Baker Barrios Architects Makes Dramatic Business Gains with Forma

Baker Barrios Architects (BBA), a mid-sized American architectural firm, was looking to push the boundaries of technology in its office when Autodesk announced its Forma Design Contest in 2023. “We thought this was a perfect opportunity to elevate our brand in the technology space,” says Wayne Dunkelberger, Chief Creative Officer at BBA, based in Orlando, Florida.  

Dunkelberger approached it as an internal design competition, with four staff members generating ideas before narrowing to one proposal. “We didn’t give ourselves much time,” says Graham Oakley, a Senior Designer at BBA. After taking a few hours to get familiar with Forma, Oakley needed only three days to generate the winning entry. His design for a 7 million sf (650,000 m²) mixed-use complex on the San Francisco Bay earned the jury’s praise for balancing commercial and residential spaces while taking environmental factors into account.

Watch the video of Graham Oakley’s winning entry for the Forma Design Contest.

From Oakley’s viewpoint, the tool made it easy to design iteratively. “As we sculpted and reshaped spaces using Forma’s 3D Sketch feature, Area Metrics provided instantaneous updates; more than just a measuring tool, it became an integral part of the design dialogue,” he says. The real magic unfolds when the capabilities are leveraged to their fullest, Oakley adds, noting that the design team relied on Forma’s real-time analytics that, with one click, empowered them to juxtapose insights ranging from microclimate and wind to daylight potential and sun. 

Since the competition, Forma has had a transformative effect on BBA, a firm of 120 people with offices in Orlando, Tampa, Nashville, and Chicago. It was a natural fit for BBA, whose portfolio includes mixed-use projects and facilities for arts and entertainment, education, healthcare, hospitality, and sports. Once they got familiar with Forma’s capabilities, BBA quickly scaled up its use in all its projects. “It’s because of the speed, efficiency, and accuracy,” says Dunkelberger. “What we really appreciated was finding software that could capture the data quickly and let us give it back to the client fast.”  

Forma has been an asset, in part because of the firm’s large, complex projects in cities or on campuses that incorporate significant public spaces. That’s where the team relies on the analyses to help ground projects with an understanding of local environmental factors. And it dovetails with their mission. “We believe in placemaking and pay close attention to how the designs improve the community—a big part of that is localism,” Dunkelberger adds.  

There’s also a “wow” factor. For example, BBA specializes in helping developers examine potential building sites for mixed-use projects, performing up to 200 site analyses and test fits a year. “We’re a small firm by comparison, but when we open up Forma with developers who have done huge projects around the country, they’re amazed,” Dunkelberger says. “At times they’re convinced that we’re more knowledgeable than other firms because of the Forma software.” It can make a quick impression. During a recent client meeting with little time to prepare, Dunkelberger presented four different models on the fly, rotating them simultaneously on the screen. “They were completely blown away,” he says. “As soon as I saw that, I started presenting every project that way.” 

After experiencing the benefits of presenting in Forma, BBA implemented the tool as the foundation to build an innovative digital workflow. 

An efficient hub. Using Forma enabled them to consolidate the functions of 4-5 different software products and improve the schematic design process. Previously, team members were involved in discrete tasks like code research, building design, graphic layouts, and face-to-face client presentations. Now Forma consolidates those tasks and does it faster. “What used to take us 40 hours to complete now takes four hours—even less sometimes,” says Dunkelberger. 

Ease of use. Forma’s user-friendliness makes it an effective tool for BBA’s 13 early-stage designers. “That is because the user interface is consistent with Autodesk’s other software,” says Wilfred Rodriguez, a Senior Designer at BBA. “You understand right away where to find things and how it functions.” Another big advantage is being web-based, Oakley adds, because anyone, anywhere can use it if they're online. “And you’d be happy to know that I got it to work successfully on the iPad during a client meeting,” Dunkelberger enthuses.  

Faster iterations. Forma supports the creative process by making it seamless to move from sketches to digital. “Every designer has their own way of designing, so we’re agnostic on what software they use as a starting point,” says Dunkelberger. “But we use Forma to collect all that information into one software. So it’s really the collector of all ideas and allows us to be collaborative in a single platform. There’s no other product we’ve used that can do that.”  

BBA also gets the proof of concept from Forma that lets them evaluate the design while seeing the effects of sun, wind, and other factors designers need to consider on a site. “It allows us to iterate much faster and then make on-the-spot decisions in real time,” explains Oakley. “While we use it at a conceptual level to start the conversation, we’ve found that Forma is an imperative analysis tool even farther down the line. Its value extends from predesign into schematic design and then into DD (design development) and construction documents through its easy connection to Revit.”

Easy connectivity to 3D printing and VR. In BBA’s Orlando makerspace, 3D printers churn out models used to both assess in-progress designs and sell ideas to clients. Now they are printing models using the Forma model without having to convert it using another software. Dunkelberger: “It completely changes the way we do things. Being able to 3D print different site options and show your client five alternatives: it’s a nice sell.” 

With the data in hand, BBA often moves to virtual reality (VR). “We’ll take a Forma model and move it into Archio,” Dunkelberger says. “Then we’ll run the VR with the client and they’ll walk through it. The visualization makes it clear and compelling for them.” And then all of it goes directly from Forma into Revit through the Revit add-in in Forma. 

BBA has found Forma to be particularly beneficial in their planning and design of Westcourt (client: JMA and Manchete Group), a large sports and entertainment district in downtown Orlando. The project includes a hotel, conference space, 270 residential units, an 11-story office tower, retail space, a 3,500-seat event space, and a parking garage—all surrounding a landscaped courtyard.  

As the site sits adjacent to Interstate 4, noise is an important consideration. “At the same time, we’re thinking about how people experience the public spaces, like the plaza and pool decks,” says Rodriguez. Showing their client the design while overlaying noise studies helped them understand the highway’s impact on the public space and how siting the office building between them provides a buffer. “Forma also helped us see exactly how wind would move through the plaza,” Rodriguez adds. “We identified where to place comfortable spaces for folks to dine or enjoy other activities. Working alongside our clients, we changed the architectural form in real time based on Forma data.” 

The sun analyses prompted the team to rotate the building and make it more orthogonal to minimize glare and provide more shade on the digital signage; it was an important move. They also reconfigured the office building’s roof, adding more height to shelter a top-floor amenity space, and relocated a swimming pool to provide more shade and improve city views. “From there, we’ll continue through DD and use Forma to inform glass selections and building materials,” says Dunkelberger.  

The benefits of implementing Forma have extended from refining BBA’S workflow to enhancing the firm’s offering, accelerating turnaround times, and winning more work. 

Improved outcomes. The ability to generate more design options in less time enables a more thorough exploration of alternatives and improved collaboration among designers. Oakley: “Our team starts to understand the site faster, which allows them to design a better solution. It just elevates the whole firm. It’s easy to study multiple options—more than clients would have seen in the past due to limited time and resources.” 

Quicker turnaround. In the competitive world of BBA’S developer clients, time is money. Being able to give timely feedback is a game changer. “We have another client who appreciates getting information fast. Because we can do it faster than our competition, he comes back to us,” says Dunkelberger. These jobs typically involve due diligence of sites during a 45-day window before the client purchases the property. “We used to complete that process in 25 days,” Dunkelberger explains. “Now it takes just one or two days with Forma. With Forma, we can give him the information he needs, so he can make a more informed decision.”  

Cost Savings. This efficiency translates to cost savings, especially when projects are charged on a lump sum basis. Dunkelberger explains: “From a company standpoint, it’s great to have one person do 40 hours of work in four hours, rather than two people working 40 hours. It’s more profitable and allows us to assign our staff to other work.” 

More work. With its visual, data-driven content, Forma brings value as a sales tool because it enhances client service. “Forma has really helped us do better design and provide better client service—which gets us more work,” Dunkelberger says. Word of Forma’s potential has spread within the firm to other teams, like business developers, who want to experiment with it to support their sales efforts. 

BBA is using Forma in innovative ways to explore new design processes and position the firm both to win new work and bring satisfied clients back to the table. Implemented in an innovative digital workflow, it's improved efficiency, enabled data-driven decision-making, and enhanced the quality of their work, both in terms of community integration and client services. In addition, by streamlining workflows, saving staff time, and boosting profits, Forma has proven to be a boon for BBA’s business outcomes. 

All images courtesy of Baker Barrios Architects.

Author: Vernon Mays