October 19-27, 2024
Annual Conference
NYC
October 19-27, 2024
Annual Conference
NYC
Since 2013 Thornton Tomasetti has hosted the annual AECtech Conference in NYC orgnanized by CORE studio, Each year this event welcomes design and technology professionals from architecture, engineering, construction, fabrication, and software industries and beyond. Over the past decade the annual confernece has evolved from a two-day to a week long conference featuring professional development workshops, speakers, 24+ hour hackathons, and much more. We strive to offer the most enriching networking experience exploring the latest development in technology and practice that engage industry leaders in a forward looking forum for growth.
By serving as a space where creative minds can devise new technologies, acquire skills and make new connections, AECtech builds an open community of knowledge sharing to promote industry progression and enhance collaboration and communication.
CORE studio is Thornton Tomasetti’s virtual incubator of ideas. Its name derives from the union of computational modeling and research and development, which are at the core of our firm’s mission. Our team is a diverse assortment of specialists, with each member bringing expert knowledge and an inquisitive mind to projects of every size and scope. Our experience working across all Thornton Tomasetti practices affords us unique insight into the needs of, and solutions for, our clients and our firm.
CORE studio provides a valuable interface among design and construction teams, developing new workflows and processes that promote collaboration and enhance building design. Our analyses of today’s practices allow us to envision the optimized workflows of tomorrow.
AECtech NYC 2024 marked the twelfth annual conference hosted by Thornton Tomasetti | CORE studio, bringing together over 300 forward-thinking professionals from 160 organizations across 22 countries. Held on Roosevelt Island, the week-long conference celebrated innovation and collaboration in the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry. This year’s lineup featured 8 Virtual Workshops and 11 In-Person Workshops hosted by experts from around the world. The popular Tech Crawl returned, featuring 12 local architecture and engineering firms who opened their offices to attendees.A new addition, the Tech Tour, allowed participants to explore built works in New York City through guided tours hosted by the firms that designed and developed them. This lead up to this year’s Full Day Symposium live-streamed from the Cornell Tech in Roostevelt Island, NYC where 16 presenters and panelists shared their insight. The event finished strong with a 26-hour hackathon that produced 10 uniquely innovative projects.
Thank you to all the companies, institutions, organziations and everyone from our new and long term partners who coninue to contribute to AECtech to meake the event possible!
Thanks to all our Tech Crawl partners for opening up their offices to host fantastic conversations!
Group 1
FIDI
Walter P Moore Engineers
Group 2
Flatiron District
Group 3
Midtown
Group 4
Dumbo to FIDI nbbj
Thanks to our partners for an incredible series of guided tours through completed projcets in NYC!
Thank you to all the outstanding hosts of this years Virtual Workshops!
Christopher Diggins Founder Ara 3d
3D programming can be quite daunting for the uninitiated. Newcomers are often quickly overwhelmed with the mathematics of quaternions, matrices, and cross-products.
The secret to being an effective programmer is that we don’t have to remember the details, because we can create well crafted functions and data types that hide the details of how to do things, and instead describe what we want to achieve. This is the hallmark of a style of programming called functional programming, and it results in code that is easier to understand and refactor.
We built an open-source geometry library in C# that embodies this approach and makes it easy to achieve sophisticated geometric forms in only a few lines of code.
In this half-day virtual workshop, you will learn:
• The fundamental concepts, data-structures, and algorithms of 3D mathematics and functional programming
How to use a range of algorithmic techniques for transforming and creating new and interesting shapes in 2D and 3D.
• This course requires a basic level of familiarity with C#, but no prior knowledge of 3D programming or mathematics.
Konrad Sobon CEO Archi-Lab
Patryk J. Wozniczka Software Developer Archi-Lab
Participants will learn how to develop a custom Revit plugin that enhances design visualization by integrating Stable Diffusion, a state-of-the-art AI model for image generation. This workshop will cover the complete process of taking image inputs from Revit views and using AI to generate new images through both direct image-to-image and prompt-to-image techniques. Attendees will gain hands-on experience with coding the plugin, connecting it with Stable Diffusion, and understanding how AI can streamline creative workflows in the AEC industry. This session is perfect for AEC professionals, developers, and anyone interested in pushing the boundaries of design automation in Revit.
Key takeaways:
• Learn how to build a Revit plugin that connects with AI image generation models.
• Understand the technical workflow for integrating Stable Diffusion into Revit.
• Explore new possibilities for AI-enhanced design visualization and automation.
Atharva Ranade
Computational Leader NBBJ
Architects often rely on a variety of media—such as images, videos, renderings, and diagrams—to effectively communicate the narrative of their designs. But what if you could embed these elements directly into a 3D point cloud scan, creating a more immersive and cohesive representation of the space?
In this hands-on workshop, you will learn to harness the Matterport SDK to build real-time, customized web experiences. By embedding Matterport scans into a web browser, we will capitalize on the interactivity and customization inherent in the browser environment, exploring how to integrate data and create a seamless, single-page web application. You will discover how to extend the capabilities of Matterport scans, transforming static models into dynamic, interactive experiences.
In this workshop, you will learn: The basics of the Matterport SDK.
• Essential techniques for extracting metadata from Matterport scanned spaces.
• How to integrate information to create custom walkthroughs, place 3D objects and embed media within Matterport scans.
• How to build single-page web applications using HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and three.js.
Stijn Jansen CPO VIKTOR
Rick Van Dijk Consultant VIKTOR
In this workshop, you’ll discover the power of VIKTOR—a platform designed for engineering and construction firms to create and share custom web apps. Learn how architects and engineers can automate workflows, collaborate smoothly, and deliver better designs in less time.
In this hands-on session, you will learn how to:
• Create a web app with just a few lines of Python code
• Convert Excel sheets into shareable apps without coding
• Connect multiple software packages (like Grasshopper, ETABS, Revit, Excel) from a single app
• Automate your workflow and create powerful visualizations (3D, maps, graphs, data)
Bring your own Python scripts and Excel files, and we’ll work together to transform them into web apps. This workshop is ideal for engineers, architects, and professionals looking to automate workflows and create user-friendly apps that can be easily shared with their teams.
Mathieu Huard Head of Product ShapeDiver
ShapeDiver’s new App Builder empowers computational designers by offering a fresh approach to building web applications. It allows you to design the full web layout of an online application directly in Grasshopper, complete with contextual UI elements that respond to the state of their model. App Builder provides the tools to create sophisticated, interactive interfaces, including data visualization options—such as text, tables, graphs, and images – that showcase your designs and engage your users on a deeper level.
This workshop is your gateway to mastering the ShapeDiver App Builder and transforming how you present and interact with parametric models online. Here’s what we’ll cover:
• Building a Simple Web Application Layout Using App Builder Components
• Data Visualization Using Tables, Charts, and Images Contextual Interfaces and Dynamic Parameters
• Select, Drag, and Draw: Build Advanced Visual User Interfaces Using Viewer Interactions
Mostapha S. Roudsari
Co-Founder
Ladybug Tools
Chris Mackey Co-Founder
Ladybug Tools
In this workshop, we cover the core improvements in the new LBT plugins in comparison to the legacy plugins. We review several examples of legacy scripts and update them to the latest version of the Ladybug Tools while discussing the overall improvements in the implementation and workflows.
We also cover the new possibilities for developing your own components, running the scripts outside of Grasshopper, and taking advantage of Pollination for running your daylight, energy, and comfort simulations on the cloud after updating your recipes.
This workshop is designed for users with intermediate and advanced knowledge of Grasshopper and Ladybug Tools. Particularly, if you are in charge of developing and maintaining Ladybug Tools scripts for your office, and your customers, this workshop is for you!
Mostapha S. Roudsari
Co-Founder
Ladybug Tools
Chris Mackey
Co-Founder
Ladybug ToolsLab
In this workshop, we’ll dive deep into the powerful new Pollination Fly components, comparing them to the legacy Ladybug and Colibri versions.
We’ll guide you through streamlined workflows and set up several parametric studies. Using Ladybug Tools and Pollination plugins in tandem, you’ll learn how to run, post-process, and visualize results effectively. We’ll cover best practices for scaling your studies from hundreds to thousands of iterations. Plus, get a sneak peek at our new DesignExplorer-like Pollination app! The workshop will cover running studies both locally and on the Pollination cloud infrastructure.
Thank you to all the hosts of this year’s incredible group of In-Person Workshops.
GH on the Web: Creating Websites with Rhino.Compute, Vue, & Three.js.
| Thornton Tomasetti | CORE studio & KPF UI
Justyna Szychowska Senior Software Developer KPF
Sophie Moore
Senior
Applications Developer
Thornton Tomasetti | CORE studio
Learn to build a custom web interface for real-time control and display of Grasshopper definitions. In this workshop, you will learn how to prepare your Grasshopper scripts to run on the web with Rhino.Compute. You will also explore the basics of Vue.js, a user-friendly web framework, enabling you to create a beautiful and reusable web interfaces that can control your Grasshopper definition inputs. Additionally, you will gain experience with Three.js web geometry library to develop dynamic and custom 3D scenes in your website.
| Thornton Tomasetti | CORE studio
Seyedomid Sajedi
Senior AI & ML Engineer
Thornton Tomasetti | CORE studio
AEC professionals often spend significant time reviewing various documents, which can be quite time-consuming. The goal of this half-day workshop is to explore a range of techniques in the field of natural language processing (NLP) and familiarize attendees with tools that can enhance their productivity when dealing with large documents.
The workshop is divided into two parts:
Classical ML and NLP
• Setup and Essentials: We’ll begin by setting up a Python environment and learning the essentials of leveraging a local machine or cloud service (such as Google Colab) to perform NLP tasks.
• Techniques and Methods: Explore simple yet effective ML and non-ML methods for automated processing of textual information.
Deep Learning and Transformers
• Fundamental: Get a deeper understanding of deep learning algorithms in NLP. Explore topics such as tokenization and text embeddings.
• Unsupervised learning: Learn how to gain insights from a large corpus of documents using a small LLM through topic modeling.
• Semantic search: build a small AI search module using Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG).
• Agents: This part will focus on enhancing the reasoning capabilities of LLMs and instructing them for tool use.
| Tiffany & Co.
Ahmad Tabbakh Sr. Computational Designer Tiffany & Co.
This workshop will introduce the basics of the Unity Game Engine and enable participants to publish their Rhino models as web-hosted walkthroughs using Unity’s WebGL build platform. The session will cover the Unity interface, exporting and importing geometry into Unity, creating a basic character, adjusting environmental settings, adding simple interactions, and publishing to the web.
Christopher Diggins Founder Ara 3d
This 3 hour workshop will provide AEC professionals with a practical introduction to C# programming. We assume a basic understanding of programming concepts and the Windows operating system,
We will cover the following topics:
• The C# programming environment
• Compiling and debugging code
• Assemblies and managed code
• Dynamic typing versus static typing
• GUI development and event handling
Useful algorithms and data-structures
• Dictionaries
• Enumerators
• Sets Trees
• LINQ (Language Integrated Natural Query)
Software development best practices
• How to become more effective with less effort
• Breaking complex problems into simpler ones
• Simplifying code via immutability and programming Code and project organization
Put the concepts and techniques into practice:
• Searching and manipulating the file system
• Extracting data from Excel
• Reading and writing text and JSON data from files
• Parsing text with regular expressions
• Creating a simple Windows UI
• Communicating over HTTP and setting up a server
• Launch and communicate with a process
Nicolas Schmidt CTO / Co Founder Build+
Multiplayer, 3d parametric model editing on the web in an afternoon. We will walk through the implementation and deployment of a demo app that allows users to edit a 3d parametric model collaboratively. Technologies used will include typescript, react, react-three-fiber, fly.io, and Liveblocks (or a similar tool for multiplayer real-time sync). We’ll discuss multiplayer app architecture and how it impacts the UX of sharing and permissions. By the end of the workshop, you’ll have a deployed instance of the app and the knowledge necessary to extend or modify the app.
| McNeel
Developer McNeel
There is a new script editor that is consistent across Rhino and Grasshopper, and on Windows and macOS. It brings Python 3 and C# scripting to Rhino alongside the already existing IronPython. All languages support package management and debugging, both in Rhino and Grasshopper. Script editor can also generate Rhino or Grasshopper plugins from your scripts very easily. To explore all these features in this workshop, we will create scripts in Rhino and Grasshopper, run, debug, and generate Rhino Command and Grasshopper Components from our scripts.
• Familiarity with Python 3 programming language is required.
• Familiarity with python scientific libraries e.g. numpy might help.
• Familiarity with C# programming language and NuGet packaging is helpful.
| McNeel
Andy Payne Developer McNeel
From its origins as a parametric geometry tool, Grasshopper has undergone a transformative evolution in Rhino 8, featuring the addition of nearly 100 new components and data types. These components serve as the building blocks for crafting innovative workflows that seamlessly merge Rhino and Grasshopper data. In this workshop, we’ll guide you through the art of harnessing these workflows, enabling you to enhance your production processes and unlock a world of untapped creative potential.
Matthijs Beekman Product Manager VIKTOR
Sylvain van der Meer Consulting Services Lead VIKTOR
In this workshop, you’ll discover the power of VIKTOR—a platform designed for engineering and construction firms to create and share custom web apps. Learn how architects and engineers can automate workflows, collaborate smoothly, and deliver better designs in less time.
In this hands-on session, you will learn how to:
• Automate your design workflows effortlessly
• Convert Excel sheets into shareable apps without coding
• Supercharge your Excel sheets with Python
• Build fully custom web apps using Python
Bring your own Python scripts and Excel files, and we’ll work together to transform them into web apps. This workshop is ideal for engineers, architects, and professionals looking to automate workflows and create user-friendly apps that can be easily shared with their teams.
Alex Schiftner CTO
ShapeDiver
ShapeDiver’s new App Builder empowers computational designers by offering a fresh approach to building web applications. It allows you to design the full web layout of an online application directly in Grasshopper, complete with contextual UI elements that respond to the state of their model. App Builder provides the tools to create sophisticated, interactive interfaces, including data visualization options—such as text, tables, graphs, and images – that showcase your designs and engage your users on a deeper level.
This workshop is your gateway to mastering the ShapeDiver App Builder and transforming how you present and interact with parametric models online. Here’s what we’ll cover:
• Building a Simple Web Application Layout Using App Builder Components
• Data Visualization Using Tables, Charts, and Images
• Contextual Interfaces and Dynamic Parameters
• Select, Drag, and Draw: Build Advanced Visual User Interfaces Using Viewer Interactions
Konrad Sobon CEO Archi-Lab
This class will focus on transitioning your existing Revit API projects to the new .NET8 runtime. Since both Revit 2025 and Rhino 8 releases offer support for that runtime environment, the AEC developers must learn how to manage their software development projects in that new environment. In this class, we will also talk about how to keep your older projects on the .NET Framework while only updating your new releases for Revit 2025 and Dynamo 3 to the .NET8 runtime. We will talk about common gotchas and issues that you might encounter with the new runtime environment, and how it compares to the old .NET Framework that you might be more familiar with. Finally, we will discuss the potential benefits that the new runtime offers to Revit API developers.
Amir Ashtiani Lead Architect Pininfarina
Synthesis of Vision is a cutting-edge workshop designed for architects and designers interested in harnessing the potential of AI, particularly Stable Diffusion, in combination with Rhino and Grasshopper, to enhance their creative process. This workshop delves into the integration of AI in architectural visualization and concept development, offering participants a deeper understanding of how to take control of the AI’s capabilities and work collaboratively with it as a medium.
Through the integration of Rhino and Grasshopper, attendees will explore methods to seamlessly combine parametric design with AI-generated visuals. The focus is on guiding and shaping AI outputs with precision, aligning them with both the technical aspects of architectural design and creative agendas. This interactive partnership with AI empowers architects to push the boundaries of their concepts while maintaining a coherent dialogue between human input, computational design, and AI-driven visualization.
Thank you to an absolutely incredible lineup of Presenters and Panelists!
MORNING PRESENTERS
Pininfarina
Nicholas Desbiens Innovation Lead
Pininfarina
Amir Ashtiani Lead Architect
nTop
Justin Hattendorf Director of Product Design
SOFTlab
Michael Szivos Director & Founder
Zaha Hadid Architects
Shajay Bhooshan Associate Director
Shifting the AEC Sandbox
Dimitrie
Stefanescu Founder & CEO
Wouter
Riedijk CSO & Co-Founder
Hypar
Andrew Heumann Software Developer
ShapeDiver
Alex Schiftner CTO
& Will
Charlie Portelli Associate Digital Innovation Strategist
Alexandra Pollock
Senior Director of CORE Studio
Petr Mitev
Vice President, Solutions for Designers
Walter P. Moore
Dan Reynolds AI Leader
Martin Bros.
Andrew Kragness Director of Computational Design
R&D in AEC
Andrew Heumann
Software Developer
David Mans
VP Applications Developer
Proving Ground
Nathan Miller CEO
Ladybug Tools
Mostapha Sadeghipour Roudsari Co-Founder
Robert McNeel
Brian Gillespie Product Manager
This project is designed to consume Grasshopper files, parse their component data, and store the information in a TinkerPop graph database. This allows for version control and analysis of Grasshopper files.
Team
• Alex Schiftner, ShapeDiver
• Alexis Kotzambasis, LPA
• Colin Matthews, Ennead Architects
• Cullen Sarles, Ryan Companies
• Justin Jao, StructureCraft
• Ka Kit Chiu, Mithun
• Karen Kuo, Corgan
• Konrad Zaremba, Kolega
• Nicholas Martino, StructureCraft
• Peter Zhang, Corgan
UpZone is your one-click solution to modeling your NYC lot’s buildable zoning volume. The app searches multi-thousand-page zoning resolution documents and city websites, identifies relevant zoning requirements, and generates a user-friendly 3D model for architects to hit the ground running with design.
Team
• Anish Reddy, Perkins & Will
• Eddy Lopez, LPA
• Elcin Ertugrul, Thornton Tomasetti CORE studio
• Georgios Athanasopoulos, Thornton Tomasetti CORE studio
• Omid Sajedi, Thornton Tomasetti CORE studio
• Susanna van de Graaf, Thornton Tomasetti
• Mahsa Dehghani, Corgan
• Joyce Hanlon, Snøhetta
• Jihoon Park, Walter P Moore
• Jari Prachasartta, KPF
“Realtime” AI imagination for your Rhino model, all within a Rhino viewport, activated via a Display Mode.
Team
• Bob Frederick, RIOS
• Jimmy Torres, RIOS
• Oscar Borgström, Foster + Partners
• Chu Ding (PE, PhD), RunToSolve
• Kohei Hayashi, Shimizu
• Sheng Zheng, PE / Martin/Martin
• Kojiro Suzuki, Shimizu
• Yutaka Iribe, Shimizu
• Tamaho Shigemura, Algorithm Design Lab
Splash
This project aims to streamline model analysis and enhance feedback processes for AEC projects. By integrating Speckle, we provide stakeholders easy web-based access to 3D model analysis results that update in real-time!. This setup empowers non-technical stakeholders to review analysis outputs and provide feedback directly, without needing specialized software like Revit or Rhino.
Team: Stephen Prendergast / SOM, Nathan Terranova / Corgan, Wade Vollink / Ryan Companies, Kent Pretorius / Fast+Epp, Erika Santos / AECOM, Julio Sarachaga / Lagarsoft LLC, Agustina Aboy , Laszlo Andrasi / Perkins & Will, Anik Alam / Mithun
Earth to Rhino
EarthToRhino is a bridge between Cesium, a 3d Geospatial platform, and McNeel’s Rhinoceros 3D through Grasshopper.
Team: Paris Nikitidis / Foster + Partners, Sergey Pigach / Thornton Tomasetti CORE studio, Alfredo Chavez / Heatherwick studio, Quoc Dang / KPF, Joanna Sabak / Heatherwick studio, Weiting Kong / Thornton Tomasetti, Jeroen Janssen / Thornton Tomasetti CORE studio, Brian Murray / Hathaway Dinwiddie, Nico Azel / Thornton Tomasetti CORE studio, Jason Yang / Thornton Tomasetti CORE studio
D-AI-LOG
This project demonstrates how to create a FastAPI-based API that interacts with an OpenAI assistant. The API allows you to retrieve the assistant, send messages, and receive responses, all using OpenAI’s Assistant and Thread APIs. It receives instructions to generate a building and returns the building description in a JSON format.
Team: Alireza Memarian / Memo.ai, Christopher Diggins / Ara3d, Francisco Maranchello / Everse , Jacob Sam / NYIT, Luke Gehron, Paweł Sapiecha / Olson Kundig, Taro Narahara / NJIT, Valentin Noves / Everse
EQUALIZER
Team: Daniel Boba / Perkins & Will, Victor Barbosa / SHL, Kart Gopinath / Perkins & Will, Mario Romero / Perkins & Will, Gigi Singh / Perkins & Will, Nick Cameron / Perkins & Will, Zuzanna Czapla / SHL
Nolli Cannolli
N-C is a project that fine-tunes a diffusion model on Nolli maps to easily generate baseline geometry with diverse urban form. The model creates images that hybridize the urban fabric from any city and can be adapted to a specific site boundary. These images feed into a Grasshopper script to generate 3d massing with customizable density.
Team: Vincent Mai / NBBJ, Hadidi Hosni / Foster + Partners, Mahshid Moghadasi / Stantec, Jacob Russo / SOM, Eesha Jain / Thornton Tomasetti CORE studio
Tools for preprocessing point clouds for analysis in Grasshopper using Ladybug and for web visualization with React and Three.js. The preprocessing pipeline cleans, transforms, and prepares spatial data, making it compatible with computational design workflows and interactive 3D visualization.
Team: Mark Skepasts / StructureCraft, Kyungho Lee / KPF, Amber Su / Cornell University, Curtis Xu / Cornell University, Hossein Zargar / Walter P Moore, Vahid Koliyaee / Zahner, Sandeep Jalui / Walter P Moore, Rimjhim Singh / Walter P Moore
IMPRINT
The “Imprint” project presents a solution to replace QR codes with embedded, design-integrated visual links. Criticizing QR codes as disruptive and unreadable, it utilizes computer vision and image segmentation across platforms like web frontends, device frontends, and a Revit add-in to embed information directly within images. By generating data embeddings from processed images and employing techniques like image augmentation and feature extraction, Imprint enables drawings and photos to function as interactive, linkable elements—eliminating the need for traditional QR codes.
Team: Anthony Samaha / Perkins & Will, Matthijs Beekman / Viktor, Nehansh Saxena / SLAM, Alan Cation / AC Design Lab, Jackson Lee / Department of Labor, Sophie Moore / Thornton Tomasetti CORE studio, Sidharth Jain / UMass Amherst, Travis Potter / DLB Associates, Praneet Mathur / Karamba3D, Nirvik Saha / Perkins & Will
THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS