WHY RHENSO…?

SUMMARY

I would like to tell you why we founded our new company?Rhenso?early 2022 to develop CAD-tools like?#AdaptivePartsEnvironemnt. I will tell you about our journey at Imagine Computation GmbH , growing a sucessfull engineering office for some of the most advanced buildings and about our digital developments. But I will tell you as well the downsides as there is something really wrong in AEC business. You will hear about our opinion on BIM and finally how all this leads to Rhenso .

PART ONE - WHERE WE COME FROM / THE SUCCESS STORY

Most of you know me as an architect specialised in digital technologies. This journey started at the chair?#CAAD?of Prof. Ludger Hovestadt at the?ETH Zürich?where I learned a lot about the potentials of digital technologies in the?#AEC?business. It was all about?#parametric?tools,?#programming, 3D-space, CNC-machines etc. Of course, this was just a glimpse of what is possible but still an eye opener. Plus, I got known to many great people that got my teachers, colleagues, friends, mentors or all at once (Tom Pawlofsky?, Benjamin Dillenburger,?Michele Leidi,?Edyta Augustynowicz,?Philippe Block,?Jakob Przybylo?just to name a few).

After leaving ETH and working at different spots (e.g.?Oliver Fritz) crossed ways with?Martin Manegold?who studied at the?Karlsruher Institut für Technologie (KIT)?and we decided to join forces at?Imagine Computation GmbH. Although we had by far not been the first working as 3D-engineers for?#carpenters,?#fa?ade?manufacturers and that kind of companies (Design-to-Production?paved the way a lot…) we were still one of the very early adopters to bring parametric and coded engineering with?#Rhino3D?at?#fabrication?detail level to the market. And we have been quite successful with it in the past 11 years: we realized projects for our clients such as?Josef Gartner GmbH,?Lindner Group,?SCHINDLER Fassadenl?sungen,?Schneider Fassaden GmbH & Co. KG,?EBENER GmbH - Innovative Fassaden,?Knauf,?POHL Metal Systems GmbH,?ZüBLIN Timber GmbH, designs of?Zaha Hadid Architects,?J. MAYER H. UND PARTNER, ARCHITEKTEN,?Sn?hetta,?UNStudio,?BIG - Bjarke Ingels Group,?Heatherwick Studio,?Eric Parry Architects?and projects for?AUDI AG,?Mercedes-Benz AG,?Google,?Facebook,?DFB?etc.

We worked on some very interesting research projects related to?#3Dprinting?or paper together with?Ulrich Knaack?from the?Technische Universit?t Darmstadt,?Kegelmann Technik GmbH, Rossmanith,?GEFERTEC?H?lscher facades etc.

Lot's of name dropping I know. But we are proud of that and we are in touch with the most skilled people at fabricators and designers to master those challenging projects together which is a great honour as it gave us the chance to learn a lot how this industry is set up and what is still lacking.

And to be honest: it lacks a lot in terms of digitalisation.

So things need to change…

image: project: Fenchurch Avenue 10, London || client:?Josef Gartner GmbH || design:?Eric Parry Architects || copyright:?Simon Kennedy

PART TWO - OUR DIGITAL JOURNEY

How we use digital technologies and how we evolved.

Couple of years ago?#grasshopper?and?#scripting?was still kind of new and many of the other CAD-applications did not yet have visual programming or other ways on automating things. Parametric processes were mainly used for designing shapes and?Patrik Schumacher?exclaimed 2008?#Parametricism?in his Parametricist Manifesto as a new architectural style.

Although many of the projects have fancy shaped designs our goal at Imagine Computation was always to use scripting, coding, parametric systems based on?Robert McNeel and Associates?#rhino3d?etc. to improve workflows and results. We strongly believed that digitalisation will help to make better designs and better buildings. There are endless ways on improving built wnvironment with digital means but our specific focus was on the interface between design and fabrication. We were thrilled on improving and?#automating?our own?#workflows?to help bringing designs into built reality by modelling every part down to the last screw in detail level suitable for?#CNC-#fabrication. Our claim was never to be faster or cheaper than other offices modelling every single part “by hand” with off-the-shelf?#CAD-#tools. Our claim was that our results are more accurate and did have less mistakes:

computers and programmed tools are just way better in repeating routines and tasks than any human ever could be.

Of course, using parametric engineering is quite common nowadays and you can see it everywhere in projects and at universities, back then it was not.

An example for this is our project?#NEO?which we did for?SCHINDLER Fassadenl?sungen?: 3.800 sqm sheet metal cladding consisting of 15.000 parts of which there were 10.000 unique sheets. At the end of the clients report told there were 7 sheets wrong which are 0.05%. Nobody ever took the effort to find out why these 7 sheets were wrong (3D-model, fabrication, installation...?) as 0.05% error rate is incredibly low within?#AEC?industry where 10-30% error rate is common. This amazing result is not based solely on us as you always need great partners to achieve something like this.?SCHINDLER Fassadenl?sungen?is one of the most innovative and forward thinking facade businesses I know and especially thanks to?Martin Drexler?&?Michael Schindler?for their open minded and solution oriented approach and their trust in us.

Sounds all like a success story? It is. But there is a downside as well.

image: project: NEO Baumkirchen, Munich || client:?SCHINDLER Fassadenl?sungen || design:?UNStudio || copyright:?Imagine Computation GmbH

PART THREE - THE DOWNSIDES

The problems and downsides we encountered during our journey were based on two developments that happened in parallel:

1. EXTERNAL

More and more projects require?#bim. At first, we were very happy about this?#development?as a good?#3D-design was not just a nice-to-have but required. We got 3D-models by the?#architects?and other involved companies so we had better input for our own?#design. 3D models are used to solve most occurring problems already during design stage instead of?#onsite. This is a really great achievment for the client as the quality of the built result rises.

Problem is that estimated hours for design might double, triple or even more because of coordination. It is impossible to estimate how much work will be needed for coordination. So how to make a proper estimation for placing an offer?

Of course, it was impossible to estimate such conflicts in previous times as well. But as long as stuff was solved onsite everybody tried to limit own efforts, blame others, hide stuff and client got in the end a less quality result without even knowing.

So, of course it is good that hiding issues, blaming others etc. got more difficult or close to impossible thanks to?#BIM. But having same money for way more work is especially for external designers like us a huge problem.

1. INTERNAL

At the beginning it was more or less?Martin Manegold?and myself doing everything - it was a very slim and?#lean?approach.

But as projects grew so did our office and things started getting complicated…. The tools we needed to develop to handle large projects got bigger and more complex. Digital development and work were less about improving workflows but more about how to organize and handle large amounts of data and to cooperate within a team and a BIM environment. The initial concept to develop digital automated workflows to deliver better and more accurate results got somehow out of balance as we spent more and more time on developing tools for?#organizing?#data?and less on?#automating?#workflows.

Currently we are finalizing our project?Google?HQ at?#KingsCross?in?#London?(client?Josef Gartner GmbH) which we had been working on for the past 4 years. 27 people have spent approx. 43.000 hours within?Imagine Computation GmbH?with that project, we modelled the entire east and north fa?ade with approx. 12.500sqm in size, 850.000 parts (25.000 unique types), grouped in 25.000 assemblies, all stored in 950.000 files needing approx. 2.700 GB.

Guess what? We would have never estimated these numbers four years ago.

This and other projects that size started the process that something needs to change. For us and our business, the digital tools we are working with and the AEC industry in general…

image: project: Google HQ, London || client:?Josef Gartner GmbH || design:?BIG - Bjarke Ingels Group?/?Heatherwick Studio || copyright:?BIG/Heatherwick Studio

PART FOUR - THE BEGINNING OF RHENSO

As said?#AEC-industry still lacks?#digitalisation. There are still many people in this business think using?#CAD?instead of pen and PDF instead of paper is?#digital?#workflow.

There are many?#startups?now trying to change things:?#PropTech,?#ConTech?and?#Greentech?etc. trying to bring a real change to the industry. improving toolsets dealing with?#finances,?#sustainability,?#robotic?#fabrication, material platforms, project and?#task?management,?#AR/?#VR,?#collaboration?etc. So many things going on, wow!

But what I really miss in this hole development are real innovations and new thoughts for design tools and CAD.

So if you think now: What about?#BIM? This is progress for design tools, right?

But is it really? I have more the feeling it is always about?#data?#integration?and having?#CDEs?and all that stuff. We need this sure but there must be more.

Do we really just wanna wait until CAD-suppliers will deliver us great tools to work with? How many open letters to?#Autodesk?by architects around the world will be needed until they will improve their tools? Just recently Autodesk pretty much told us what the future will be: A more or less closed cloud-based ecosystem named?#Forma?which will be even more a one-fits-all solution.

And will it ever happen? Or will it be forgotten like the other projects 2016: Quantum and 2019 Plasma?

Let’s jump back to our start 11 years ago: As we could?#script,?#code?and use?#grasshopper?we were able to develop our own tools for the very special jobs we had as there was no?#tools?on the market being able to help us.

Because CAD-suppliers simply can never deliver solutions to make every user happy. There are as many unique workflows and usecases as users out there. It is impossible and not feasible to develop tools for every purpose.

And that is why we started?Rhenso:

We believe CAD users deserve better CAD-tools.

We believe CAD users know best which tools they need and how the tools should look like.

We envision a work environment where CAD-suppliers host strong and robust CAD-systems with?#openAPI?with a huge?#ecosystem?of smaller and larger tools developed users for users.

Our mission is to?#empower?users to develop their own tools and share them with others.

#AdaptivePartsEnvironment?will be the first step in this journey. It is like dynamic blocks just?better. You can bake any GH-definition into an adaptive part that can be shared and has an easy UI. We will keep on extending this?#technology?to make this concept more powerful every day.

Help us make this?#vision?come true so nobody needs to have dumb repetitive CAD-jobs any more but can profit of the knowledge of the crowd with great tools for CAD design!