How Zaha Hadid Architects Build the Future With Next-Gen Toolkits on OpenUSD

Currently, over 20 architects are using extensions developed with Omniverse at ZHA, and they plan to expand up to 50 users. "Omniverse fits well with our mesh-based, high-fidelity, high performance paradigm," said Shajay. "We believe that USD and Omniverse are setting a new standard, like a GitHub for architectural design development."

The time saved on data prep for reviews is important, as it gives the team more time to iterate. They purposely iterate as much as they can, taking an edit-and-observe approach to make sure good design isn't left to chance. Often the team will create hundreds of different design options while trying to meet tight deadlines to deliver projects quickly.

Preparing the 3D files for rendering was also time-consuming because the team sends their designs to third-party rendering companies. Vishu Bhooshan, lead designer in the Computation and Design Research group at Zaha Hadid Architects, adds, “We really need things to be super high performance, and now with Omniverse, we don’t have to wait 11 hours for files to import — we can send to our partners instantly.”

He says one of the benefits that USD will soon enable is that their teams can start prepping for rendering without needing to wait for all the 3D data to be aggregated.

"Once we have a unified repository and everyone is trained on this workflow, we'll start preparing render files in parallel to design teams that are reiterating on designs — this brings a lot of potential for nondisruptive, parallel workflows," said Vishu. “And when we build the asset repository, we'll look to integrate that with 3D machine learning and AI that NVIDIA is pioneering, such as text-to-3D.”

Zaha Hadid Architects Computation and Design Group (ZHA CODE) is a research group that taps into cutting-edge parametric design software and technologies to create aesthetically stunning and high-performance architectural designs with the use of computer graphics, digital design, and robotic construction.

The team harnesses the power of computation to augment human intuition, allowing them to improve design speed, data assimilation, and discover new possibilities. Their bespoke computation framework, the Spatial Technology Stack (STS), enables the synthesis of optimized geometry and the creation of immersive spatial experiences.

ZHA CODE started developing on Omniverse. The team began to build their own custom extensions to connect existing tools.

Over the course of 10 months, they've built over 10 extensions to build out their production pipeline. Shajay explains their approach to developing these new tools as a way to transform and optimize processes, and solve problems for their industry—instead of the temporary workarounds and unscalable hacks they have done before.

For example, ZHA CODE has continuously experimented with robotic hot-wire cutting, a method that enables manufacturing of complex, doubly curved concrete molds. The process, which involves robotic arms equipped with hot-wire cutters and large foam blocks, helps produce mold segments in a fraction of the time. To enhance training of the robot, ZHA built a plugin extension that would simulate the robotic wire cutter.

The team designed a digital twin of the robot to train, visualize, and teach it what to do—and they were able to accomplish all this virtually without needing to interact with the robot physically. By generating AI-driven simulation inside Omniverse, the designers can better visualize how the robot will cut through the 3D blocks, and which forms and shapes the 3D blocks will take.

The model for sculpting the form is trained and optimized in a virtual environment, and then the model is bridged to a physical robot where it executes the sculpting it's been trained to do. This enables groundbreaking fabrication techniques to further push their well-recognized design style. The team liked the extension so much, they decided to open-source it via GitHub for others to use.

Another example is a recent stadium project in China that ZHA worked on. The stadium had thousands of roof panels as part of its design, and the team needed to convert non-planar panels to planar. They created a custom visualization tool to identify non-planar panels, and used proprietary software to switch them to planar—this wouldn’t have been possible to do manually.

The ZHA team also created a data visualization extension that enables them to see additional details and information related to the geometry in their designs. Geometry often changes throughout the stages of a project, so by capturing custom data visualization, the ZHA team can gain deeper insights into the geometry of the designs, and iterate or optimize based on the analysis that's generated in Omniverse.

"Because Omniverse supports Python, it was very easy to write some of these extensions, as most of the core functionality of what we want to do with our geometry, we already have it in our existing framework," said Vishu. “On the technical side, we had to learn how to use the API for USD files. But we already had experience of using USD with C++, so it was easier to switch over.”

Zaha Hadid Architects will continue developing new tools around automation and asset management, and with an increasing number of academic institutions embracing new technologies and standards like USD, the company envisions the next wave of students will be trained on pioneering technologies that can solve some of the industries’ biggest problems.