NXT BLD 2025

Introduction to NXT BLD

We’ll showcase how we, at Heatherwick studio apply innovation through our processes to empower our designers and increase impact. We’ll use real-world projects to dive into our workflows and demonstrate how we applied our research from ideation through human-centred analysis, to delivery.

Perkins&Will’s Digital Practice has grown from project-based innovation into a firmwide structure organized around four streams: Digital Design & Delivery, Innovation & Development, Education, and Advisory Services. In this talk, Nick Cameron shares how this framework is positioning the firm to meet growing client demands, manage increasing project complexity, and prepare for the next generation of AI tools that are beginning to shape the future of architectural practice.

The plan has always existed, we just needed to catch up to it in time. Open Standards, collaboration among firms, AI, Data platforms and Automation all play a part in predicting the future we make for ourselves. The talk will focus on the evolution of Greg’s thinking but more importantly the work that is happening between firms to forge a new reality.

Arcol is a collaborative design tool built for AEC. Arcol is a browser-based design tool that unifies your model, data, and presentations in a real-time, multiplayer environment—allowing architects, developers, and owners to collaborate and align early in the project. By eliminating information silos and outdated workflows, Arcol helps teams design faster, collaborate earlier, and make better decisions—together.

The AEC industry has long been built on information — drawings, models, documentation. But information alone is no longer enough. As complexity rises and expectations shift, we need collaborative systems that can reason, adapt, and respond to design intent. This talk explores how the next generation of tools — grounded in intelligence, not just data — will retool the way we imagine, design, and deliver buildings. Welcome to the age of Agentic Building Modeling — where creativity is supported, not constrained, by intelligent, inclusive, and intent-driven systems.

In this session, we’ll provide an overview of Qonic, our cloud-based platform, and demonstrate how it’s currently being used to deliver complex and real-world projects. We’ll also share our roadmap for expanding Qonic’s modelling and creation tools, enabling you to capture creative ideas using fluid and flexible tools while accurately classifying structured BIM deliverables.

We’ll expand on deliverables by providing a live demo of three automations: automated and batch data classification, which takes concept models through to deliverable BIM projects; automated modelling, which quickly enhances the detail and trust in your BIM projects; and finally, an inside look at how Qonic can deliver configurable and customisable, automated general arrangement drawings directly from your models.

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Over the last six years at Hypar, we’ve been exploring what the right kind of automation looks like for building design — powerful enough to capture expert logic, simple enough for anyone to use, and smart enough to learn and adapt over time. In this talk, I’ll share how we’ve evolved from a scripting platform into a design environment that offers intelligent suggestions, captures firm-specific expertise, and helps teams move faster without losing control. But more importantly, I’ll show where we’re headed: toward a future where automation doesn’t just execute your intent — it anticipates it, adapts to your standards, and makes every project a little smarter than the last.

Autodesk’s Carl Christensen, Vice President of Product Development, will share Autodesk’s vision for realizing the future of AECO with the Forma industry cloud and its data-centric, outcome-based approach. Carl will highlight the importance of combining informed decision-making in pre-design, multimodal collaboration, and an open ecosystem to achieve the next industry transformation and solve the big challenges we face in designing and building the built environment.

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Tired of feeling outmaneuvered by polished software sales reps trained to win your business and budget? In this session we’ll explore some of the playbooks commonly used by sales teams and discuss together how you might be better prepared to secure win-win contracts that help both sides achieve their goals.

We’ll ​discuss how top-performing sales pros and savvy buyers navigate discount games, challenge pricing, and steer high-pressure pitches into data-driven, value-focused negotiations.

You’ll uncover:

- Some of the playbooks software sales teams use
- How to recognize (and counter) Jedi mind tricks like FOMO, FUD and anxiety traps
- How to confidently negotiate and re-frame value in a deal like a pro—without needing a procurement badge

This isn’t about being aggressive. It’s about being prepared. Because in the game of buying software, the best buyer doesn’t just accept the deal—they define it.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it: Buy smarter. Spend better. Win more

Martha Tsigkari, will explore creativity, disruption and AI in Architecture.

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In AEC, interoperability has long been treated as a purely technical challenge - solved through standards, schemas, and rigid pipelines. Speckle takes a different approach: it sees design as a conversation. We will look at how Speckle reimagines interoperability across disciplines, as a dynamically collaborative, human-centred exchange, embracing context & flexibility.

Design coordination benefits from Speckle’s real-time data exchange & version tracking across Revit, Rhino & Archicad. Our integrations enable teams to transform BIM data into actionable dashboards, to drive decision-making & get project insights.

Speckle's online collaboration tools - such as live 3D viewers & discussion threads - facilitate stakeholder engagement. And our new automation capabilities can drive productivity gains on iterative BIM tasks across projects

What we're building at Speckle is more than just a box of tools: it's an operating system for the AEC industry designed from the ground up around collaboration and data.

Every AI-generated image is shaped by unseen forces: embedded biases, textual prompts, andcompositional choices that infl uence the very fabric of digital reality. In this insightful presentation, weunpack the subtle yet profound ways in which bias and intention become encoded in AI-generated visuals. By examining how text prompts guide imagery, how biases influence outcomes, and howcomposition decisions direct perception, we reveal the complex interplay that defines the aestheticsof artifi cial imagery. Architects, designers, and technologists alike will gain critical awareness of theircreative responsibilities in leveraging AI tools, empowering them to design with intentionality andethical clarity in an increasingly AI-driven landscape.

This talk will describe how Infinitive is incorporating manufacturing and assembly information at the concept-stage, by using an AI-driven configurator that designs from a kit-of-parts. This approach was demonstrated in 2024 with an Innovate UK BridgeAI project with use-cases from Facit Homes and Stora Enso, and now being taken further in the BridgeAI Accelerator with Digital Catapult and Buro Happold. It will also cover how it is being applied in the Coventry Very Light Rail project, to vastly accelerate infrastructure design.

In this talk, we’ll share our journey tackling the challenging problem of real-time building design—balancing physics, performance, and usability. This is a story of both successes and lessons learned. We’ll walk through how open-source collaboration allowed us to develop creative solutions and evolve faster as a community.

While our background is in structural engineering, the principles behind our work—parametric modeling, optimization, and fast solvers—can inspire other design fields too. Whether you’re a structural engineer, designer, or just curious about the future of computational tools, we hope this talk resonates with you.

Architects and engineers are forced to make critical design decisions well ahead of constructibility realities. AI will automate the detailed and constructible design of building systems, compressing months of work into hours while providing immediate insight into performance, cost, and constructibility at the earliest design stages. Join Augmenta's CPO and co-founder, Aaron Szymanski, as he charts our path to this future and showcases a real-world project where AI modelled and coordinated a complete electrical system for a school that has been successfully built—the first of its kind and proof that integrated design and construction intelligence isn't just possible, it's here today.

With groundbreaking innovation and a growing number of more advanced AI technologies around every corner of the AECO industry, it can sometimes be daunting to understand not only how, but where and more importantly when you should get started on tackling the onslaught of AI that can and likely will affect the workflow of many inside the AEC industry. In this session, learn how the latest workstation technology trends and updates can transform the industry you work in, and get help demystifying buzz-word AI bingo vs. real-world workflows that your teams operate in every day.

In this session, we’ll demonstrate how Finch is transforming early-stage architectural design with AI. You’ll see how to leverage knowledge from past projects and generate compliant floor plans in seconds. We’ll also share success stories from leading architecture firms using Finch to accelerate early-stage design and reallocate time to other value-adding tasks for their projects.

Consigli’s Autonomous Engineer is an AI-powered agent built to replicate the core capabilities of human engineers —mechanical, electrical, fire and more — during the early stages of building design and planning. She reviews architectural drawings and technical documents, generates full interdisciplinary clash free BIM, interprets building codes, and autonomously flags engineering requirements, coordination issues, and potential risks. She is already making changes in the industry, and you should join the session to see it for yourself.

Yoshiharu will showcase how our AI-powered Gauzilla Pro 4D digital twin platform enhances progress tracking, stakeholder communication, safety compliance, and risk assessment of AEC projects by utilizing the revolutionary Radiance Field reality capture technology called Gaussian Splatting (3DGS).

3DGS generates high-fidelity 3D scenes from short videos captured using smartphones, 360 cameras (eg. Insta360), drones (eg. DJI), or LiDAR (eg. XGRIDS for accurate scanning). It has less data acquisition & processing time than traditional Photogrammetry and allows for expressive and holistic 3D scene reconstruction.

Gauzilla Pro's dynamic 4D time-lapse feature allows for detailed as-built progress analysis of a construction project. The platform also lets you easily and precisely segment complex 3D geometries such as MEP, HVAC, PT cables, rebars, etc.

Today, we stand at the edge of a transformation in the AEC industry - one driven by the rise of AI Swarm architectures. In traditional construction design workflows, knowledge is fragmented and dependent on personal expertise. AI Swarm changes this by enabling a network of highly specialized agents to autonomously perform individual tasks while coordinating as a collective. However, to realize this future, all agents must access a unified knowledge base that AI can reliably build upon.
At Tektome, we position ourselves as a knowledge agent - one critical piece of the broader AI Swarm ecosystem. Our mission is to ensure that information is structured, valuable, and primed for action, empowering other agents and stakeholders alike to operate with consistency and precision.
To support this vision, we introduce ReqManager, a key pillar of the Tektome Platform. ReqManager is a solution designed to manage the complex web of regulations, internal standards, and client requirements that all projects face. It automatically structures unorganized information, identifies relevant requirements based on project attributes, and supports real-time collaboration among team members. By streamlining compliance workflows, ReqManager helps ensure that early design phases are more accurate, coordinated, and resilient - paving the way for a true AI-driven future in the built environment.

Explore the full spectrum of working with GenAI—from hidden productivity tips and efficient workflows to the evolving legal and ethical implications of generative AI in design. This session gives both creative and critical insights for using GenAI with confidence and clarity.

Al is transforming the AEC industry by eliminating tedious processes and boosting productivity. In this talk, we will explore Al solutions for Planning, Design, Engineering, Construction, Operations, and Administration. In doing so we will cover the basics of Al – including Training, Fine Tuning, RAG, Inference, Generative Al, Data Science, and Radiance Fields. We will also discuss the use of Digital Twins for training synthetic data for construction robotics and similar use cases, and simulating projects before deployment in the real world. Finally, we will explore how all these technologies can be used to achieve sustainability objectives for Datacenter design.

The most important question is often the one we overlook: Where? This session explores how combining various layers of data at wide ranging geospatial scale enables analysis, simulation, and collaborative understanding. Using real world projects and examples, real-world context delivered in GIS enables better AEC workflows.
Join us to see how answering Where with data transforms how we imagine, evaluate, and deliver the built environment.

Giraffe is a common data environment used by architects, developers, and governments to mash up design, planning, and finance in real time. It breaks the old BIM silos, blends in GIS, and turns spatial data into a live decision-making tool—blurring the lines between who designs, who decides, and who pays. Bonus: you can do visual programming inside, just like Grasshopper.

In 2025, architects and urban designers still face a basic, frustrating question at the start of every project: where is the context model? Despite the explosion of AEC tools and digital workflows, site context data—whether GIS or 3D—remains patchy, low quality, or locked in unusable formats.

In this talk, we explore why this foundational step in design has been overlooked for so long, and how improving it can unlock better, faster decision-making across the AEC stack. He’ll share how Cityweft is addressing the problem by making high-quality, geospatially accurate context models accessible in clean, interoperable formats—so that the industry can stop wasting time assembling the basics, and start designing.

Strap in for a fast-paced demo-rich session where Michael Hoppe shows how today’s architects and developers are ditching PDFs and jumping into live, generative cities. You'll witness how AI is now driving real-time zoning checks, instant AR previews on-site, and even cinematic renders in minutes—not hours. Whether you're designing a home or planning an entire district, this talk will change the way you see the future of architectural design.

The era of brittle BIM workflows and siloed tools is ending—and Skema is leading the charge. In this forward-looking session, discover how Skema 2025 rewires the architectural design process by combining smart toolchain integration, reusable design intelligence, and zero-code generative design into one.

We'll unpack how Skema:

- Connects conceptual design tools like SketchUp, Rhino, Grasshopper and Forma to BIM without data loss or rework
- Enables architects to reuse proven building components and logic at scale
- Delivers rapid design iterations powered by AI—without requiring coding skills
- Empowers firms to move from early concept to LOD350 deliverables in record time

Whether you're struggling with software sprawl, knowledge leakage, or the limits of traditional BIM tools, this session will show how Skema flips the script—helping firms design smarter, faster, and more profitably.

If your practice is ready to move beyond legacy BIM, this is your blueprint for what’s next.

In an era where Ai tools can conjure architectural visions within a few keystrokes, a critical question arises: How do we translate AI-generated designs into tangible, buildable structures? Can Ai also translate its own creation into a buildable reality? Architect Tal Friedman, a pioneer in parametric and generative design, addresses this challenge head-on.

Generative Ai is at its core what French Philosopher Jean Baudrillard described as “simulacra” (singular: simulacrum)- A simulation of a simulation. A hyper reality of something that never existed. It resembles what we perceive to be true, but only to the minimal extent needed. For this reason, Ai generation can be both highly productive and deceiving at the same time.

In this compelling talk, Architect and Foldstruct CEO Tal Friedman, delves into the transformative potential of Ai and Fabrication Integrated Modeling (FIM), a methodology that harmonizes generative design with real-world construction constraints.