AECtech+ 2025 | Boston

Thank you to everyone who attended AECtech + Boston 2025!

On September 19-21, CBT Architects and Perkins & Will hosted the first AECtech+ Boston event.

 

AECtech Boston 2025

 

Workshops

The event began on Friday, September 19th with a series of workshops led by Perkins & Will, and CORE studio.

 

Perkins & Will Workshop

Thornton Tomasetti CORE studio Workshop

 

Thornton Tomasetti CORE studio | Agentic AI and MCP for AEC

Sergey Pigach | Senior Associate Applications Engineer @ Thornton Tomasetti CORE studio

2025 is undeniably the year of AI agents! In this workshop, you will learn about Anthropic's Model Context Protocol (MCP), which is quickly becoming an industry standard for connecting Language Models to tools and custom data sources. Together, we will build a series of MCP servers that extend the functionality of Claude Desktop by enabling it to perform actions on your computer and call third-party APIs. We will then build a custom AI Agent that can use our MCPs to reason through problems and even interact with design software. This workshop will give you a solid foundation for automating parts of your daily workflow with MCPs and agentic AI systems.

Perkins & Will | Prompt, Respond, Refine: Vibe Coding in Design

Harish Palani | Digital Practice Specialist @ Perkins & Will

As AI becomes increasingly embedded in design practice, a new paradigm is emerging—one where we code not through syntax, but through conversation. This workshop introduces Vibe Coding, a design-oriented workflow that uses large language models (LLMs) as collaborative partners in generating scripts, geometry, patterns, and more. The participants will explore how to frame the right question, interpret responses, and refine outputs—all without traditional programming experience. 

Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects | Modern UX for AEC Stack: Building Web Interfaces in Revit & Rhino

Victor Wanderley Barbosa | Senior Digital Practice Manager @ Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects

This hands-on workshop will guide participants through building a modern web-based application on top of an AEC-focused tech stack, integrating with both Revit and Rhino. Over the course of 4 hours, we’ll create a shared web interface loaded inside each host application using WebView2, and connect it to their respective APIs to perform a fun, lighthearted task. The focus will be on showing how a web interface can help deliver delightful, intuitive, and visually polished user experiences, while keeping the architecture clean and maintainable. Attendees can choose to follow along, building only the Revit add-in, only the Rhino plugin, or both if they’re feeling adventurous.

Hackathon

Over the course of 24 hours, over 50 participants pitched ideas and competed in 7 teams for the Best Overall, Most Collaborative, and Most Impactful Hack.

 

Hacking away!

Last minute presentation preparation

Hackathon Team after winning Most Impactful Hack

Boston Hackathon Judges from left to right, Charlie Portelli, Zach Kron, Nirva Fereshetian, Murat Melek

 

BEST OVERALL HACK: FirstPass

A ‘code compliance agent’ extracts image context from a raster image of a floor plan drawing and flags potential compliance issues with citations in the raw code PDFs.

Pia Pedroso / Slantis, Elif Unsal / Perkins & Will, Adam Treat / Nomic, Andriy Mulyar / Nomic, Chase Gallik / Nomic

MOST COLLABORATIVE: Monkeys on Keyboards

Monkeys on Keyboards is a collaborative 3D interactive canvas with AI-powered image generation, designed for vibe coders who want to co-create applications — especially for teams in AEC (Architecture, Engineering, Construction) working together to design buildings in a more open, playful, and iterative way.

Built with React Three Fiber and FAL AI, it's not just a dev tool — it's a creative playground for coders, designers, and engineers to build AEC-focused apps together, live. Think of it like a jam session, but instead of music, you're building tools for buildings.

Carlos Torres / Sasaki, Harish Palani / Perkins & Will, Mirnalini Verma, Luke Gehron / Perkins & Will, Shandon Herft / Thornton Tomasetti CORE studio, Joseph Mulligan / CBT Architects, Juliana Cizek, Sarah Khadraoui / New Balance

MOST IMPACTFUL: Rubber Duck(t)

A 3D modeling plugin that provides early-stage specialist guidelines tailored for small to medium architecture firms, bridging the gap before consultants are engaged.

Anthony Samaha / Perkins & Will, Emre Baykurt / Boston University, Ethnie Xu / Hart Howerton, Ioannis Kopsacheilis / Enemco, Nicolas Martinez / Slantis, Qiayi Huang / Boston University, Sergey Pigach / Thornton Tomasetti CORE studio, Victor W. Barbosa / Schmidt Hammer Lassen

All Hackathon Projects

Judges

Hackathon entries were judged by an esteemed panel of industry & academic leaders

CORE studio