We're excited to announce that Prof. Masoud Akbarzadeh will be the speaker at the next VCD on November 7th! This talk will take place at Structurecraft's Vancouver office (2425 Quebec St. Suite 302), with doors opening at 5:30, and the talk starting 6:00 PST. The talk will also be streamed at https://www.twitch.tv/vcdtalks.

Masoud is the founder of Polyhedral Structures Laboratory (PSL), which is a research unit at Weitzman School of Design, University of Pennsylvania. His research primarily focuses on advancing structural and architectural geometry, as well as construction technologies.

Masoud's talk will cover the design and construction of a concrete 3D-printed, post-tensioned funicular beam prototype and the experimental test results of subjecting the beam to four-point bending. The beam is designed as a combined compression and tension funicular system with minimized mass and optimized reinforcement. His study establishes a foundational basis that will be used to further develop and enhance such structural systems for more sustainable construction practices in the future.

We're excited to announce that Weike Qu will be the speaker at VCD's October 3rd technical talk! The talk starts 6:00 at the Concept Lab, in Fast + Epp's Vancouver office.

Weike is a structural engineer turned developer and the co-founder of Stride, a modern technical documentation and calculation software. Having worked in both worlds, Weike has seen similarities between code in software development, and calculations in engineering, but big difference in tools for developers and structural engineers.

In his talk, Weike will look at some of the key philosophies that drive the development of Stride and how these concepts can help the engineering design process at any company, including:
-> Why plain text and hand calcs matter
-> Reviews in discrete chunks
-> Calcs at the heart of projects, and an open api platform to bring things together

We’re excited to announce that the speaker for Technical Session 1.8 on September 5th will be Dr. Juney Lee, an Assistant Professor of Architecture at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, USA. Dr. Lee will present previous work from the Block Research Group at ETH Zurich, Lightweight Cable-net and Fabric Formwork System for the HiLo Unit at NEST in Dübendorf, Switzerland. HiLo demonstrates how High (Hi) performance can be achieved with Low (Lo) embodied and operational emissions by combining lightweight concrete structures with novel digital fabrication methods.

This event takes place at Fast + Epp’s Concept Lab, or online at at: https://www.twitch.tv/vcdtalks. Doors open at 5:30, and the talk starts at 6:00. Drinks and food will be provided.

We’re excited to announce that the speaker for Technical Session 1.7 will be Kai Zhu, the Design Automation Manager at Intelligent City! Intelligent City is a housing technology startup focused on robotically manufactured, mass timber, mid-rise construction. In this session, Kai will talk about the intersection of computational design, industrialized construction and urban-housing as a product. This will include discussion points on the value of Open Source, product vs project approach and the benefits of vertical integration.

Sometimes it’s too nice out to be inside - join us in our Summer Social at Mahony's Tavern in False Creek!

VCD is excited to announce the June technical session will be a special event! It will take place on June 13th at Perkins+Will’s new Vancouver office and feature two speakers. Join us for presentations from Elton Gjata from Perkins+Will, and Jason Hendrich from HDR. In this session, both speakers will give a broad perspective on how computational design and digital technology is being used in their architecture practices.

The session will be in person and online. For online attendance, a RSVP as required at the following link. A teams invite will be sent out the week of June 10th.

Doors open at 6pm, the talk starts at 6:30, and food and drink will be provided. Access to the office will be restricted past 6:30, so make sure to be on time!

The speaker for Technical Session 1.4 will be Sahar Barzani, the Computational Design Team Lead at StructureCraft.
In this session Sahar will present work she has done on some of StructureCraft’s free-form geometry projects. Sahar will speak about the use of computational design and parametric tools in design and build complex wood structures. She will also talk about how computational design can be leveraged in the early stage of design to creating fabrication data for CNC machines.

In session 1.3, Christian Slotboom will present work done upgrading Fast+Epp’s Bay Design Application to it’s second version. Included will be a review of the structural analysis done by the tool, the tech stack used, how the project was managed, and how key decisions were made. Christian will also speak about how custom software using programing languages like Python is used to help with day to day design work, and give recommendations for people looking to implement software in their organization.

We are excited to announce that Callum Sykes from Structurecraft will be the next speaker for the VCD technical talk on March 7th!
In his talk, Callum will be speaking about an open source plugin he is developing called Crash, which that enables you to make your Rhino models multi-user!

We're excited to announce that Kent Pretorius, the computational design manager at Fast + Epp, will be speaking at the first VCD session of the year! In his talk, "Streamlining Architect-Engineer Collaboration: The Power of Speckle", Kent will show how Speckle and computational design work-flows are used at Fast+Epp on the PNE amphitheater, and Burnaby Lake Overpass.

VCD will host a talk on the first Thursday of each month, and this talk will be February 1st. It will be possible to attend in person or online. To get a meeting invite, please RSVP using the following form: https://lnkd.in/gpBvXYFD

For those coming in person, the talk is hosted at F+E's Concept Lab, with doors will open at 5:30, and the talk starting at 6:00!