Working in collaboration with the French and Belgian façade contractor Kyotec Group, the team was tasked with developing a fully engineered system design, BIM model, and fabrication documentation of a bespoke, nonrepetitive, complex curved, aluminum rain screen cladding system for Zaha Hadid Architects’ new 40-story, 525 ft (160 m) tall hotel tower at the City of Dreams complex in Macau. Using in-house developed parametric modeling and development tools, we were able to create an automated engineering, modeling, and fabrication drawing production workflow to generate the necessary fabrication documentation for the several million unique parts required to construct the 194,000 ft² (18,000 m²) of cladding. The project is currently under construction and is expected to be completed in late 2017.

The exposed mesh exoskeleton connects the left and right towers at both the podium and the roof levels, with two bridges that seem to undulate as they divide its external crevasse. The hotel will house a retail strip, gaming area, and the atrium, which includes the main reception area, lobby bar, and a flexible installation space, on the ground floor, in addition to 780 hotel units, a casino floor, restaurants, meeting spaces, and a sky pool.