AECtech 2023 Seattle | Hackathon

A huge thank you to everyone who made the AECtech 2023 Seattle Hackathon an amazing event!

On June 24-25, LMN Architects hosted the second AECtech event in Seattle. This years event featured a series of light masterclasses and a full Hackathon at LMN’s incredible new Shop Space in downtown Seattle. This was the first AECtech Hackathon held in a common space in over 5 years which brought an incredible energy to the day.

 

LMN Architects, The Shop

Masterclasses

The event kicked off on Friday morning with a series of Masterclasses hosted by LMN Architects and CORE studio which brought together participants from the local Seattle AEC community to learn about new workflows spanning multiple disciplines.

Urban Lenses

Unveiling the Unseen through Data-Driven Urban Exploration

Hosted by LMN Architects

This introductory-level workshop provided an alternative perspective on urban analysis. Participants uncovered and mapped unseen data, offering a new lens to view and understand cities. Central to this process was a unique approach that utilizes tools like Google Maps API, QGIS, Rhino, and Grasshopper. These tools translate complex urban data into comprehensible, actionable information, setting the stage for informed design decisions. As the course navigated through data, design, and discussion, participants concentrated on the distinct urban landscape of Seattle. Furthermore, this class fostered an open dialogue about the technical aspects of these tools and their potential influence on urban design.

Extend Grasshopper with Web APIs

An in depth introduction to Swiftlet

Hosted by Thornton Tomasetti | CORE studio

This workshop took a look at Swiftlet, a Grasshopper plugin that lets you make web requests directly from your GH definition. Utilizing web services and external APIs opened up unique opportunities for data scraping, cloud computing, and live data processing within your favorite modeling software. Swiftlet provides a streamlined workflow for sending GET, POST, DELETE, PUT, and PATCH requests to any API endpoint. It gave participants advanced control over request headers, query params, web authentication, and parsing JSON. The class also explored how this capacity can be extended further by hosting Grasshopper definition on cloud computing platforms and integrating machine learning models into a microservice approach to AEC design.

Making Design Accessible

Cloud Modeling in ShapeDiver & Data Visualization in Ellipse

Hosted by Thornton Tomasetti | CORE studio

This workshop explored opening up parametric modeling and data project visualization to a larger team and audience through the power of cloud-hosted platforms. Participants learned the simple steps required to prepare a grasshopper file for use on the web through the ShapeDiver platform. The class then explored how to build audience-tailored experiences in the Shape Diver web application. Building on these data-rich design models, participants were then introduced to Ellipse, a new AEC data studio. The course wrapped up with a walkthrough of how to quickly build project sites in Ellipse that bring images, drawings, models, and data together to tell the story of a project backed by data.

AEC Happy Hour

Friday evening began with a series of presentation by CORE studio, NBBJ, Mithun, and LMN Architects on evolving work culture, innovations in design processes, and technological transformations both in projects and on the horizon. Following the presentations, McNeel hosted a happy hour where communities came together over a few rounds of drinks and pool.

Mithun | History of CoLab

NBBJ | Technology in the design process

Hackathon

Over the course of 24 hours over 40+ hackers, pitched a record 16 concepts and 6 teams competed for the Best Overall, Most Open Source, and Most Collaborative hackathon projects. This event brought together a fantastic mix of engineers and architects from local firms with software developers and some recent graduates to create a diverse set of teams who each proposed and developed a unique set of projects. We were once again joined by the next generation of hackers! This time an outstanding team from the Seattle Christian School High School Robotics Program earned an honorable mention.

Hackathon Winners

BEST OVERALL HACK

GhPT

This project sets out to find a way to leverage the power of ChatGPT to create Grasshopper definitions.

Team: Callum Sykes, StructureCraft / Jo Kamm, Dimensional Innovations / Sergey Pigach, CORE studio / Ryan Erbert / Quoc Dang

BEST COLLABORATIVE HACK

Carbon Hacker

Carbon Hacker is a web tool for home/building owners and designers to understand the current and future operational carbon emissions of their existing or proposed buildings due to their grid electricity and on-site fossil fuel usage, as well as the impact of PV on the net emissions.

Team: Sishe Jeff Chin, ZGF Architects / Margarita Ganeva, Carrier Johnson + CULTURE / Heinrich Hoza / Daniel Mayall, ZGF Architects / Pawel Sapiecha, Olson Kundig / Chris Savage, LMN / Fendy Setiawan, Degenkolb Engineers / Chuou Zhang, ZGF Architects

BEST OPEN SOURCE HACK

Likeable

Likeable is your architectural wingman, showcasing designs one-by-one for focused decisions and swipes. Through a gamified interface, you gain valuable insights from colleagues’ quick swipes, steering you towards your project’s perfect design match.

Team: Shariful Alam / Kristen Forward, NBBJ / Atharva Ranade, NBBJ / FX Wood / Weston Norwood

HACKATHON Projects

Beyond QWERTY | HONORABLE MENTION

Making a Keyboard Layout that is Optimized for Python
Team: Terry Liu / Caden Rowse / Owen Susanto / Scott Dea

Seismic Coefficient Mapper

Seismic coefficient mapper
Team: Nathan Xu, Magnusson Klemencic Associates / Parth Korde, Thornton Tomasetti / Sophie Moore, CORE studio / Andres Roncal, CORE studio

Fire Hazard Simulator

A real time interactive fire hazard map simulator utilizing Google Map API, Weather Info, and Historical Fire Data
Team: Boris Plotnikov / Michael Weismann / Jean-Luc Jackson / Srikrishnan Madhavan, Thornton Tomasetti / Bianca Casem, Degenkolb Engineers

Judges

Hackathon entries were judged by an outstanding panel of innovation drivers

Special Thanks

Thank you to the following who made the event possible and a great experience.

LMN Architects | Event Host & Coordination

McNeel | Happy Hour & Promotion

ZGF Architects | Event Sponsor

Special thanks to Scott Crawford and Stephen Van Dyke from LMN for coordination and making the event possible.

 
CORE studio