When David Roden saw a demo of VU.CITY at MIPIM, he immediately recognised the many benefits for his business. The practice adopted our 3D smart city design and planning platform in September 2018 – and has never looked back.
Niazi Roden Architects specialise in masterplanning, urban regeneration, mixed use developments, residential, commercial, research and technology buildings.
During the pre-app process of a proposed development in Victoria (4-8 Victoria Street), London, the team knew that getting their scheme approved would be a challenge, particularly with protected sightlines being so high up on the planning committee’s judging criteria.
Any slippages in time could result in different stages of development overlapping – at great cost.
They needed to be able to make smart decisions, and get others to approve their designs quickly.
They realised how useful the accuracy of the landscape was thanks to VU.CITY, particularly when dealing with townscape and heritage issues. Accurately determining the heights of surrounding buildings and bringing their “townscaping” in-house saved them weeks of reports and verification.
VU.CITY helped highlight issues, such as the protruding plant area on their scheme’s rooftop. Simply adjusting the position in VU.CITY allowed them to find a way around the problem in a short amount of time.
When presenting their scheme to Westminster Council planning committee, the architects could accurately prove that all considerations had been taken not to negatively impact the surrounding area. What might have been viewed as areas of concern dropped off the agenda and the risk of not getting permission fell dramatically. Their application was successful.
Niazi Roden Architects regularly use VU.CITY in presentations and are so impressed with how they can now design and plan projects in 3D with smart city data that they frequently discuss the platform’s merits with their peers.