Ganapathy Mahalingam, professor of architecture, has been recognized with a Special Mention Award at the fifth annual Architizer A+Awards, which is a highly prestigious international juried awards competition in the fields of architecture and design.
Mahalingam was honored in the apps and digital tools category for his Auditorium Design System app. There were entries from more than 100 countries around the world.
“The Special Mention distinction is awarded to work entered that exhibits remarkable achievement and that scored in the top 15 percent of entrants – this is an outstanding accomplishment for you and your team,” wrote Marc Kushner, CEO of Architizer. “We are truly honored to honor you.”
Mahalingam’s Auditorium Design System is a professional software tool for architects to generate the initial spatial form of a proscenium-type auditorium based on programmatic and acoustical parameters. The software optimizes the various parameters and generates a 3D spatial form of the auditorium, which can be exported as a 3D DXF file. The file can be imported into 3D CAD, BIM and modeling software such as AutoCAD, Sketchup, Revit and formZ. The file also can be imported into acoustical simulation software such as EASE or ODEON to perform acoustical simulations with the spatial design.
According to Mahalingam, the spatial form generated is an initial 3D wireframe in actual dimensions to be used in 3D modeling or BIM software for design development. The tool is intended for busy principal and project architects, who want to generate candidate solutions and delegate the design development to a design team. The input parameters have been constrained to a range of values that have been established in auditorium design practice as being optimal, so the candidate solution is already optimized for realistic conditions.
“This award acknowledges that faculty from the Department of Architecture and Landscape Architecture at NDSU are producing works that are among the best on a global stage. Such work serves to inspire the students we teach at NDSU and help them develop goals to pursue in their own careers,” said Mahalingam.
Architizer is the largest online architecture database, where architects can search more than $4 trillion in projects from 40,000 architectural firms worldwide.
The Architizer A+Awards is the largest awards program celebrating the year’s best architecture and products. The A+Awards are bigger than just the architectural community. Entries are judged by more than 300 luminaries and thought leaders from fields as diverse as fashion, publishing, product design, real estate development, and technology.
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