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AEC Hackathon – Zurich Edition 2025

It's a wrap!

On the first February weekend in 2025, we could again welcome an amazing crowd of around 200 people in Zurich / Winterthur at the ZHAW Institute of Building Technology and Process – around 100 digital doers actively participated in the Hackathon.

Pictures of the event

Focus Session Wood

This time, the Institute for Digital Construction and Wood Industry from Berner Fachhochschule, led by Prof. Katharina Lindenberg, joined us as Key Partner for the Friday session. In this session, we investigated the potential for code-based collaboration in the wood industry. You can find all the input talks here (please check the timestamps in the description):

Part 1: Digitalisation strategies in the timber industry

  • Wood industry in Switzerland and it's potential for code-based collaboration, K. Lindenberg, BFH
  • Vertically integrated strategies for construction, J. Wiesinger, Gropyus
  • Local collaboration in a fragmented industrial landscape, E. Augustynowicz, BFH & M. Fuhrer, balteschwiler AG
  • Obstacles and opportunities for software providers, M. Brunner, cadwork
  • Panel discussion

Part 2: Organisational challenges at the beginning of the information age

  • From software towards data, M. Drobnik, Herzog de Meuron
  • Fit for purpose: using embodied carbon data effectively, P. Hadjikyriakou, 2050 materials
  • The digital library of the wood industry, H. Schmid, lignum
  • Why ontologies matter, P. Dohmen, qaecy
  • Panel discussion

Hackathon

There were six challenges from our partners. You can find the presentations of the challenges here

  • Challenge 1: ETH Zürich (Team Digital Twin)
  • Challenge 2: Esri (Team R&D Center Zurich)
  • Challenge 3: schaerholzbau ag, Gumpp & Maier GmbH and Berner Fachhochschule BFH
  • Challenge 4: Balteschwiler AG, LIGNOCAM, Cadwork, BORM-INFORMATIK GmbH and Technowood
  • Challenge 5: Implenia (Team Real Estate Products, ZHAW)
  • Challenge 6: SIA_ZI, Marti AG, Flughafen Wien AG, Burckhardt Architektur, VIE Build GmbH

Tech Talks

On Saturday, we invited a range of experts to give us insights into their work in short 15 min talks.
Please find all the talks here:

Final presentations

It's stunning to see what's possible if a group of motivated individuals from different companies aligns on one goal and truly collaborates on a weekend. The degree of self organisation, the quality of the prototypes and the tools that are available today is nothing else than amazing 🚀.

Everyone who participated in the Hack throughout the weekend can consider himself / herself a #winner. 13 teams presented their work. Please find all the presentation here (first part) and here (second part) (videos come with timestamps).

Six teams got a special recognition from the jury members Ursula Frick (Design to Production), Alar Jost (beyond BIM) and Ronny Standtke (BFH):

Best Overall Project:
👉 Team "Connection found" AND Team "Find the Connection"
👩🏻‍💻 Link to repo on Github from "Connection Found"

Best Hack for Humans:
👉 Team "Data Blocks"

Best Mash Up Project:
👉 Team "ifc_data_bus"
👩🏻‍💻 Link to repo on Github

Best Startup Potential:
👉 Team "projects talking"

Best Solves A Big Problem:
👉 Team "Bridge_IT"
👩🏻‍💻 Link to repo on Github

Further project repos:
👩🏻‍💻 Team Voxel
👩🏻‍💻 Team Smart Search

Congratulations again to all our winners!

Final words

Thank you one more time for participating in this event. Everyone who made his / her way to Winterthur made this weekend a special experience and the orga team is still blown away from the happiness we could see in all the faces. Let's keep pushing the industry since there is so much potential out there for our creative energy to make our built world a better place!!!

And last but not least: A big THANK YOU to our partners who made this event possible – without your trust and support, we could not create this platform to bring so many energetic digital doers together for this exciting weekend!

AEC Hackathon - Zurich Edition 2025 partners

Links

Pictures of the event