VectorWorks Plays Key Role in Designing Swiss ‘Inventioneering Architecture’ Exhibit to Open at Boston’s Logan Airport
Columbia, Maryland (January 9, 2006)—Nemetschek North America announced today that the caad.designtoproduction research group at The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) used VectorScript®, VectorWorks’ powerful built-in scripting language that automates drafting and modeling tasks, to help Instant Architects from Zurich design and produce the stage for the traveling exhibit Inventioneering Architecture. The exhibit will open January 20, 2006, at Boston’s Logan Airport.
The interactive exhibit’s stage is a platform that resembles an abstract cross-section of the Swiss Alps. It was designed to allow visitors to stroll the platform while viewing architectural models and visuals on overhead screens and display panels.
To develop this platform, a NURBS surface was translated into the geometry for 1,000 individually shaped rafters, which formed a doubly curved surface of 1,300 square feet, measuring 130 feet long by ten feet wide with varying heights up to five feet.
“VectorScript allows for a tight integration of programming, manual drawing and editing, which is especially important in complex projects such as this,” says Christoph Schindler, architect and co-founder of caad.designtoproduction. “And due to these capabilities, we were able to generate the steering code for the CNC-router that produced the rafters directly within the CAD system, effectively closing the gap between design and production.”
Read more about this project and caad.designtoproduction’s other innovative work with world-renowned architects such as Daniel Libeskind in the case study “VectorWorks Brings Daniel Libeskind’s Futuropolis to Life” at www.nemetschek.net/news/casestudies.php
About Inventioneering Architecture
Showcasing the Swiss approach to teaching architecture, Inventioneering Architecture celebrates the innovative work of the four Swiss architecture schools: the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zürich (ETH); Accademia di Architettura, Università della Svizzera Italiana (USI), Mendrisio; Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL); and the Institute of Architecture at the University of Geneva. The exhibition will give visitors a physical and intellectual opportunity to experience the differences between Swiss architecture pedagogy and American architecture teaching methods. Visitors can walk on the platform, view monitors with web-based architecture content and add their own thoughts at various terminals. An overhead screen will display Swiss architecture projects in CAD software. The exhibition debuted in San Francisco and opens at Boston’s Logan Airport with a ribbon-cutting ceremony and reception on January 20, 2006. It will remain in Boston until March 31, 2006, then travel to Shanghai, Dubai, and Zurich.
About the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology
The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, ETH Zurich, was founded in 1855 as the Federal Polytechnic Institute. Today it is an internationally respected research institution of higher learning. Twenty one Nobel Prize winners are associated with ETH Zurich, in the fields of physics, chemistry, medicine and literature—most notably Albert Einstein in 1921. Among ETH’s more prestigious faculty are the Pritzker Prize-winning architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, whose latest project was the recently-opened de Young Museum in San Francisco.
Nemetschek North America is a wholly-owned subsidiary of European software giant Nemetschek AG. A global leader in design technologies, Nemetschek N.A. has been developing CAD software for the AEC, entertainment, landscape design, and manufacturing fields since 1985. VectorWorks, its flagship product, is one of the world's best-selling cross-platform CAD applications. It is available in more than 85 countries and is translated into eight languages. An all-in-one solution that's easier to learn and use and more cost-effective than most other CAD programs, VectorWorks is ideal for firms that don't have unlimited IT budgets. For more information, visit www.nemetschek.net.