Every project in the Built Environment lives one lifecycle. AECOR names its five chapters — and the green O at its centre is the world all five revolve around. The final letter is the new one: Regeneration closes the line into a loop, because buildings are retrofitted, materials recirculated, and operational data feeds the next generation of design. That loop is exactly what AI makes possible.
Vision, form and human experience — where every lifecycle begins. Urban planning, masterplanning and design intent for the whole Built Environment, not just buildings.
The rationale that makes vision buildable: structures, façades, environmental systems and the computational analysis binding them together.
Realisation — contracting, fabrication, assembly and the digital manufacturing methods that carry a model into the physical world.
The longest chapter: running, sensing and optimising what we build — digital twins, BMS automation and the data a living building generates.
The letter that closes the loop. Retrofit, adaptive reuse, circular materials — and AI learning from the operated building to regenerate the designed one.
Why "Built Environment" and not just AEC? Because governance, urban planning, infrastructure and operation belong in the room too — AECOR widens the audience to everyone who shapes how our civilisation builds.
Until its dissolution in 2019, SmartGeometry was the most influential global community bringing researchers and practitioners together in the digital world of the Built Environment. Nothing has filled that space since — existing platforms each cover a slice, none the whole lifecycle, and AI has changed everything in the meantime.
The benchmark: academia + practice + fabrication in one 3-day event. Its ending left the gap AECOR is built to fill.
Respected platform for digital construction — but delivery-focused, with AI topics largely uncovered.
Architects sharing technology and entrepreneurship — light on engineering, contracting and R&D.
Workshops and hackathons with real energy — but software-bound: what's created stays on screens.
The streams widen the audience across everyone researching, designing, building, operating and regenerating with computational tools — with AI featured as the main driver augmenting or reinventing every stage.
The Global Summit is a 5-day event held in London every second year — four days of live design-and-build workshop, capped by a day of keynotes, presentations, exhibition and the gala awards — preceded by an 8-week remote design period for selected workshop groups. The Seminar is a 1-day format touring multiple cities every year, where design teams pitch for a place at the London workshop. All events are captured in papers, booklets and film, and connected globally through AR/VR, 3D holograms and interactive AI.
Workshop groups — selected via call for proposals and coached for 8 weeks — fabricate, assemble and test a smart adaptive structure over four days, live.
Mission statement, keynote speakers and discussion panels — academia and industry on one stage, opening the showcase day.
Workshop presentations, exhibition of the built outcomes, podcast interviews — capped by the gala awards ceremony.
The Seminar is a single travelling day — mission, keynotes, panels, design-team pitches for the London workshop, digital exhibition and podcast interviews — touring multiple cities every year. Seminar 01: Together, London — April 2027.
The summit's live design-and-build workshop runs on serious local compute and a proven design lineage — three things no other platform combines.
NVIDIA DGX Spark delivers 1 petaFLOP of FP4 AI performance in a desktop form factor — real-time generative design, parametric simulation and AI-augmented fabrication on-site, no cloud dependency. Two stacked units support models up to 200B parameters.
The Al Bahr Towers — the global benchmark for smart adaptive façades, CTBUH Best Innovation 2012 — was authored by the Drees & Sommer IDR leadership now shaping this platform. Its fully documented vision-to-realisation process becomes the workshop's teaching spine, re-augmented with AI.
Beyond flat-screen presentations: 3D holograms, immersive rooms, 3D cinema and extended reality link summit venues and remote groups into one connected, global experience.
* LISTED TECHNOLOGY SUPPLIERS ARE POTENTIAL, NOT CONFIRMED, CONTRIBUTORS.
Global events organiser — coordination, networking, marketing, sales and sponsorships. Their global event, Zak World of Façades, is the world's premier symposium on façade design & engineering.
Global digitalisation expert providing the platform's intellectual content through its Interdisciplinary Design Research (IDR) team — computational design, AI, BIM, digital twins and fabrication automation.
AI technology leader on the platform's technical side — keynote speaking, workshop activities and training, integrating its AECO AI teams, processes and tools across the entire event experience.
Academia, R&D, architecture and engineering design, contracting, IT, product development and real estate — if you shape the Built Environment, there is a seat with your discipline on it.
One day at Together, 88 Wood Street, London — April 2027 — keynotes, panels, design-team pitches and digital exhibition. Then Global Summit 01: five days in London, April 2028, with the live design-and-build workshop and gala awards.
Keynotes, panels and podcast interviews across the four streams.
Form a design team and pitch at the Seminar — then develop it with specialist coaches and build it live at the Summit.
Put your technology, materials and expertise inside the workshop where the industry is watching.
