AJ100 Best Use of Technology 2021 finalists revealed

The high-tech tools by Bryden Wood and Zaha Hadid Architects repectively have been named on the four-strong shortlist alongside business innovations by HLM and Chetwoods.

HLM has developed a Thoughtful Design Toolkit containing a suite of digital apps allowing designers and commissioning clients to ‘define, develop and assess their building projects in an evidence-based way’.

Meanwhile Chetwoods has devised a ‘data-centric’ system which combines BIM and VR with digital monitoring to ‘capture engagement with our designs’ in a bid to ‘understand the human emotional responses’ to completed buildings.

The category’s judges are Alice Britton, founding director of Squint/Opera, Maria Smith, a director at Buro Happold, Indy Johar of Architecture 00 and creative consultant and author Mike Fairbrass.

Last year the award was won by HBERT, an embodied and whole-life carbon measurement tool developed by Hawkins\Brown with UCL.

The tool, a Revit plug-in, uses free data from an Inventory of Carbon and Energy database, measuring the volume of all materials identified in the Revit model. Embodied carbon data is then applied to that material, broken down into life-cycle stages (product, construction, use stage and end-of-life) in line with British Standards.

Shortlist

• Configurator platform on the Roatan Island project, Honduras, by Zaha Hadid Architects (with AKT II and Hilson Moran)
• SPACED (Smart Planning + Automation for Cycling: Engineering to Delivery) by Bryden Wood
• Thoughtful Design Toolkit by HLM Architects
• WORKS digital strategy by Chetwoods