PR - Bentley Systems, Incorporated, the leading company dedicated to providing comprehensive software solutions for the infrastructure that sustains our world, today announced the key speakers and session topics for SmartGeometry 2009. The speakers at this eight-day, five-event, one-of-a-kind program come from leading architecture, engineering, and research organizations around the world. Sponsored by Bentley and hosted by the SmartGeometry Group, the program runs March 25 through April 1 in San Francisco and focuses on new developments in computational and parametric design for the architectural, engineering, and construction community. The session topics address new issues arising from generative technology and the underlying architectural goals and present visions for engineering, energy, innovation, and design. The agenda is detailed at www.SmartGeometryConference.com.

“In these economically challenging times, there is only one certainty: skills matter,” said J Parrish, a director of SmartGeometry Group and a director at ArupSport. “As a result, knowledge of such critically important emerging practices as digital parametrics is vital to the success of not only individuals, but also entire design organizations.”

Added Lars Hesselgren, a director of SmartGeometry Group and research director of Kohn Pederson Fox Associates, “We are privileged to live in a time when all preconceptions of the designing process are disappearing. Complexity is no longer an issue. Design automation is opening new opportunities, but an overall vision for the confluence of digital representation, computational geometry, and digital fabrication is needed to effectively engage this new technology.

“Design tools are as fundamental to the designer as the hammer and saw are to the carpenter. The real tension arrives when the tool utterly changes character, as happens only once in many generations.”

The speakers at SmartGeometry 2009 will share their knowledge of, and vision for, today’s advanced computational and parametric design practices and tools, such as Bentley’s GenerativeComponents. Among these thought leaders are some of the world’s preeminent authorities on the theory and practice of generative design in advanced 3D design applications, including Mark Burry, professor of innovation and director of Spatial Information Architecture Laboratory (SIAL) at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia; Chris Williams, senior lecturer, department of architecture and civil engineering, University of Bath; Saul Griffith, co-founder of Squid Labs and Makani Power Inc., Alameda, Calif.; and Brett Steele, director of the Architectural Association School of Architecture, London.

For details on SmartGeometry 2009, to register, or for an event schedule, visit www.SmartGeometryConference.com. To fill out an inquiry form, visit appsnet.bentley.com/gccontactform. Those interested in attending can review the presentations from SmartGeometry 2007 and 2008 at the above website.