On 22nd September my colleague William Lopez Campo participated in the closing event of Autodesk’s BIM Conference (more info) held in Berlin: a two-round 20 minute(each) LIVE “DesignSlam”.

William and three other participants (listed below) are all highly skilled in Autodesk software. They were asked to do design for a Facade (given one of the 4 sides of a building) and a Bridge (given the terrain).

• Prof. Martin Schroth – who studied at the University of Applied Sciences Biberach / Riss in Frankfurt and took his Master of Arts and in 2006 he founded his architectural studio in Rothenburg
• Moritz Fleischmann - who studied at the RWTH Aachen University, the ETH Zurich and in 2006 was graduated as a qualified engineer. In 2008 he co-founded with Sean Ahlquist, the design group Morse.
• Sean Ahlquist – who received his master’s degree in architecture at the Architectural Association in London and established 2008, together with Moritz Fleischmann, the design group Morse.

William’s tool of choice was Revit, and the audience (between 200 and 300 attendees of the Conference) were very pleased to see all competitors spinning their models and progressing the design in live big screens and with a DJ and light effect in acion.

William’s design was heavily oriented to show the power of BIM in action, so for the Facade he chose to extend the existing building and creating a mild freeform atrium (compared to the other participant’s MAYA or Robot/3DS MAX approach). William’s objective was to get closer to a “reality” project, and the judges appreciated how as soon as they were drawn I had access to fully-detailed and accurate schedules of the walls, windows and panels I had created, to inform a preliminary idea of cost implications of my design.

William said about the Bridge exercise “I  started from a simple set of shapes, flexing to a set of parameters. My intent here was to drive all the elements from an “Engineering” constraint (that the section and the shape had to follow a parabola, or that height was dependant on the angle of the section) to justify an efficient shape, yet fluid and organic. The most exciting moment of my design was when time was up, and I transferred all the Parameter information to a nested set of the simple elements. In the click of a button I asked Revit to recalculate over 4500 values, model 1600 solids, regenerate around 20 views, most shaded and shadow-enabled and including perspectives. It took around 3 tense minutes for a quite cryptic image on screen to become the bridge I had in mind.”

And the great news is that William’s Parametric bridge was the winner of the contest!! A thoroughly deserved win, the Judges said that although the Maya approach to free-hand modelling (of Martin) for the Facade was impressive and the highly experimental approach of the young Sean and Moritz deserves further investigation, the Parametric bridge was the winner. The prize was a cheque for €1.000 and a Lego Architecture model of Fallingwater house by Frank Lloyd Wright.

William would like to give special mention to his colleagues Alistair Lillystone, who helped with the design ideas and the discussion of the approach and David Light, who helped refine the tools William used, that even surprised the Autodesk crew! So much so that Autodesk were interested in following-up to develop educational material from the Revit models in Williams presentation.

William said of his win ” I am proud to be part of the effort to have HOK’s name associated to state-of-the-art design and tool usage.”

The judging panel was:

• Dr. Phil Bernstein, VP of Building Industry Strategy & Relations, Autodesk Inc.
• Heidi Vogel, Architect, OBERMEYER Beraten + Planen
• Prof. Peter Russell, Dean of Architecture Faculty and Professor of Computer Supported Planning in Architecture
• Moderated by Prof. Ruth Berktold – CEO Yes Architecture, Munich
• Presenter and curator of the Conference: Christian Weiss – Autodesk

And here is what you’ve been waiting for – the images (plus, for good measure,  some photos of the event and William’s presentation he’s giving to HOK CAD Managers today). Enjoy!