IN PERSON Workshops
Thursday, November 13th | @ verizon education center / cornell tech | IN PERSON
Join your peers for a full day of Workshops hosted by design innovators and software pioneers developed to introduce participants to a wide range of powerful new workflows that enable new ways of working and enhance existing design processes.
Location
All In Person Workshops are hosted at:
Verizon Education Center
Cornell Tech
2 W Loop Rd, New York, NY 10044
Transit Options
Roosevelt Island Tramway to / from Manhattan
Subway via the F Train at the Roosevelt Island Station
NYC Ferry via the Astoria Route at the Roosevelt Island Stop
Agenda
9:30 am
10:00 am - 1:00 pm
1:00 pm - 2:00 pm
2:00 pm - 5:00 pm
Registration
Morning Classes
Lunch Break
Afternoon Classes
full day Workshops
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As a Solution Architect at Epic Games, Stephen works with AECO customers globally to implement Epic's ecosystem of real-time tools: Twinmotion, Unreal Engine, and RealityScan. He comes armed with over 10 years of experience supporting end users doing rendering and development for VR, mobile, AR, and desktop applications.
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Dassault Systemes
Workshop Title Coming Soon
Dassault Systèmes Provides Virtual Twin Experiences for Infrastructure & Cities
Virtual twins empower architects, city planners, and builders to develop clean energy, sustainable infrastructure, and industrialized construction for resilient, sustainable, and people-centric environments.
A virtual twin is a dynamic digital replica that mirrors real infrastructure and construction, from neighborhoods to entire cities, integrating real-world data and simulations to guide better decisions across planning, construction, and operations.
It’s more than a 3D model: it’s a living system to test ideas, optimize resources, and align stakeholders before anything is built.
CATIA is Dassault Systèmes’ Leading Solution Spanning the Complete Innovation and Development Processes to Imagine, Design, and Simulate New Products and Systems.
CATIA allows architects, engineers, owners, and governments to build and collaborate beyond the limits of traditional project delivery methods by delivering a range of 3D modeling and experience solutions that span the whole design, engineering, and delivery process. This allows for complete digital continuity for diverse project teams on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform.
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Description Coming Soon
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morning Workshops
Thornton Tomasetti | CORE studio
Agentic AI and MCP for AEC
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.
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Sergey Pigach is a Senior Associate Applications Engineer at CORE studio | Thornton Tomasetti. Sergey's work builds on his architectural training by bridging the domains of technology and design, driving him to develop computational tools for architects, designers, and engineers. Since joining CORE studio he has worked on desktop and web-based projects including Swarm, a cloud compute solution for Grasshopper; ShapeDiver, a desktop client integration following a merger; and—most recently—Cortex, CORE Studio's new MLOps platform.
Foster + Partners
Cyclops : Real-Time GPU-based Environmental Simulation
Learn GPU-accelerated techniques for near–real-time analysis of solar obstruction, daylight autonomy, and cumulative radiation at façade, building, and urban-context scales.
Advancements in GPU-accelerated ray tracing have transformed our ability to conduct city-scale environmental analyses in near real time. This hands-on workshop presents reproducible workflows for GPU-based evaluation of solar obstruction, daylight autonomy, and cumulative radiation at three hierarchical levels of the built environment—façades, individual buildings, and urban contexts.
The workshop is structured into two modules:
Foundations of Environmental Analysis, illustrated with industry case studies
Analysis Methodologies for near real-time, Performance-Driven Design.
By the end of the workshop, attendees will be equipped with scalable workflows for rapid environmental assessment, ready to integrate into architectural, urban, or research projects.
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Cyclops is an environmental analysis plugin for Grasshopper in Rhino 3D developed by Foster + Partners. It significantly accelerates raytracing-based simulations by leveraging state-of-the-art GPU computing.
Cyclops is compatible with Rhino 7 and 8 on Windows.
It requires an NVIDIA GPU of compute capability 5.0 (Maxwell) or higher. This means most modern NVIDIA GPUs will work, for a complete list of supported GPUs see the NVIDIA CUDA GPUs page.
Cyclops also requires an NVIDIA driver of version 536.25 or higher. The driver version can be checked in the NVIDIA Control Panel and updates can be downloaded from the NVIDIA website.
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Oscar is part of the Applied Research + Development team at Foster + Partners, where he develops computational tools that underpin performance-driven design workflows. His work includes solutions for view analysis, environmental simulations, rendering, and artificial lighting.
With a degree in Architecture and Engineering from Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden, Oscar has contributed to advancing the AEC industry in areas like geometry processing, digital fabrication, optimization, and software interoperability.
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I am the founder of PROVING GROUND – a new business venture that delivers data-driven solutions for architects, engineers, contractors, and owners. I have worked with some of the most reputable organizations in the building industry to create digital transformation strategies and custom software. My work in data and computation has impacted the design and delivery of a wide range of built environments including offices, stadiums, hospitals, and museums.
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Skema + ShapeDiver
From concept to BIM: Part 1
Reusable design intelligence in the cloud with
Grasshopper, ShapeDiver, Skema, and Revit
This two-part workshop shows how firm-specific knowledge captured in Grasshopper and Revit can be reused through a cloud-based workflow. Part 1 covers how to generate custom unitized facades and integrate Skema with ShapeDiver for reusable, firm-specific design logic.
Part 2 demonstrates how those results flow into Revit for high-fidelity BIM deliverables that preserve design intent.
Capture firm-specific rules in Grasshopper and publish them through ShapeDiver.
Integrate Skema with ShapeDiver to automate facade and layout generation.
Generate a unitized facade system from Skema’s wall geometry using Grasshopper.
Manage custom unitized facades across projects with reusable presets.
Use Skema as the mediator for geometry and metadata across platforms.
Sync Skema’s data-rich models into Revit via Rhino.Inside for high-fidelity BIM deliverables.
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afternoon Workshops
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I am the founder of PROVING GROUND – a new business venture that delivers data-driven solutions for architects, engineers, contractors, and owners. I have worked with some of the most reputable organizations in the building industry to create digital transformation strategies and custom software. My work in data and computation has impacted the design and delivery of a wide range of built environments including offices, stadiums, hospitals, and museums.
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Skema + ShapeDiver
From concept to BIM: Part 2
Reusable design intelligence in the cloud with
Grasshopper, ShapeDiver, Skema, and Revit
This two-part workshop shows how firm-specific knowledge captured in Grasshopper and Revit can be reused through a cloud-based workflow. Part 1 covers how to generate custom unitized facades and integrate Skema with ShapeDiver for reusable, firm-specific design logic.
Part 2 demonstrates how those results flow into Revit for high-fidelity BIM deliverables that preserve design intent.
Capture firm-specific rules in Grasshopper and publish them through ShapeDiver.
Integrate Skema with ShapeDiver to automate facade and layout generation.
Generate a unitized facade system from Skema’s wall geometry using Grasshopper.
Manage custom unitized facades across projects with reusable presets.
Use Skema as the mediator for geometry and metadata across platforms.
Sync Skema’s data-rich models into Revit via Rhino.Inside for high-fidelity BIM deliverables.
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To Be Announced
Workshop Title Coming Soon
Workshop Description Coming Soon
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IaaC + Thornton Tomasetti | CORE studio
Exploring Buildings as graphs
Representing buildings as graphs enables efficient analysis of spatial relationships, navigation, and connectivity by abstracting their properties based on their relationships. This approach helps humans and computers understand buildings, enabling tasks like pathfinding, optimization, and simulation. The workshop will focus on the representation and visualization of buildings as graphs while exploring their opportunities. Participants will learn how to convert IFC files to graphs, visualize them in a web application to get insights, and query their properties using LLMs.
Prerequisites: basic level of programming in Python or JavaScript
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David Andrés León is a private consultant for digital technologies for the AEC industry with particular focus on web development and user interfaces for AI. His goal is to empower designers with digital tools to leverage the design process. He is also currently Director of the Master of Advanced Computation for Architecture and Design (MaCAD) at the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalunya (IAAC), and a member of the faculty of the Norman Foster Foundation and the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC). He has been involved in various research collaborations and co-authored numerous publications in the field of architectural research.
David holds a Master of Science Degree from the Institute for Computational Design and Construction (ICD) in Universitat Stuttgart and a Masters Degree in Advanced Design and Digital Architecture from the Escola Superior de Disseny i Enginyeria de Barcelona (Elisava). He has been involved in several research undertakings of which stand out his participation in German research platform FAT-LAB in Stuttgart and his collaboration as a research assistant in the Centre for Information Technology and Architecture (CITA) for the EU-Horizon 2020 Future and Emerging Technologies Proactive Action project Flora Robotica. David is also the co-author of various publications in the field of architectural research and robotics.
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Sophie is a senior applications developer at Thornton Tomasetti | CORE Studio where she develops tools to automate engineering and design workflows. With a background in structural and facade engineering, she brings practical expertise to her role.
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