The SDW was held from August 19 to 23 at KYOWON Training Institute with 42 students. It is a place where students can freely express their ideas about architecture and communicate with other participants they meet during the 5 days and 4 nights workshop. The participants and the interlocutors poured all their energy into this meaningful and special opportunity to only focus on architecture. SAMOO will continue to work hard to provide challenging and passionate architects with opportunities for growth in the future, and we ask for your support to help SDW continue to grow.   Group A instructed by DongHoon Lee  Group B instructed by HyungSeok Oh  Group C instructed by MinJung Cho  Group D instructed by Jong Yoon  Group E instructed by YoungChul Shin  Group F instructed by JuByung Lee    

Winning the IDEA(International Design Excellence Awards) 2019 Gold Award

IDEA, one of the world's top three design awards organized by the Industrial Designers Society of America, the exhibition concept 'Visionary City for UIA Seoul' won the Gold Award, the highest award in the Environments category.  [Link to news]  

Innovation with Technology: Advanced Technology Consulting

SAMOO Architects & Engineers Co., Ltd. (“SAMOO”) is the top design firm in South Korea and has ranked fifth and eighth of the manufacturing sector of ENR International Design Firm in 2017 and 2019 respectively. We are pleased to introduce Advanced Technology Consulting team that has been leading in engineering and design for decades with expertise in manufacturing and industrial facility design. Who is Advanced Technology Consulting?Advanced Technology Consulting (“team”) is a specialized organization of engineers and designers to support high-tech and industrial plant design projects. On a mission to enhance their engineering capability, the team not only organizes of design database and standard, provides quality management and technical support of the design team, manages BIM planning and standardization, but also researches on next-generation “Future FAB”, develops automatic application technology based on DT(data technology), and establishes guideline and standard for safety design measures.  What does Advanced Technology Consulting do?Design Standard and Quality ManagementWhen multiple design and construction projects run simultaneously at the same time, it is essential to collect database and issues form each project, and to establish a communication channel to share the database between project sites. Every month, the team collects and classifies the project data and report from each on-going projects, and updates the design standard based on the accumulated data to improve standardized drawing and document quality. Additionally, they continually update tools for drawing quality management such as building code and QC checklists, and standard detail drawings, and run internal Peer Review team and Design Review Meeting to review drawings and construction documents for all projects before the delivery. Recently, as safety has resurfaced to a critical issue in the industry, Design For Safety (DFS) became a major design consideration. The team leads in implementing safety design standards for industrial facilities to prevent and eliminate construction safety accident at the design phase. In 2018, the team established DFS Checklist, as a guideline for safety design, and they are currently working with a global consulting firm to study disaster prevention and DFS standards for all stages of design and construction.R&D and Prep for Total ENG ServiceAs our clients demand more advanced engineering service and technical, specific and specialized requirements, the Advanced Technology Consulting team continuously conduct research and development to internalize core design technology and expand automatic design applications for all stages of project based on existing design expertise and performance data. The team has designed and developed three application programs to aid FAB-design processes. First, FAB performance prediction program is used to predict building utility usage and energy usage pattern. The specification analysis program can verify and automate the consistency of Tool Utility Matrix, and lastly, FAB automatic zoning program calculates facility area based on cleanroom area and distribute automatically based on preset zoning logic.< Energy Usage Pattern result from FAB Performance Prediction Program > Furthermore, they are securing their technological competitiveness by assigning specialist in CFD, structure, civil engineering, and air abatement systems for technical development and support for various projects. The team installed an in-house CFD tool and conducted an airflow analysis case study of the cleanroom to accumulate technical data and provide an optimal design for a cleanroom environment with visualization to the clients. They also provide technical support to the design team to derive optimal design from concrete CFD analysis results, such as airflow analysis in ducts and pipes, cooling tower, and office air conditioning analysis. < Basic Cleanroom Modeling and CFD Case Study Simulation > The micro-vibration control technology is the core structural technology of semiconductor and display FAB design. To internalize the micro-vibration technology, with our Ph.D. structural engineer in charge, we have recruited a micro-vibration specialist as technical advisor to collaborate on research on vibration transmission control method of equipment foundation, grille beam, and structure by 2020. < MIDAS NFX Micro-vibration Velocity Contour > BIM Management an Automation Program DevelopmentFor the first time in Korea, SAMOO introduced BIM in industrial facility design and soon reached global top-level BIM technology. The team established BIM manual and technical standard for FAB facility to standardize BIM performance. Currently, they are developing an integrated solution to manage both standard BIM library for FAB and work environment. As part of the modeling automation strategy, the team has developed numerous automatic applications, such as NWC and RVT file automatic conversion and automatic modeling program for a piping nozzle, access floor, system ceiling, and cable trays to increase efficiency and reduce manual modeling time. They wish to continue developing more application to automatize BIM. < Automatic Modeling Program for System Ceiling, Access Floor, Cable Tray > Preparation for the FutureAdvanced Technology Consulting team is currently developing a next-generation model of FAB based on accumulated design know-how and data from 35 years of experience. By experimenting with innovative ideas and reviewing various types of FAB in addition to existing double-stacked FABs, they are strengthening their engineering capability hoping to differentiate from their competitor, secure their position as Korea-top cleanroom design firm, and gain an edge in global competition.    

Winning the 37th Seoul Architecture Awards

The Seoul Botanic Park Project, which was conducted to provide a healing space in the inner city of modern people's busy lives, has been selected as the winner and the Special Prize for Citizens' Compassion in the Seoul Architecture Awards. 

BANK of KOREA, Gyeonggi Branch Office

Winner BANK of KOREA, Gyeonggi Branch Office[Design Summary]Project : BANK of KOREA, Gyeonggi Branch OfficeUsage : OfficesLocation : Yeongtong-gu, Suwon-si, Gyeonggi-do, Republic of KoreaGFA : 20,015.17 m²Floors : 5F / B3