Computer Aided Design

Architect Ken Shuttleworth was a director at Foster and Partners

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Nominated by architect Ken Shuttleworth.

CAD has revolutionised the way we work and what shapes we can build accurately.

When we built the Hong Kong Shanghai Bank [HSBC Building] back in the 1980s, we built it to +/-40mm. Now with advances in technology, we can build to millimetre accuracy.

We can take our computer model and take it straight to the fabricator. As a result we can be more accurate in specifying what we want. At Swiss Re, we could take advantage of this -  the cladding and steelwork was fabricated so accurately that it was installed without any problems – that wasn't the case at Hong Kong.

In the old days you had to make every element the same size because that was how they were made and that was what was most efficient and economic. Now you can make everything different sizes because of being able to feed CAD information directly to the cutting machine.

Until recently everything was a rectangle, now you can have whatever shape you want and you can design and create prototypes much quicker. We can also draw more accurately – at full scale and in 3D.

Architect Ken Shuttleworth was a director at Foster and Partners where he was responsible for the landmark Hong Kong and Shanghai Headquarters in Hong Kong and the Swiss Re Headquarters in London.  He now heads up his own practice, Make, which was recently responsible for the Aspire sculpture in Nottingham. At 60m, it is the UK's tallest.