VectorWorks Users Rios Clementi Hale and Morris Architects Win ASLA 2006 Professional Awards
Columbia, Maryland (May 23, 2006)--Nemetschek North America is pleased to announce two VectorWorks users have won ASLA 2006 Professional Awards. Los Angeles firm Rios Clementi Hale Studios won an ASLA General Design Award of Honor for its Chess Park Project in the city of Glendale, California. Florida firm Morris Architects won an ASLA Analysis and Planning Award of Honor for its Parque Amazônia, in Belém, Pará, Amazônia, Brazil.
"Our Chess Park project involved a very intensive design phase and some fairly unconventional construction techniques," says Samantha Harris, Chess Park project designer and senior associate at Rios Clementi Hale Studios. "VectorWorks provided the platform that allowed us to freely explore our many design options and easily communicate these ideas to our client, consulting engineers, and fabricators. VectorWorks allows us to use one tool to do many things. With VectorWorks, we can seamlessly and intuitively work back and forth between 3D modeling, presentation drawings, and production drawings. Using VectorWorks, we can easily produce compelling presentation materials without having to move our work into another application for illustration or page layout."
Created as a part of the city of Glendale's efforts to redevelop its downtown core, the 4,500-square-foot Chess Park provides residents, the Glendale Chess Club, and other community organizations with a multi-functional urban pocket park that fosters and celebrates artistry, gamesmanship, intellectual debate, and challenge. The park is located in a previously underused passageway which runs between two retail shops in the Brand Boulevard business district, connecting a city parking structure to the bustling street-front shops, restaurants, and theaters on Brand Boulevard, Glendale's main thoroughfare.
Read more about Chess Park at http://asla.org/awards/2006/06winners/504.html
"Parque Amazônia has been a challenging and inspiring project to work on, and VectorWorks Landmark was instrumental in the success of the project," says Todd McCurdy, Parque Amazônia's design lead and associate principal at Morris Architects. "Each time our project team traveled to the 19,000-acre Amazon Rainforest site, we used VectorWorks Landmark to integrate the GPS data gathered with our concept site plans to help us understand the vast land and verify locations of vital areas. We used VectorWorks Landmark's Digital Terrain Modeler extensively to study landform, slope, drainage, and zone of visual influence. 3D models of key elements were also quickly created as a basis for final presentation sketches. In our 300+ page final presentation book, VectorWorks Landmark drawings were used side-by-side with hand sketches, seamlessly working together to create just the right character for this presentation."
Amazônia, the massive Amazon Rainforest region of South America, is one of the most environmentally significant regions in the world, and its degradation is an ongoing global concern. Parque Amazônia was conceived to create educational and research opportunities to make a positive impact environmentally and financially on the region. The World Tourism Organization (WTO) maintains that the essential component in Ecotourism is the "inherent quality and authenticity of the landscape, wildlife, and the cultural experience." This description follows exactly the design intent of this project, placing emphasis on the landscape first, and ensuring that the total experience is not degraded, but enhanced by the manmade additions. We based Parque Amazônia, on four founding principles of Education, Ecotourism, Sustainability, and Conservation with the ultimate goal of using those principles to heighten global awareness of rainforest issues within the constructs of an ecologically sound, and financially viable ecotourism experience for the Government of the State of Pará.
Read more about Parque Amazônia at http://asla.org/awards/2006/06winners/336.html
About the ASLA
Founded in 1899, ASLA (www.asla.org) is the national professional association for landscape architects, representing more than 15,000 members nationwide. Landscape architecture is a comprehensive discipline of land analysis, planning, design, management, preservation, and rehabilitation. ASLA promotes the landscape architecture profession and advances the practice through advocacy, education, communication, and fellowship.
Nemetschek North America is a wholly-owned subsidiary of European software giant Nemetschek AG. A global leader in design technologies, Nemetschek N.A. has been developing CAD software for the AEC, entertainment, landscape design, and manufacturing fields since 1985. VectorWorks, its flagship product, is one of the world's best-selling cross-platform CAD applications. An all-in-one solution that's easier to learn and use and more cost-effective than most other CAD programs, VectorWorks is ideal for firms that don't have unlimited IT budgets. For more information, visit www.nemetschek.net.
Michelle Ervin
Marketing Manager
Nemetschek North America
7150 Riverwood Drive
Columbia, MD 21046 USA
www.nemetschek.net
410-290-5114, ext. 719
mervin@nemetschek.net
