The 2009 SmartGeometry Conference was held at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco from 25 March to April 1. The conference focused around the use of Bentley’s GenerativeComponents associative and parametric design software. The event included a 2 day training course, a four day workshop to construct individual projects, a one-day alumni summit where GC practitioners got to present their work. The final day was a public seminar held at the Intercontinental Hotel (for a review of the seminar take a look at the AECbytes article).
Around 80 delegates (including over 15 from Australia) from practice and academia attended the conference — a little down from previous years but still a good turnout bearing in mind the GFC. Matthew and I were there representing BVN and I’m pleased to say we went ok; we both had interesting(ish) projects and we both achieved an outcome (of sorts). I think it is the most progress we (BVN) have made using GC to date.
Conference days went from 8:30 or 9:00am to usually after 7:00pm, although many attendees stayed back much later voluntarily to work on their projects. At the end of the week the tutors (and in particular Ben Doherty) were looking mighty haggard from all of the late nights. My worst night saw me getting to bed just after 6:30am, and sleeping through the 9:00am start. It was worth it however as Ben made a brief reference to my project during the public seminar.
The full schedule limited any opportunities for sightseeing. I made some time to take photos out the hotel window and of the hotel lobby, and managed to get out briefly one evening to snap as much as I could. I needed to get a photo of a dog, a cat and a rat, so how lucky was I with photo 5 below?
Fortunately Matthew and I had a few hours before our flight home on our final day, so we cabbed it to Golden Gate Park to photograph the de Young Museum (Herzog & de Meuron Architekten) and the California Academy of Sciences (Renzo Piano). We finished up back near the hotel giving me a chance to snap pictures of SF Moma (Mario Botta) and some random shots around the CBD.
