by Susan Smith

At the GreenBuild Conference in late 2006, Phil Bernstein, Autodesk vice president of Building Industry Strategy and Relations, announced that the software company would begin working with the U.S. Green Building Council to help architects and engineers more readily adapt their digital design processes to incorporate sustainability issues.

To explain how this commitment to "green" will influence changes in software, Autodesk held World "Press Day 2007" in February. Sustainability-related analysis functions will be integrated with building information modeling (BIM), a technology for designing buildings and creating documents that the company has been committed to for several years.

At the press event, Autodesk president and CEO Carl Bass made clear the company's direction: focusing on "helping customers experience what they are going to build before they build it."

Factors driving the evolution of the building industry include a global population increase of an estimated 75 million annually between now and 2025. In the United States, half the buildings in which Americans are expected to live and work in 2030 don't even exist yet. Today's buildings account for 36 percent of total U.S. energy consumption and use 30 percent of raw materials; and they emit 30 percent of the country's output of greenhouse gases and other waste.   >>>

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Building Performance Analysis, integrated with computer-aided design software. Image: Courtesy Autodesk The "green" Winrock International Headquarters in Little Rock, Arkansas, by HOK. Photo: Kerun Ip   Click on thumbnail images to view full-size pictures.