International teams selected in revolutionary 'virtual' design contest

The winners of a 48-hour virtual design competition, involving teams from around the world collaborating to produce designs for a multi use development in London, have been announced.

The aim of the Build London Live event was to demonstrate how technology and collaborative working can be used to revolutionise the way buildings are designed.

Teams from UK companies include Davis Langdon and Buro Happold who were vying against contingents from Korea, Japan, Chile, the US and Norway.

The competition was based on a site close to the former Millennium Dome and design teams were asked to come up with an outline proposal for a significant mixed use.

Those taking part in the competition – and over 300 observers – used Asite's online collaboration platform to bring the designs together and watch the buildings take shape.

Winners of the following categories were:

  • Overall winner of Build London Live: Team 7, The BIM Vikings.
  • Best Design Award: Team BIM Products won because they made the best use of the site and surrounding context.
  • Best collaboration Award: Team Seoul BIM Forum won the for overcoming a steep learning curve to achieve impressive collaboration from Asia to Europe over the course of 48 hours.
  • Judges Discretionary award: Team BIM Japan won for achieving consistently high quality.
  • Judges Discretionary Award: Team Southern Axis won for excellent results achieved from a very small team.
  • Continuous Publication Award: Team Food for Thot won for the use of the full range of collaboration systems.
  • Use of Interoperability Award: Team Omega won for using SmartCODEs for regulation checking.
  • Multi-disciplinary Design and Constructability Award: Team BIM Vikings won for the wide range of organisations, disciplines, and applications used plus the massive use of BuildingSMART standards.