By Samantha Smith and Michelle Ervin

In a place where music is king, the instruments are larger than life. At the Hard Rock Park in Myrtle Beach, S.C., McCurdy transformed a Gibson Guitar into a plaza that really grooves. It's seen here from the VIP lounge overlooking the lake.
Photos: Morris Architects

Technology is a fact of life. There?EUR??,,????'???s no getting away from it, even for professions such as landscape architecture, which is traditionally thought of as more ?EUR??,,????'??creative?EUR??,,????'?? or ?EUR??,,????'??artistic.?EUR??,,????'??

Technological and software options abound, and landscape architects who know which tools to use when are creating a distinct advantage for themselves. And they?EUR??,,????'???re finding how much more quickly and accurately they can produce impressive results using the right tools?EUR??,,????'??+without sacrificing creativity or quality.

 

Hard Rock Park's "Guitar Plaza" plays many roles, including funneling guests through the exit retail as they leave the park.

A hard act to beat

Morris Architects is one such firm that has been creating award-winning rock-star projects for years by using CAD software as one of their key technologies. The Orlando, Fla., firm has established a reputation for being able to accomplish a large amount of work with a small number of talented designers. Led by Todd McCurdy, ASLA, Principal and Director of Landscape Architecture and Planning, the 200-person firm?EUR??,,????'???s landscape architecture team consists of five designers. The team spearheads most of the firm?EUR??,,????'???s international work, which includes mixed-use urban developments, five-star hotels, resort areas, eco-tourism venues, and entertainment destinations.

In the last ten years, the team has completed nearly 50 international projects and, in the last five years, has contributed to the firm securing more than $4 billion dollars in projects. Among them are master plans for the newly opened Hard Rock Park in South Carolina, an ecotourism resort in the Amazon Rainforest, and the revitalization of downtown Niter??i, also in Brazil.

McCurdy credits his favorite design software program, Vectorworks Landmark, for visibly boosting his team?EUR??,,????'???s efficiency by keeping everything in sync on large projects.

?EUR??,,????'??I think we?EUR??,,????'???re pretty efficient,?EUR??,,????'?? McCurdy says. ?EUR??,,????'??Vectorworks Landmark allows us to keep all the moving parts and pieces organized on large projects ?EUR??,,????'??+ satellite imagery, GIS data, and our proposed design ideas. We overlay them to see everything at once. And, even more importantly, in front-end design, it allows us to include hand-drawn and CAD drawings together?EUR??,,????'??+taking advantage of the strengths of each but having them appear seamless.?EUR??,,????'??

Todd McCurdy and his team built a mass model of the downtown for the Niter??i Centro Masterplan to demonstrate scale relationships to the city officials.

Timing is everything

On one recent project, a master plan for the downtown revitalization of Niter??i, Brazil (the 2026 Niter??i Centro Master plan), the timeline was short. To keep things moving quickly, the team extracted key data from the piles of data given to them by the local government, and created presentation-quality documents that pulled everything together with very little upfront time.

And they were able to do the jobs of three or four design applications with just one ?EUR??,,????'??+ combining general CAD, graphic illustration, 3D modeling, and GIS capabilities to work from preliminary studies all the way up through presentations ?EUR??,,????'??+ and save time and money. The program automatically calculated quantities and other data. With enough detail in the drawings, the team was able to present accessible work that sold the plan.

They started by building information models that captured the existing structures. They had received some information from the city, but it was incomplete. So they imported the city?EUR??,,????'???s GIS and CAD files and plugged in the missing pieces. Now they had a challenge. With a whole city?EUR??,,????'???s worth of buildings and numerous other spaces to manage, they needed to document the evolution from the existing layout to the proposed plan.

A nighttime rendering of Niter??i Brazil's new urban waterfront illuminates the great potential of the proposed development for the city, helping officials visualize the changes.

Tools of the trade

A master of his craft, McCurdy makes the most of his CAD tools. For the Niter??i Centro Master plan, he used Landmark?EUR??,,????'???s Custom Selection tool to remove some of the old data and insert new information. He performed a quick search by class and layer, as well as line style. All the buildings that were set to be demolished had been entered as one layer, so he removed them all with the click of a mouse. Changing other objects was easy, too. He sorted by object or object type, and changed classes, layers, and line weights with this simple, but powerful, tool.

The Niter??i Centro waterfront area became the focal point of the overall Masterplan.

Seeing is believing with 3D

The master plan took shape. ?EUR??,,????'??When some of our people have worked on other CAD programs that don?EUR??,,????'???t offer the Custom Selection tool, they practically pull their hair out because they?EUR??,,????'???re so used to Vectorworks Landmark?EUR??,,????'???s capacity for pulling data out or select key objects.?EUR??,,????'?? Once the data for the Niter??i Centro Master plan was updated, the team took their 2D data and created a 3D model of the entire downtown in fifteen minutes. ?EUR??,,????'??It was really impressive?EUR??,,????'??+for the city and for us,?EUR??,,????'?? says McCurdy. ?EUR??,,????'??We used this information to help city officials and the team visualize the effects of the design on the city fabric.?EUR??,,????'??

CAD Keeps Rockin?EUR??,,????'???

Another recent ?EUR??,,????'??rock-star?EUR??,,????'?? project for Morris Architects is Hard Rock Park, a theme park devoted to rock and roll ?EUR??,,????'??+ that just opened to rave reviews. From early in the master-planning phase of the park design, McCurdy wanted to create a signature plaza near the park entry that would function as a gathering space at arrival, a great photo-op spot, and the flexibility to incorporate a temporary concert venue. In addition, this space needed to be a good vantage point to watch the nightly fireworks display, as well as provide the guests with a different experience when leaving the park at the end of the night. With the Hard Rock brand in mind, a guitar shape was the perfect icon.

In what is now known as The Guitar Plaza, the design became the embodiment of a gigantic Gibson ?EUR??,,????'??Vegas High Roller?EUR??,,????'??? Guitar. With a little help from Gibson USA, McCurdy was able to duplicate the guitar in larger-than-life style, right down to the frets, strings, and pickups ?EUR??,,????'??+ but in colored concrete instead of rosewood and flamed maple.

To make it happen, Hard Rock Park?EUR??,,????'???s official guitar sponsor, Gibson USA, provided the actual CAD/CAM files used to manufacture the guitar. McCurdy imported the files into Vectorworks, scaled them up ?EUR??,,????'??+ a lot ?EUR??,,????'??+ and began tweaking the scale and orientation of the guitar and adjacent buildings in his master plan design. The guitar provided the perfect shape for the space. The guitar body cantilevers over the lake, creating the perfect gathering space and temporary concert venue. The pickups in the guitar became a pop-jet fountain, and the guitar neck leads exiting guests into the main exit-retail store, where the guitar head becomes part of the interior floor pattern. For those who might be thinking, ?EUR??,,????'??you could only see that from an airplane,?EUR??,,????'?? you can, indeed. Passengers on the left side of planes arriving on final approach to Myrtle Beach International Airport can see the park and its Guitar Plaza ?EUR??,,????'??+ a high-rolling gathering point that will have fans talking for years to come.

And for that reason, Todd McCurdy and his talented team in the landscape architecture studio at Morris Architects, that means CAD software ?EUR??,,????'??? Vectorworks Landmark, in particular ?EUR??,,????'??? will always be an essential part of their playlist.

Vectorworks??????oe is a registered trademark of Nemetschek North America.