2019 AEC Tech - best one yet!
It’s that time of year again, conference season, and CORE at Thornton Tomasetti hosted AEC Tech 2019 on October 16-20. This was our seventh annual event in New York City and we know we say every year is the best one yet, but this one was really special.
The theme for the 2019 event was Cultivate + Propagate focusing on how the AEC industry has been in a state of repetition for many years and as a result, we’re beginning to work through pain-points and establish new opportunities with technology, parallel industries, and more. The industry faces the question of how to cultivate innovation in the workplace, technology, and industry, and equally, how we propagate this knowledge across multiple areas within the industry at-large.
This year we introduced a pre-event on Wednesday, October 16 - VR/AR Tech: Immersion Night. We decided to team up with our friends at NYC Revit User Group and CTBUH to bring the experience to a broader community and audience. The night began with introductions from Shannon McMullan from CORE at Thornton Tomasetti and then the group heard from local professionals about their use of VR/AR technology into their workflows and projects. The roster included Adam Glass from Advance2000, Terence Caulkins from Arup, Vladimir Gluzov from Thornton Tomasetti, Andrew Swartzell from Pickard Chilton, Aysu Unal from Cannon Design, and Adam Chernick from SHoP Architects.
After the presentations, attendees had the opportunity to visit VR/AR vendor tables and try out the equipment themselves! We were thrilled to have Unity, Advance2000, RWDI, Imeve, IrisVR, InsiteVR, and Microsol Resources at the event showing off their technology. The event was a hit with over 100 attendees and sold out days prior! We hope to continue this event in years to come.
On Thursday, October 17, we jumped into our regular AEC Tech programming with full-day master classes at Baruch College. Attendees had the opportunity to take the following variety of classes and full descriptions can be read here:
Rhino.Inside with Luis Fraguada and Kike Garcia, Robert McNeel & Associates
Model & Data Visualization with CORE Apps with David Mans and Emil Poulsen, CORE studio
Practical Use of AI within the AEC Sector with Dr. Badri Hiriyur, CORE studio
compute.rhino3D with Will Pearson and Steve Baer, Robert McNeel & Associates
A3, A(bstract) Cube pt. 1 with Onur Yuce Gun and Chris Wawrousek, New Balance Athletics
Introducing xGenerative Design with Dassault Systems
Data-Driven Visualization & Dashboards with Steve Sanda and Kristen Schulte, Proving Ground
Python: The Next Level with Mostapha Roudsari and Chris Mackey, Ladybug Tools
Coding xGenerative Design with EKL with Dassault Systems
The symposium is always an exciting day because we get to hear from AEC professionals about the state of the industry and how they are contributing to the advancement of technology and processes. We gathered together on Friday, October 18, at Baruch College in Engelman Hall and we welcomed speakers from a wide range of professional backgrounds to speak on the theme of Cultivate and Propagate. The symposium program featured the following presentations:
New CORE Tech: T2D2 and Swarm
Badri Hiriyur, Sergey Pigach, and Emil Poulsen, CORE studio
Abstracting Project-Specific Problems for Broader Application
Zach Soflin, Layer
Dirty IoTini - 1 part Connected Devices, 1 part Cloud Orchestration, 8 parts Project Management
Gregor Vilkner and Jonathan Rodriguez, Energy Metrics
The Accessibility of Technology for Making
Justin Nardone, Figur
0 to n: Rapid Growth and Continuous Improvement
Matt Naugle, New Hudson Facades
Robust Geometric Algorithms: A Data-Driven Approach
Elissa Ross, MESH Consultants
Beyond the Parametric Surface: Economically Viable Mass Customization of Large-Scale Structural Forms
Ahmed El Husseiny, AE Superlab
Design with Life: Biotech Architecture and Resilient Cities
Maria Aiolova.
We loved the addition of the panel discussion last year and decided to bring it back! This year’s panel discussion focused on the topic of Incubation and how many companies nowadays are realizing the vitality research and development provides an organization and thus creating internal incubators to create and foster innovative solutions and applications. The panel included Janet Simpson, Ray Daddazio, Roderick Bates, Stephen Van Dyke, and Kenn Clausen. The full symposium schedule, description of talks, and speaker bios can be read here.
Drum roll please for our FAVORITE event… the hackathon! On Saturday, October 19, hackers, programmers, tech folks, architects, and engineers came together at the Thornton Tomasetti office for a 26-hour hackathon. The hackathon resulted in 12 new open-source projects with 4 projects taking home a prize. All around, this was by far our favorite hackathon because we witnessed our most diverse crowd to date with the most women in attendance! The spirit of hacking, collaboration, and community building was in the air. Presentations and GitHub links can be found here!
Our judges had a tough time this year deciding who should take home a prize and even awarded the Best Overall Hack to TWO teams that tackled the same problem.
Our hackathon winners were…
Best Open Source - RT Flow
Best Collaboration - Building Ballot
Giant thanks to our wonderful Hackathon Judges!
Betty Chen, Sidewalk Labs
Violet Whitney, Sidewalk Labs
Sanjive Vaidya, Department of Architectural Technology at City College
Nick Desbiens, KPF
Brian Furlow, NVIDIA
Dennis Shelden, Georgia Tech
The GANgaru team graciously chose to not accept a physical prize and instead wants to donate hackathon tickets to their community! We are pleased to help support this request and will be working with the group to donate 3 Hackathon tickets to AEC Tech 2020! For more information and to submit your CV, contact info@sfcdi.org.
The success of the 2019 events is in part due to our workshop, symposium, and hackathon sponsors: Dassault Systemes, New Balance Innovation Studio, Ladybug, Proving Ground, Robert McNeel & Associates, and The Architect’s Newspaper.
We want to thank everyone for attending the events, participating with open minds, promoting the event, and maintaining the infectious energy that keeps us all coming back every year! If you have any suggestions on what you would like to see next year, please email us and let us know!
Stay tuned, we will be posting videos from the symposium presentations in the coming weeks! Please enjoy a few symposium photos below.
