APLA Faculty 3D Model Alabama State House Building

In 2023, the Alabama Legislature commissioned New York-based Robert A.M. Stern Architects and local architecture and engineering firm Goodwyn Mills Cawood (GMC) to build a new State House. Set to be completed by the end of this year and occupied in 2027, the $400 million project will replace the 1963 building and completed the urban complex that includes the Alabama State Capitol Building.

To commemorate the new building, GMC partnered with APLA to 3D-print phases of models.

This summer, Robert Sproull, Associate Professor of Environmental Design; Frank Hu, Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture; Ernesto Bilbao, Assistant Professor of Architecture, and a team of student workers printed over 150 miniature models as tokens for legislators. The bulk of this task was completed over the long Fourth of July weekend with the help of APLA’s IT department.

Now, the team is working on two museum-quality models: one at 1 inch to 40 feet that comprises 12 city blocks and another that sets the State House on a 3-foot by 4-foot base.

“The hundred-year models allow the public to examine and understand what the State House does for Montgomery,” Sproull said, explaining that the displays will set the new building in the larger urban capitol complex.

To tackle this project and accommodate the scale, APLA purchased three new Bambu Lab 3D printers and is working across SketchUp, Rhino, Revit and Bambu Studio.

“The project has increased the knowledge the faculty has,” Sproull said, explaining that the commission has helped the faculty to stay at the forefront of architectural modeling technology.

“Our students are being exposed to really high-end modeling, way beyond what they would do in school,” he said, noting that the detail of the models will not leave anything to the imagination, but help communicate the Neoclassical design to the larger public.

The team plans to have the models delivered to Montgomery by the end of the year.

“It’s exciting to be a part of the telling of the story of this project” Sproull said, noting the significance of the first new state legislative building in the United States in decades.