Zaha Hadid's One Thousand Museum in Rhino
This mini course with Dusan Cvetkovic recreates the exterior of Zaha Hadid's One Thousand Museum in Miami from scratch in Rhino. We block out the tower from the real sections, model the GFRC exoskeleton in SubD with Reflect and Radiate symmetry, build the terraces, slabs and glass, and then use Codex to write custom Rhino commands, released as the free How to Rhino Tools plugin, that fillet every slab and place every mullion with a live preview. The finished model is rendered with RhinoFrame.
In this mini course, we are going to model Zaha Hadid's One Thousand Museum in Miami from scratch in Rhino. This 62-storey tower is famous for its exoskeleton facade, where the structure wraps around the building and changes shape from the base to the helipad on the roof. We will focus entirely on the exterior: the exoskeleton, the terraces and slabs, the glass facade, the mullions, and the ribs on top.
Starting from the real sections and elevations, we will block out the proportions, trace the main pillars as curves, and then convert them into SubD so we can control the shape freely. Along the way you will learn how to use Reflect and Radiate to model just one quarter of the tower and let Rhino build the rest, how to fade structural edges in and out with Soft Crease, and how to connect separate SubD pieces cleanly with Stitch, Bridge and Insert Edge.
The second part of the course is about working smarter. Instead of filleting dozens of slabs and placing hundreds of mullions by hand, we will use Codex to write our own Rhino commands with a live preview: SlabFillet, SurfaceMullions, FloorMullions and CurveMullions. You will see the whole process, including the bugs and the back and forth, so you can build tools like this for your own projects.
The best part is that we released these four commands as a completely free plugin called How to Rhino Tools. You can download it right now from the Package Manager in Rhino 8 (Windows and Mac) and start using it on your own projects.
At the end, we will take the finished model into RhinoFrame and turn our viewport captures into realistic renderings with prompting alone.
This mini course is best suited for people who are already comfortable with basic Rhino modeling and want to get better at SubD and at automating repetitive facade work.
- How to set up real sections and elevations as references, scale them to the true 216 m height, and block out the proportions of a tower before adding any detail
- How to trace the exoskeleton as NURBS curves and convert them into SubD with SubD Sweep 2, then shape them with Extrude, Insert Edge, Stitch, Bridge and Slide
- How to model one quarter of the building and let Reflect and Radiate rebuild the full tower, so every change you make is mirrored on all four sides
- How to use Soft Crease with percentage ranges to fade a structural edge in and out, exactly like the real GFRC exoskeleton
- How to build the terraces, floor slabs, side walls, railings and glass, and cut floor plates with Boolean Split as the facade changes from the zigzag base to the upper floors
- How to use Codex to write your own Rhino commands with a live preview, the same four commands we released as the free How to Rhino Tools plugin
- How to create the roof ribs with Twin Curves, SubD Loft and Offset SubD, close the top and add the helipad
- How to capture viewports in RhinoFrame, chain and enhance prompts, and turn a white Rhino model into a realistic rendering
Dusan Cvetkovic
Founder of How to Rhino and the lead behind RhinoFrame. Dusan has spent more than a decade teaching Rhino and Grasshopper to architects and building tools that bring computational design and AI into everyday architectural workflows, reaching a community of 89,600+ YouTube subscribers.
