When AECOM started thinking about designing the 2022 Innovation Spotlight Award, they established three core ideologies to guide their process. After winning three awards for the Gordie Howe International Bridge project in 2021, the team knew it had to pay tribute to this iconic project. Second, with CanBIM’s evolution to Building Transformations that same year, they wanted to celebrate the organization’s new brand. And finally, the award had to represent innovation and digital progress.
With these fundamental principles in mind, Peter Byrne, Matt Anderle, Nick Bogle and Joanne Garcia started brainstorming and developing mock-ups. Before long, Matt Anderle, Director of Digital Strategy at AECOM, came up with a design that emerged as the front runner. With an initial concept in mind, Matt then studied Building Transformations’ logo and colour scheme for additional inspiration.
The result was the award’s arch form suspended by cable stays as a tribute to the Gordie Howe International Bridge design. From there, the arch was flipped vertically to represent the billowing sail effect created by the three shapes that make up the new logo.
Once the design was set, Josh Coulas at Peter McCann Architectural Models helped bring it to life. Josh created a plan to produce this unique award using a stereolithography 3D print approach to output the award’s shapes using a photopolymer liquid resin. He then worked closely with Nick Bogle, one of the lead architects on the bridge project, who oversaw production and made sure the awards finishing touches had the polish and wow factor the team wanted to achieve.
At the heart of the 2022 Innovation Spotlight Award design was AECOM’s desire to honour Building Transformations’ passing of the torch approach from previous winners year after year, and to convey the team’s inspiration and 2021 success into this year’s awards program.
Design and Fabrication Team
