Division1 Architects has received a 2012 residential architect Design Award (RADA) for its vision behind The Lacey, a high-end, 26-unit condominium building it designed for Washington, D.C.’s thriving U Street corridor. The project received a RADA Merit Award in the Multifamily Housing category and was one of 36 winning designs honored from among nearly 800 entries to this annual design competition.

Photo courtesy of © Debi Fox Photography

The Lacey sits on the former parking lot of the legendary soul-food restaurant, the Florida Avenue Grill, which survived the 1960s race riots, as well as neighborhood decline and a recent rebirth. To honor this legacy, the owner sought something different from the brick-and-mortar tenant buildings of the past.

“The owner wanted this to be a forward-looking landmark—something that engaged the street,” said Ali Reza Honarkar, who founded Division1 Architects in 1994. “We therefore had to come up with a building that had its own personality and stood on its own—all while showing respect to the neighborhood and its history. The Lacey was meant to make a statement, and I think that is exactly what makes it work.”

Praised by RADA jury members for its transparency and industrial elegance, The Lacey’s concrete walls, solid steel framework and transparent glass panels combine to create an intriguing 24,000-square-foot, four-story structure complete with an interior atrium in which hallways seem to float unsuspended. The inside combines form and function. Units embrace open plan design, providing the freedom and flexibility to facilitate better living through architecture.

During the design and planning phases of the project, Division1 used Vectorworks Architect with Renderworks to create concept studies and presentation boards. Additionally, all contract documents, including plans, elevations, sections, and details, were created with Vectorworks software.

Read more about The Lacey and the other winning projects in residential architect magazine’s May/June 2012 issue or on its website.

Looking for a way to simulate crowd movement and analyze pedestrian flows through your designs? Then you’ll be happy to learn that Nemetschek Vectorworks is announcing exactly this type of tool at The AIA 2012 National Convention and Design Expo, which takes place May 17-19 at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C.

SimTread is a pedestrian simulation software tool that works with Vectorworks software to simulate and verify how crowds move through buildings and municipal designs. It was developed by A&A Co. Ltd., the Vectorworks distributor in Japan, in partnership with Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan, and Takenaka Corporation.

Users gain several benefits when adding SimTread to their lineup of planning and design tools, including data and visualizations to:

• Analyze how people move through a design
• Verify a design’s occupant circulation
• Prevent congestion caused by commuters at transportation terminals
• Assist with municipal planning and traffic signal placement by simulating pedestrian movement along sidewalks
• Help with evaluating evacuation planning processes

Stop by the Nemetschek Vectorworks booth, #2009, at the AIA Convention for a demonstration of SimTread and other solutions such as a cloud-based BIM collaboration tool, an augmented reality solution, and Vectorworks Cloud Services. The booth will also host several guest presentations featuring architects from François Lévy Architect, Division1 Architects, The M Group and more.  You can preview a complete schedule of events on the Nemetschek Vectorworks Facebook page.

To read the full press release, click here.

Tony Award winning lighting designer Beverly Emmons has lit up stages for Broadway and Off-Broadway shows, regional theater, dance, opera, and even a Disney World show. Her philosophy is simple. “I like to call lighting design a secondary art form,” she says. “We support and reveal the work that somebody else is making. What’s important is the work on the stage—the dancers, the actors, the vision of the director, playwright, choreographer and how this play or this dance should be seen. It is the work that is important and our role is to reveal and reinforce it. It’s an honor to be useful in that area.”

In 1982 the legendary modern dancer and choreographer Martha Graham approached Emmons to light the entire dance company’s repertory. She was honored to carry on the renowned tradition. The company tours many countries across the world moving constantly from theater to theater. In collaboration with the touring lighting supervisor, Judith Daitsman, Emmons uses computer-driven technology to communicate the lighting needs of the company in advance of their arrival. She relies on Vectorworks Spotlight software with Lightwright to manage it all. Whether the company is performing in Tel Aviv, Istanbul, Milan, or Honolulu, the show needs to look the same. Emmons and Daitsman continually adapt the lighting to new theaters, new architecture, new equipment, and new countries’ crews.

Embattled Garden from Martha Graham Dance Company

Modern theatrical lighting has been a growing industry for the past sixty years, and big commercial productions have always kept elaborate documentation in order to maintain long-running shows. Yet until now, these documents, including plots, focus charts, cue sheets, and other information from past shows, have been saved in the designers’ personal storage. Emmons, with the support of several notable lighting designers, conceived and created two very important efforts to digitally archive historic documents for future generations of lighting designers and students of lighting design. To preserve and make accessible the lighting documents for many shows from Broadway and beyond, she is building the Theatrical Lighting Database, an arm of the New York Public Library, and The Lighting Archive.

To read the full profile on Beverly Emmons, please visit the Success Stories section of our website.

Beginning today, Vectorworks Service Select members in the UK, Ireland, Denmark, Portugal, and Spain can take advantage of the new Vectorworks Cloud Services to access and share files and make design decisions from any location.

“We are very pleased to offer the benefits of cloud computing directly to our UK customers through Vectorworks Cloud Services,” said Martyn Horne, product development manager at Computers Unlimited, the Vectorworks distributor for the United Kingdom and Ireland. “Coupled with the new mobile app, Vectorworks Nomad, this capability adds a very useful and new dimension to the Vectorworks workflow and product portfolio.”

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Vectorworks Cloud Services provides greater convenience, collaboration, and freedom for users to access their designs from any location, at any time. It is available exclusively for members of the company’s software subscription program, Vectorworks Service Select, and is initially offered as a free service.

“Vectorworks Cloud Services will be a nice opportunity for Danish Vectorworks users,” said John Hansen of MikroGraf, who represents Vectorworks in Denmark. “Smaller firms, in particular, will benefit from the backup and presentation features of this inventive service.”

To read the full press release, please click here.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Morris Architects | MorrisTerra has a long tradition of being environmentally sensitive, economically sustainable, and financially responsible. This project was no different. Not only did the firms involved need to restore the Cypress Gardens site, which housed Florida’s first commercial amusement park, but it also wanted to preserve and maintain the site’s natural character and beauty—all while accommodating LEGOLAND Florida’s planned rides and attractions. Achieving this goal meant keeping as many trees and plants in their original locations as possible and relocating others amid construction.

From concept through construction, the solution was Vectorworks Landmark software.

“Early in the design process, when some of the LEGOLAND people were coming to the office for a workshop, we plotted the Masterplan out at 6′ x 20′ to cover the conference room table, so everyone could mark on it,” says Todd McCurdy, FASLA, Principal and Director of Landscape Architecture and Planning at Morris Architects | MorrisTerra. “It worked great!”

McCurdy adds that the Stake tool in the Landmark product aided in their intelligent site planning process.

“We used Landmark to do our layout of the park, including locating LEGO models, and all the trees that we moved and saved,” adds McCurdy. “In Miniland, the part of the park where there are miniature versions of Washington D.C., New York, and other places, we used Landmark to provide coordinate geometry for every LEGO building, light pole, roads and walks. It was like laying out a city, but at a tiny scale—and more colorful.”

For the LEGOLAND Florida project, Morris Architects | MorrisTerra was a Design-Build partner with PCL Construction Services, Inc. (PCL), and the firm shared landscape architecture duties with ValleyCrest.

Peter Walker, FASLA, has become a legend in his own time. One of the leading landscape architects in the Modernist movement, Walker was chosen to help design and build the National 9/11 Memorial in New York City, and his list of accolades continues to expand.

All in all, he has received over 70 design awards in the regional, national, and international spheres, including the coveted Cooper Hewitt National Design Award, the Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe Award from the International Federation of Landscape Architects, the Honor Award of the American Institute of Architects, Harvard’s Centennial Medal, the University of Virginia’s Thomas Jefferson Medal in Architecture, and the American Society of Landscape Architects Medal.

The National 9/11 Memorial opened on September 11, 2011. Several years earlier, Walker had been brought in by the jury overseeing the competition to work with architect Michael Arad to help Arad realize his vision for the Memorial—two large fountain-lined voids marking the footprints of the fallen Twin Towers and carrying the names of those lost in the 9/11 attacks and in the 1993 bombing attack on the World Trade Center. Walker and his firm, PWP Landscape Architecture, balanced the stoic stone memorial with a lush park to encourage reflection and respite for visitors as well as the inhabitants of Lower Manhattan, one of the densest neighborhoods in the country.

Walker prefers to focus on a few objects and use only a few meaningful materials. “I’m interested in how few things you can use that have multiple interactions, for instance where a group of trees will throw shadow. I’m interested in where people might sit—not just benches, but steps, walls, all of that. I’m always interested in trying to make fewer things do more things. It’s more than an interest in reductiveness—it’s more of an artistic interest,” says Walker. This approach is evident throughout the National 9/11 Memorial.

Walker and his firm used Vectorworks Landmark software to create and model the National 9/11 Memorial, as they do with all of their designs. “We always use Vectorworks on preliminaries. That’s typically the way we work—everyone here has to do that. It’s much more flexible, it’s much more refined than AutoCAD,” notes Walker. Walker commends the three-dimensionality. Since it’s so difficult to draw, the ability to quickly maneuver a design in 3D is tremendously helpful. He appreciates the fact that you can blow up a detail to its actual size in order to see it better.

By shaping a strong tradition of Modernist landscape design in the U.S. and throughout the world, Walker has helped to create a vocabulary that continues to drive design. Through his many notable projects, he has fashioned spaces that commemorate some of the most important moments in history—living monuments that will continue to thrive for years to come.

To read the full profile, please visit the Success Stories page of our website.

Designers in France can now produce accurate energy analysis calculations thanks to a new plug-in for Vectorworks software. Developed by French distributor CESYAM and designed to help users comply with a new thermal regulation, RT-2012, the free plug-in exports Vectorworks-created BIM models to ArchiWIZARD, which is a powerful software suite that lets designers evaluate the impact of their architectural choices on the energy performance of buildings (e.g., heat balance, lighting, solar energy production).

“Being able to quickly evaluate the energy performance of a building – as early as the initial drafting phases – helps to optimize this energy need and to design the best green buildings,” says Thierry Beurey, owner of CESYAM. “It was therefore essential to develop this plug-in.”

The ArchiWIZARD plug-in for the Vectorworks program is available for both Mac and Windows platforms and will be provided with every Vectorworks Architect license in France, starting with the third service pack for Vectorworks 2012 (available since April 2). Future plans include making the plug-in accessible outside France, so stay tuned for updates.

Ready to embark on a journey through the cutting-edge methods and techniques used to develop engaging lighting plots? Ready to take advantage of everything the Vectorworks Spotlight 2012 software has to offer? Then check out our latest training guide, Light Plot Deconstructed for Vectorworks Spotlight, Fourth Edition.

Written by veteran scenic and lighting designer Gregg Hillmar, this companion guide helps readers draft lighting plots more easily. It reflects updates in Vectorworks 2012 software and covers everything from choosing palettes, workspaces, grids and layers, to uncovering the basics of how to import files, save views and place instrumentation.

“The new edition of Light Plot Deconstructed highlights some of the new features in Vectorworks 2012 that improve the lighting designer’s process of drafting the light plot,” says Hillmar. “In addition, reader requests drove the expansion of several topics, including a new section on using viewports to create ‘cardboards’ and other specialized views useful to the theatrical electricians in realizing the plot in the theatre.”

Light Plot Deconstructed is part of Nemetschek Vectorworks’ self-paced tutorials, designed for people who like to learn on their own and at their own pace. Buy your copy today!

To read the full press release, please go here.

Bruce Krempetz, winner of the 2012 Behind the Scenes raffle

It’s been a few weeks since the United States Institute for Theatre Technology (USITT) Annual Conference and Stage Expo, but we want to extend a belated congratulations to Bruce Krempetz, winner of the Behind the Scenes raffle. Krempetz received a professional license of the 2012 version of Vectorworks Spotlight with Renderworks.

Behind the Scenes is a program developed by The ESTA Foundation to provide entertainment technology industry members with grants for emergency situations, such as serious illness, injury, or death. A raffle co-hosted by The ESTA Foundation and the Long Reach Long Riders is held each year at USITT to raise funds for the program.

“We had a fantastic turnout for this year’s raffle and live auction at USITT in Long Beach,” said Rick Rudolph, chair of the Behind the Scenes Committee. “Nemetschek Vectorworks has stepped up each year by donating one of the most sought-after prizes, Spotlight, our raffle grand prize. We are extremely grateful for their ongoing support of the charity.”

Creating 2D plants? Want to learn how to use the Renderworks Camera? This month’s tech tips will show you how.

The first video demonstrates how to use the Plant Line command and the Freehand tool to create quick 2D representations of plants. These two features in Vectorworks software allow you to easily create 2D plants.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

The second video shows how to link a Renderworks camera to a sheet layer viewport.  Linking a Renderworks camera to a viewport gives you greater control over how you present your project.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.