3D Building Model: Oxford Botanic Garden

At SIAD Studio, our work extends beyond modern infrastructure and into the preservation and sensitive adaptation of the nation’s most cherished heritage sites.

Our project at the Oxford Botanic Garden exemplifies how advanced 3D Building Models are crucial tools for managing, maintaining, and planning future works for historically significant structures.

The Oxford Botanic Garden, established in 1621, is Britain's oldest botanic garden. Its architecture—particularly its iconic glasshouses and listed walls—demands a level of care and precision that traditional survey methods simply cannot deliver. Our commission was to provide a definitive, accurate spatial record of key structures, empowering the garden’s management and design teams with reliable data.

Preserving History with Digital Precision

When dealing with heritage buildings, the primary challenges are often complex geometry, structural idiosyncrasies from centuries of alteration, and the need for non-intrusive survey techniques. Our solution employed high-definition 3D laser scanning. This technique captures the exact geometry of the building fabric—from intricate façade details to the complex curves of the glasshouse structures—without physical contact, ensuring no harm to the historic materials.

The output from this process is a massive point cloud, a data set containing millions of measured points. This point cloud is then meticulously processed by our expert team to create a highly detailed 3D Building Model. This model, often delivered in a Revit or BIM-compatible format, is not merely a drawing; it is a live, dimensionally accurate digital replica of the building.

For the Botanic Garden, this model provides an invaluable resource:

• Accurate Documentation: A precise record of the existing condition for conservation management plans.

• Facilitating Restoration: Designers can use the model to accurately plan repair works, ensuring that new elements are fabricated to fit the existing, often non-plumb or non-square, historic structure perfectly.

• Clash Avoidance: Essential for modernising services within a historic envelope, ensuring that ventilation or electrical systems can be installed without damaging original fabric.

Nationwide Commitment to Complex Structures

The project at Oxford Botanic Garden underscores SIAD Studio’s capability to handle structures with profound historical and architectural value, where precision and sensitivity are non-negotiable.

Our expertise in generating these detailed 3D Building Models and Measured Building Surveys is applied to major, complex structures across the country. Whether it is a critically operational site like a large hospital, where operational continuity is key, or a historically important heritage site like the Botanic Garden, we provide the definitive spatial data required.

By leveraging digital technology, we empower clients nationwide to manage risk, accelerate project timelines, and ensure the successful, sustainable future of their most valued assets. We deliver the foundational accuracy required for confident design and execution.