Firm Profile
Columbia Associates is celebrating 25 years of architecture. We understand the importance of good design as an investment, first in our immediate communities and within a world that is dynamically changing.
Listening to your needs, we create improved work flows so your employees intrinsically play forward these comfort sensibilities, positively connecting with your customers, providing sustainable healthy growth and long term success. Transformations through our innovations and inventions come from successful communications with you and the multidisciplinary team members that are selected to meet the specific needs of your project.
Our website serves as an informational and educational tool presenting the uniqueness of each project, the importance of good planning, incorporating client preferences, budget needs and schedule. We believe that built environments should include sensitivity to culture, historical context and the natural environment while incorporating the knowledge of the best of the latest advances in Technology.
Our Timely Services
Columbia Associates Building Technology Integration Resources: In January of 2006 Columbia Associates embraced the highest level of building information modeling available today. Our investment in parametric building modeling uniquely offers the concurrent and immediate availability of all of the important information about your building resulting in higher quality work, greater speed and productivity and decreased drafting time . Our major investment in this technology gives our clients the highest degree of responsive architecture integrating all systems and components of your project for optimal decision making throughout your project. Our team is so highly skilled in the use of this technology that we are requested time and again to teach these technologies at the college level. In fact because of this high level of training that we provide, we have had employees relocate into other related disciplines as leaders in those industries. Improve the output of your next project with Parametric Building Modeling and Columbia Associates
The orange line on the chart above, shows how parametric building modeling technology is uniquely suited to supporting the highest level of building information modeling effectiveness at the lowest level of time and drafting (manpower) effort. Parametric building modeling uniquely offers the concurrent and immediate availability of all of the important information about the building that results in higher quality work and immediate identification of specialty detail requirements of each project. Sections and details are simply cut throughout the model as shown in the example above and schedules of doors, windows, and finishes are populated automatically.
The blue line on the chart above represents software based on object CAD technology. It cannot ensure the presence of the high-quality, reliable integrated and fully coordinated information required for the highest levels of building information modeling benefits. This still requires the old methods of manually checking for coordination issues where two or more discipline drawings must be compared individually to locate potential human error conflicts.
The gray line in the chart above represents CAD-based software that is based on technology used in the industry for several decades. Higher levels of administrative and management overhead are introduced, layer and naming standards require high maintenance and this technology is rarely used with Building Information Modeling Technology.
Construction and Technology Experience: We provide concurrent information on the use or performance of your building; its occupants and contents; the life of the building over time; and the financial aspects of the building to you at any time throughout the design process. We can provide you with a digital record of changes and revisions as the project progresses so you can review the process of decision making at any time. Between 2006 and 2007 Columbia Associates produced 50 diverse projects in the Lake of the Ozarks area.
"Comprehensive professional services for fast-track or distant future."
Time Sensitive Design
Communication
The speed of business processes makes it even more important for an architectural firm to quickly identify client needs. With experienced Interior Design and Real Estate Development staff, Columbia Associates provides deeper understandings of client issues to assist clients in managing space as a critical business planning tool.
Traditional programming is a linear exercise that moves step by step toward a design notion as information is collected and analyzed. Columbia Associates Architecture and Interior Designs can utilize a combination of traditional programming with an addition of .looping critical information to insure that important issues are not overlooked in a fast pace process. Thus we can capture the best of both worlds of stable processes with dynamic business planning. Our planning includes the issues of growth management, staff attraction and retention.
Participation
One method we have utilized is beginning work sessions with several concept models each with implications noted in order to generate feedback from the client. The client becomes the center of the process by assisting in the development of the best design choices. As with any project there are several paths that can become possibilities. Our approach in assisting the client develop ideas promotes buy-in and lasting satisfaction with our completed projects. These methods strengthen our designs due to the open forums that we create. Ideas surface because of our ability to generate client-initiated input that may not otherwise surface.
Value
Clients can then better gauge their capacity to meet their business goals. Designs are improved reducing risk of unintended results that can cost time and money to change.
Columbia Associates creates enriched environments that improve staff working conditions by invigorating, comforting and inspiring.
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