NXT BLD 2024

Introduction to NXT BLD

Scott Pritchard, an Emmy-nominated visual effects supervisor for Industrial Light and Magic (ILM), will share secrets from his vast career, including Andor for Disney+ set in the Star Wars Universe.

Construction has been an effective means of delivering buildings for centuries but with the productivity dial notably failing to move, and with the urgent need to decarbonise the industry, it must rapidly shift from optimising traditional ways of doing things to radical new approaches. WSP is nudging towards a paradigm shift by leveraging its Kit of Parts framework for its clients, roundtripping between the strategic and tactical to hone ways to optimise industrialised construction solutions. This talk will consider the digital and technical lessons learned and how industry can make this leap at scale

The industry needs a data bridge, to get data out of the many applications it uses. Greg Schleusner will illustrate how we need to start with the Foundation. If we take the good ideas from USD in the VFX world, we can preserve the data and enable the ability to work across many new tools and not necessarily have them fight to replace each other.

Geometry is only one part of that data jigsaw. APIs are the Future, but they also will bring an end to the flexibility of files and rely on vendors being truly open to access, even from competitors.

Schleusner argues the Foundation of the Bridge needs to bring all the knowledge we produce together, not lock it away. We don’t need a new file format, we need a new way of assembling knowledge, in a machine interoperable way

With a "Productization approach" Bouygues Construction is able to considerably simplify the processes, from design to execution. More off-site manufacturing, less on-site transformation, thanks to product lines or modules to be assembled on the building site. To do so, @Bryck, an innovative department of Bouygues Construction, is developing a Construction Virtual Twin Mock-up that aims to be web-controlled by the project team on the 3DEXPERIENCE Cloud Platform.

With Bentley Systems already having made its next-generation file, actually a database, format open source, Moutte will address the growing need for open data standards and data-centric approaches to infrastructure technologies.

Moutte will also address how digital twins unlock and unleash the value of data across the infrastructure lifecycle to power artificial intelligence, sustainability requirements and more

Join TestFit’s CEO and co-founder, Clifton Harness as he walks us through a novel approach to early stage feasibility. With rising housing needs and land shortages, we need to get more out of the buildings we build. Be the first to learn about TestFit’s next generation of design that can revolutionize building optimization all while being efficient and intuitive.

The AEC industry’s existing information exchange workflows are broken and a new approach to data is essential, not just to fully realize the potential of AI, but to address today’s basic challenges around data accessibility and interoperability. Autodesk is introducing a new approach to data with the launch of our AEC data model, which delivers an open, extensible data framework that enables improved collaboration and better project outcomes for AECO stakeholders. This session will introduce the key tenants of the new capability, highlight how customers are already leveraging it to realize improved outcomes and share our vision for delivering data infrastructure of the future.

The integration of geospatial capabilities and a data-centric approach has become essential for achieving project success for AEC projects of all types. This presentation will explore how the data-centric approach of GIS empowers architects, engineers, and construction professionals to make informed decisions, optimize workflows, and enhance collaboration. By harnessing the power of spatial data, professionals can visualize, analyze, and manage complex projects with greater accuracy and efficiency. Attendees will gain insights into the latest GIS advancements and practical applications in the AEC industry.

With the advent of 3D modelling, architects have moved beyond designing physical buildings and now create swathes of valuable digital assets in high definition USD.

Treasury is a new registry and data vault, for designed spatial assets, which can be licensed for use in areas such as film and virtual meta worlds. It is co-founded by Zaha Hadid Architects, Spaceform (backed by BIG) and Heatherwicks.

Patrik Schumacher and Shajay Bhooshan of Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA), together with John Manoochehri of Treasury will discuss the benefits of expanding into the new digital frontier of meta and highlight Treasury’s benefits to creators and builders.

SHoP Architects has established itself as a cutting-edge practice with projects of note across five continents. At SHoP, considerable attention and resources in developing and integrating emergent technologies have been folded directly into the process of architectural design and delivery.

SHoP principal John Cerone, who leads many of the firm’s inventive projects responsible for the advancement of digital process innovation, will discuss the firm’s influential early work and experiments in direct-to-fabrication methods, use of data modeling to create predictive space planning applications and deployment of augmented reality visualization in the field as an on-site tool for construction. He will explore how these innovations were developed simultaneously to create efficiencies within the process of design and delivery as well as optimizing the pace and clarity of communication and decision making with clients—with the ultimate goal of removing any distance between design and execution in the rapid and exact assembly of buildings of every type.

Matar will delve into how AI is transforming creative processes, enhancing artistic expression, and revolutionizing design methodologies. Key topics will include integrating AI in concept design and developing these concepts into 3D scenes using AI. Attendees will gain insights into cutting-edge AI applications and how these technologies are shaping the future of creative industries.

Letters of protest, expensive licences, vendor lock-in, lack of control over data, slow innovation, few alternatives... Proprietary technology is in the hands of a few companies, so new software companies cannot compete on a level playing field. Users are not happy, but they have no alternative. The BIM software market is closed. But it can be opened up. It has been done before in other sectors, and it can be done in our industry. In fact, we have already started to do it. In this 20-minute talk I'm going to show you our plan to open up the BIM software market.

Al is poised to transform the AEC industry with the promise of eliminating tedious processes and boosting productivity. In this talk, we will explore Al solutions for Conceptual Design, Design Compliance, and Construction. In doing so we will cover the basics of Al - including Al Training, Fine Tuning, RAG, Inference, Generative Al, Data Science, and NeRF. We will also briefly discuss the use of a Digital Twin for aggregating Al data, training synthetic data, and simulating projects before deployment in the real world.

With the dramatic shift in the diverse use cases of real-time visualization, traditional 3D CAD, high-performance computing, and generative AI across industries, a one-size-fits-all approach is no longer viable. Balancing increasing IT demands, tighter deadlines, and budget constraints necessitates investing in the right technology for the right users at the right time. As AI emerges as the defining technology of our era, determining where to start can be challenging. Learn from Lenovo how to best equip your organization for success, from initial steps to hybrid working, generative AI, and larger global deployments, helping you reduce costs and enhance workforce agility.

Increasing manufacturing capacity is a pillar to Intel’s foundry strategy for advanced semiconductors. Our recent project announcements have created an unprecedented construction roadmap that surpasses all prior benchmarks. The sheer amount of data produced on these mega projects overwhelms traditional project teams and tools and requires new digital capabilities. Such a roadmap demands innovating on all fronts to drive productivity and ensure a predictable delivery of the project. Some of the innovative strategies being deployed to improve productivity are the deployment of AI solutions, Digital Twins and the shift towards a data centric design and engineeringworkflow to enable more efficient down-stream construction execution. These capabilities are being developed and deployed for greenfield and brownfields and these strategies demand digital tools and digital workflows to be successful. During our talk we will share some of the challenges of building multiple mega-projects in parallel and how we are breaking old paradigms to ensure we can meet the demand for semiconductors to power the worlds innovations.

Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA) have collaboratively evolved expertise and proprietary technologies at the intersection of spatial user-experience, interaction, and design with computational technologies of algorithmic 3D geometry creation, gaming & MMO, and user-analytics.

ZHA also has long-standing expertise in developing 3D spatial and architectural assets by adapting so-called Digital Content Creation (DCC) tool sets that are commonly used in the computer graphics, animation, and video game industries.

The presentation will showcase a so-called spatial technology stack, which compared to the current and dominant BIM 1.0 based architectural technologies, provides a powerful technological basis for engaging and responsible design, both online and on-land.

FACIT founder & CEO Bruce Bell and Director of Design Technology Oliver Thomas talk about FACIT’s unique approach to building sustainable homes in the UK. Utilising BIM-Manufacturing, Modular Components and on-site digital manufacturing to rethink the design to build process through digitisation.
Also hear about the recent collaboration with technology company Tharsus as FACIT looks to scale up its technology, machinery and building system to deliver houses at scale.

A demonstration of the online design to fabrication platform, built for Travis Perkings, and Tophat Homes. This innovative platform empowers property Developers to design and configure multiple houses directly in a web browser. Users can place these houses on sites and, within minutes, generate comprehensive construction drawings, schedules, and detailed Bills of Materials (BOM) that include costs and product codes, dynamically sourced from the Travis Perkins merchant database. We will show how we have taken this innovation platform a step further for TopHat homes by not only automation the construction information, but by also controlling the KUKA robotics that drive the factory without any human intervention.

Cojocaru will present two case studies: a mixed-use development in Puerto Rico and an attic renovation, where NUMENA's virtual reality tool played a pivotal role in the concept design phase. She will explore the significant impact this tool had on her projects and client relationships, and discuss why she believe new technologies could lead architecture into a disruptive era of independent toolmaking.

Despite a decade of immense investment in both North America and Europe, new companies driving industrialized construction have struggled to achieve stable, profitable businesses. This session asserts that many of the current approaches for ‘Engineer-to-order construction’ are broken, and new design tools alone won’t fix it. Simply moving to productized construction by transforming BIM to DFMA has promised to be the answer. From his experiences in companies like Dassault Systemes, Marty will share examples from manufacturing that have already productized some elements of a building that we might learn from. He will explore how LOD 200 splits and goes to LOD 300 and LOD 400 along different parallel paths, with examples from leading Architectural and Engineering firms integrating new solutions like Skema with other emerging solutions to unitize early schematic design, such that better early decisions can be made to accelerate our ability to industrialize building delivery.

The challenge of interoperability and the need for algorithmic methodologies in structural engineering require innovative computational workflows that are made possible by using the BHoM.

The BHoM is a powerful open-source computational development project supported by Buro Happold.

It allows to improve collaboration on projects and develop advanced computational workflows unlocking interoperability between multiple AEC software packages.
The main features of the tool are presented together with a selection of case studies showing the specialized approach used for developing advanced computational workflows on large-scale projects worldwide, especially in the Middle-East.