Implementation

In 2020, while developing a new architectural project in MTDI, Autodesk Revit released its 2021 version with a long-awaited feature: slanted walls. For many, it was just another improvement in the vast BIM ecosystem. For me, it was an entirely new doorway.

Until then, creating slanted walls required awkward and inorganic tricks: masses, in-place families, geometries that didn’t behave as integral parts of the model. But with this new feature, it became possible to define the wall angle directly within a basic wall, with real parametric control. I began applying it immediately.

That first gesture changed the direction of the project. The slanted walls not only brought a more dynamic language, but allowed me to explore a structural and visual slenderness that had previously been difficult to achieve. It was as a new brush.

In India, office buildings often have a significant footprint of around 5,000 square meters, which results in truly imposing volumes. Designing their façades becomes a major challenge, as finding effective volumetric articulations and visually reducing their mass is no easy task.

Therefore, in the conception of this building, the design strategy was to create a dialogue between three volumes, introducing folds in multiple directions so that vertical relationships would become the dominant expression.

The design, conceived in 2020, evolved with this new tool as its conceptual and operational backbone. And although construction was completed in 2024, the core idea was born alongside the tool itself. It wasn’t just a technical shift; it was a new way of thinking about the project, composing the façade, and understanding vertical rhythm.

Today, looking at the finished building, I see not just the completed work, but the process. The tool wasn’t a shortcut, it was a journey. A path where the implementation of a digital feature translated into formal, structural, and aesthetic decisions with real-world impact.

Tool vs Concept

In a context where digital and parametric architecture often presents itself as a solution on its own, it is essential to develop a critical understanding of our tools. Not everything new is automatically applicable or useful. There are environments where advanced technology is used superficially, chasing novelty rather than solving anything and often complicating what should be simplified.

To implement is also to discern. To understand when a tool adds value, and when it doesn’t. To recognize its limits and most importantly, its potential within the specific context where we design. Because a powerful software is meaningless if it doesn’t translate into architecture that is precise, feasible, and meaningful.

AI

Today, with artificial intelligence entering the design field, this dilemma reemerges. Image-generation tools — some capable of great visual beauty — propose spectacular architectural visions that are entirely disconnected from the operational logic of building.

AI can generate utopian, ephemeral, seductive architecture. But we must ask ourselves: how does that translate into a process that takes years to materialize? How many of those images can truly withstand time, technique, and budget?

The risk isn’t the tool itself — it’s using it without criteria. What truly makes architecture is the ability to solve real problems with design intelligence, without losing the poetic soul or technical rigor.

That’s why, beyond innovation, true implementation happens when technology becomes part of a conscious vision — rooted in context and capable of carrying an idea from the screen to concrete reality.

ANKOR - INDIA BANGALORE

Functions: Office

Project phase: master plan, initial concept design, concept design, façade concept design, initial schematic design, schematic design, façade schematic design

Completion: 2025 | Project date: 2020-2023