by Michael Tardif, Assoc. AIA
Contributing Editor

Summary: As David M. Schwarz Architectural Services, Inc. (DMSAS) looked forward to its 30th anniversary in 2008, the principals of the firm pondered how to mark the occasion. The firm—which has amassed an impressive portfolio of cultural, institutional, commercial, sports, educational, mixed-use, and residential projects throughout the U.S. and is highly regarded among its client base—has had a curiously low public profile. The anniversary seemed like an ideal opportunity to celebrate milestones with clients while increasing the general visibility of the firm both in the architecture profession and among prospective new clients.

The firm planned a few conventional celebratory activities—a lecture series, a second firm monograph—and one very unusual one: they decided to create digital models of about 40 of the firm’s buildings and submit them to Google Earth. Anyone can create Google SketchUp models of buildings or other artifacts of the built environment and place them in the Google 3D Warehouse, where they are available to be displayed on their actual sites in Google Earth by anyone who knows how to find the model files. But DMSAS decided to take the next step and formally submit their models to Google for incorporation into Google Earth itself, so that anyone in the world who happens to view, say, downtown Fort Worth would see detailed models of the buildings DMSAS designed there. (Google Earth is freely available to anyone and can be downloaded from their Web site.)

The project was the brainchild of firm principal Thomas H. Greene, AIA. He and the firm had long been in the habit of using Google Earth for projects and prospective projects. “I would look at a place where we might have a prospective project,” he says. “It might be a riverfront site in Arkansas, for example. I would study the town, the topography, and get a feel for the place.” These “virtual site visits” had become so routine that Greene frequently used Google Earth “to scope out vacation plans.” While studying downtown Minneapolis on Google Earth—a city that is particularly well-modeled—it occurred to Greene that there was no reason why architects couldn’t model and submit their own buildings, and many reasons why they should.

Reasons why you should
“By submitting your own models, you can control the message,” Greene points out. In addition to the model itself, the submitter writes the pop-up text that accompanies the model, which can clearly identify the firm that designed the building and may include hyperlinks to the firm’s Web site as well as the firm’s other buildings in both Google Earth and the Google 3D Warehouse.

The Google Earth interface allows submitters to create a “collection,” thumbnail images that can be easily scrolled and that allow users to fly around the Earth from one building in the collection to another: a digital portfolio, with each building displayed in its actual geographic context. “People who look at D.C. in Google Earth will see mostly monuments,” says Greene. “Until more buildings are modeled, our buildings will stand out among those few.” The rest of the city—or any other city—will consist of gray massing models, the default placeholders that Google Earth uses to represent 3D buildings.

Greene views Google Earth as a way to reach people in new ways. “It has the serendipitous search characteristics of the book stack of a library,” he says. “People of all kinds can go in and find interesting and related sites.” In addition to viewing it as a ubiquitous marketing and publicity medium, DMSAS views Google Earth as a way to attract new employees. “We wanted to create buzz, find and attract younger staff,” says Greene. “Having a presence on Google Earth says something about our firm.”

Julian Goldman, the intern architect who developed the firm’s first Google Earth model, adds: “When people search for information on the Internet, instant gratification comes into play. If you can find vast amounts of information about a firm on the Internet, it feels more present or accessible. When I’m looking for a store or service, if it doesn’t have an Internet presence, then as far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t exist. The speed with which detailed information about our firm can be accessed online is enhanced by being in Google Earth.”

Some practical tips
Google Earth models are created in Google SketchUp. The file sizes need to be fairly small so that they will display quickly in Google Earth. Detail is added to the basic volumes of buildings with texture maps or by “pasting” low-resolution digital photographs onto the surfaces of the SketchUp model, the digital equivalent of pasting drawn elevations of buildings onto foam-core models. DMSAS had previously modeled a few of its buildings. For those buildings designed in a building information modeling (BIM) application, the digital model is exported to Google SketchUp, which greatly reduces the time required to create the Google Earth models. Whether using BIM models, texture maps, or pasted photographs, the key is to “downsample” (simplify) the source files sufficiently so that the Google Earth models look realistic but are small enough to display and refresh quickly.

It takes about three to four months for Google to place models into Google Earth once they are submitted. In the meantime, authors can place models in the Google 3D Warehouse, but people interested in viewing them have to know that the models are there and “retrieve” them to display them in Google Earth.

Models submitted to Google Earth become the property of Google. Anyone can download a 3D SketchUp model and modify it or use it for another purpose. This may be a matter of some concern to architects, but DMSAS believes that the benefits outweigh the risks. The SketchUp models themselves are so “sketchy” as to be of little value for design by anyone who may be intent on stealing a design concept. They gain little more information in the process than they could gain by visiting the building and photographing it, or looking at photographs in a book or magazine. DMSAS regards the information in their Google Earth models as being closer in nature and type to publishing than to digital design information. And, after all, anyone can create SketchUp models of any building and submit it to Google Earth. Architects who model and submit their own buildings get to control the message.

Goldman completed the firm’s first model, of 1718 Connecticut Avenue, NW, in Washington, D.C. (now live on Google Earth) and developed an understanding of the logistics of working with Google. The firm then outsourced the development of the remaining models to Parallel Alliance, a modeling and visualization firm with whom DMSAS had a longstanding prior relationship. Rhiannon Porter, Assoc. AIA, acts as the project manager for the Google Earth portfolio project, assembling the raw materials for Parallel Alliance and serving as the primary client contact. Greene serves as “principal in charge of design,” reviewing and approving the “message” and the models, while Goldman performs the final quality assurance/quality control check before submitting the models to Google. The firm estimates that the anniversary project of about 40 models, which is about 50 percent complete, has consumed about 735 hours to date, or roughly 35 hours per model. That includes the firm’s initial “learning curve,” as well as the fact that most of the models had to be created from scratch.

As DMSAS looks forward to its next 30 years, submitting models of their buildings to Google Earth will become a routine part of their marketing and public relations efforts. They also see additional benefits. “We continue to build where we’ve built before,” says Greene. “Putting projects into the urban context is a big part of what we do here. We design not just buildings, but the environment around them. In the past, we’ve had the opportunity to reuse physical models of city blocks developed for previous projects. Getting our buildings into the massing of a whole urban area in Google Earth is appropriate to our way of thinking.”

Copyright 2008 Michael Tardif