Royal Hobart Hospital Redevelopment

• Zero printed drawings needed
• Hundreds of meters of curved brick
• First AR-built commercial project

All Brick needed to build several hundred meters of complex, continuously curving brick benches spread across six floors of the Royal Hobart Hospital, a geometry that would have been extremely difficult to set out accurately from flat, printed drawings.

Fologram was chosen because it overlays the Rhino and Grasshopper-generated holographic model directly onto the job site through a HoloLens headset, letting bricklayers see exactly where each curved course and brick should go in full scale, in place, without interpreting a 2D plan.

Because the augmented reality model could also be used to generate on-site templating and cutting tools, set out blockwork, rebar, and ties, and locate services, the same holographic workflow covered far more of the job than a plan alone ever could, which is why the team chose Fologram over sticking with conventional templates and printed setout drawings for this project.

All Brick faced the challenge of laying several hundred meters of continuously curved brick benches across six floors of an active hospital construction site, a scale and complexity of curved masonry that had never been attempted on a commercial project using standard drawings alone. The design geometry changed constantly as the benches wound through each floor, so a conventional workflow of printed setout drawings and physical templates would have required an enormous number of individually drafted templates, one for nearly every changing curve, and any drafting or measurement error would only surface once bricks were already being laid on site.

The team needed a way to keep the whole crew working from one accurate, constantly available reference for setout, cutting, and coordination with other trades without slowing the job down with paperwork.

Before Fologram, complex curved brickwork like this would normally be set out using printed drawings and physical templates, with bricklayers measuring and marking each curve by hand from 2D plans and cutting bricks to match paper templates on site. On a straightforward, flat wall that approach works well enough, but translating several hundred meters of continuously curving benches across six different floors into accurate on-site geometry from flat paper drawings is slow and leaves a lot of room for measurement error, especially where the curve radius changes or the brickwork needs to align precisely with structure and services on each level.

Any mistake in reading a printed dimension or template would only show up once bricks were already being laid, at which point correcting the work would mean pulling courses back out.

Using Fologram let All Brick build several hundred meters of complex curved benches across six floors of the Royal Hobart Hospital entirely from holographic reference, without printing or referring to a single setout drawing or physical template on the whole job. Because the HoloLens model showed each bricklayer exactly where every course and brick belonged at full scale and in place, the crew could work in larger, more efficient teams and catch positioning issues immediately rather than after a course was already laid, cutting out the rework that printed-template errors would otherwise cause.

The same holographic model doubled as the tool for templating and cutting bricks, setting out blockwork, rebar, and ties, locating services, and scheduling the sequence of construction, so a single digital model did the job that would normally have needed a stack of separate paper drawings and physical templates.

The project became the first time part of a large commercial build had been constructed directly from holographic models in augmented reality. All Brick has embraced working in augmented reality because it introduces minimal disruption to their normal workflow while letting them work in larger, more efficient, highly skilled teams.