Case Study: RapidformRCA and Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates

RapidformRCA is a rapid prototyping bureau based at the Royal College of Art that enables exactly detailed models and prototypes to be created from CAD files in a matter of days. This in turn allows companies and designers in London to get concepts into the real world fast, quite apart from putting a cutting-edge facility at the disposal of RCA students and graduates.

Product designers are the traditional beneficiaries of this type of service, but an increasingly wide range of businesses is now profiting not only from quick results but also the kind of models that cannot be easily achieved by other means.

A case in point is leading architectural firm Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates (KPF) whose London office is based in Covent Garden. KPF’s chief modelmaker Neil Merryweather acknowledges that RapidformRCA has proved invaluable for achieving reduced-scale models that would probably be beyond the very best conventional model-making techniques.

A case in point was KPF’s entry for an international competition, the Dubai International Finance Centre, for client Sovereign Asset Management of Monaco. Merryweather explains: “This was a tower office building and we discussed how to go about creating a model based on sketches I was shown. I knew that Martin Watmough at RapidformRCA had a bureau service that could do this. These machines are not something you can have in an office environment, so quite apart from the cost, it’s not equipment we would want to buy—and I think that’s true of most companies.”

He continues: “We first used RapidformRCA’s fine-tolerance SLA machine to make 1:1000 scale models of the entire tower—these were simple monochrome shapes. Once a direction was established, the design process continued and we then used the service for some very fine detail on the building’s supporting ‘trees’.

“These were Islamic-style supporting columns with a very distinctive shape and some very fine arabesque tracery. They would have been very difficult to make by hand.”

Merryweather raises an interesting point about the architectural application of this sort of rapid prototyping service. Unlike product designers, who usually need same-size models, architects are obviously reducing their designs greatly.

This can mean it is almost impossible to render fine detail on the reduced models unless you have some type of stereolithography facility like the RapidformRCA machines. “It would take forever by hand, if it were possible at all,” says Merryweather.

KPF is just one of a growing number of architects—as well as product and jewellery designers—who are profiting from a bureau service that is supported by the London Development Agency to stimulate business success in local industries while simultaneously serving post-graduate student needs.

As part of InnovationRCA’s integrated new product service to business, RapidformRCA’s position within the creative environment of the Royal College of Art gives it a further point of difference. As Martin Watmough explains: “It means that innovative collaborations are encouraged and enabled in a way that would not present itself to clients using a conventional commercial bureau.”