Longform Editorial
Autodesk hired me to write a chapter for a hardcover book titled The Future of Making.
My chapter’s topic was LiDAR, which is similar to sonar or radar but reliant on lasers, and therefore more precise. A builder of breathtaking bamboo homes in Bali was using LiDAR to help create architectural drawings post-construction so they could be more efficient with future builds.
I interviewed people across three continents for this project. It was extremely fun.
The Future of Making
The book is out of print but still listed on Amazon.
My chapter, called “Modeling Paradise,” can be downloaded here. And I’ve included some quotes below.
The homes in Green Village are made almost entirely of bamboo. While this makes Green Village one of the more unique and sustainable communities in the world, it also poses challenges to its builders and architects.
They looked around at the sweeping bamboo curves and wildly complex geometry and quickly realized how complicated their work there was going to be.
“When I saw Brett’s eyeballs, and the look of terror,” says Hurley, “it validated the fear that I was having. We had two weeks on the ground.”
The team got to work.
A couple of weeks later, when they were finally finished, the sheer amount of data they had accumulated was staggering.
Hurley and his team are now working with those digital models to develop new simulations of the structures to test their resiliency and integrity under various types of natural duress.
“I do so many presentations to industry, talking about the virtues of the digital world, and I’m a deep believer,” Casson says. “But Bali made me really assess what craftsmanship means. It had a profound impact on me.”
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