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The Exhibit Hall is open
If you’re here in Las Vegas, remember that we’re unveiling our fabulous Exhibit Hall tonight at 6:30! Get ready for bold and beautiful immersive exhibits, hands-on demos, and volunteer activities—across an expansive and updated physical space. Because it's such a great place to be, we'll be serving lunch here tomorrow.
Opening Keynote
Jeff Kowalski and Carl Bass got this party started with an inspirational keynote delivered to a packed house. Jeff walked the audience through the reality of the future of making things. Epic changes are afoot! Carl shared several recent developments at Autodesk that have helped to shatter the glass between the digital world and the physical world. Emily Pilloton described the organization she founded, Project H, including the deeply moving projects undertaken by her amazing young students. This is what the design revolution looks like.
You can watch the Keynote Address online.
Innovation Forum
This afternoon Building and Architecture professionals gathered to hear our panel address The Future of How Buildings Are Made: A Stimulant for Your Next Project. What we learned is that the explosion of digital context is changing everything we know about the design and construction of the built environment. Fascinating case studies illustrated various challenges and how they were resolved with new technologies, including BIM and collaboration tools that can be used on projects with dizzying layers of complexity.
Alan Ricks, co-founder of MASS Design Group, described how his organization works globally to promote and build architecture that has a positive impact on communities. In Rwanda, a beautifully designed hospital has driven improvements in health outcomes, and rural housing attracts doctors. As one of his architects puts it, beauty is dignity.
We also heard from a team at Walt Disney Imagineering that designed a Renaissance castle in Shanghai; Ken Wiseman, president of Design Services at CannonDesign; BIM pioneer and NYU professor James Vandezande; Chris Horne, an urban planner at Sasaki Associates in Massachusetts; and others.
Classes
Today’s speakers knocked out few hundred sessions total, with topics running the gamut from “Social Involvement in Urban Planning with Laser Scanning” to “Wind Simulation in Robot Structural Analysis Professional” and everything in between. To find out which generated the most enthusiasm, check out the mobile app or follow the conversation at #AU2014.
/Ann
