Rayon, an innovative online design tool that aims to create a new collaborative approach to developing "mundane buildings" within the city, has been selected as part of ArchDaily's 2023 Best New Practices. Founded in 2021 by Bastien Dolla and Stanislas Chaillou, it is a collaborative design software that brings together professionals in the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industries. The software company believes that there is a “culture of the ordinary” in architecture. This culture represents an ecosystem of buildings that may seem unremarkable or aren't impressive landmarks in the city. However, these buildings and their construction professionals make up 90% of the urban fabric and contribute to the design culture that collectively gives identity to the city. The founders believe previous software generations have neglected this culture and propose Rayon as a novel tool to fill that gap by enhancing collaboration and user ergonomics.
The culture of the ordinary encompasses three essential aspects that inspire the development of Rayon. These aspects include knowledge sharing among professionals, team diversity that brings together numerous experts and non-experts, and the scale of deployment across multiple locations of mundane buildings. In responding to these, the cofounder, Stanislas Chaillou, terms Rayon as a “light-BIM” software blending features of both CAD and BIM worlds together, while adding a whole new layer of open engagement.
Space Design is fundamentally collaborative, but the current CAD software offering is not: these tools are not only expensive, heavy and too complex, but they also represent a barrier to teamwork in this industry
The software opens with sets of interfaces that gather information about the user, including their experience with CAD and BIM software, as well as their intentions within the platform. This information is used to tailor a user experience that is suitable for them. It leads to a simple interface with drawing tools at the bottom, layers, and templates at the top left with a channel for comments and engagement from all relevant professionals. The design experience with the tool is interactive as clicks on drawn walls reveal its dimensions and relation to space, while the placement of furniture blocks reveals scale, material properties, and spatial relationships. Through this experience, the user becomes familiar with the interface, which leads to fast and efficient design development.
Rayon’s workspace has been optimized for speed over complexity, favoring the ergonomics of a user-centric interface where a feature or tab is easily located and accessed. It also incorporates a multiplayer real-time edition; a web app infrastructure allowing anyone, anywhere, to connect and participate. This allows the software to bring multiple professionals for seamless collaboration, allowing for content creation and feedback to live in the same place. The workspace favors drawing, collaging, sharing, commenting, annotating, and integration with a broad range of formats (video, image, PDF, DWG, 3DM, etc.) as well as other software.
Rayon is betting on a more accessible way to design spaces and floor plans: 2D over 3D, browser-based over desktop-based, and multiplayer over single-player. That’s the way to go for space design!
Alongside an interactive drawing space, Rayon's workspace offers a cross-communication workspace where 2D images can be collaged for mood boarding. It can be used to curate material, furniture, and interior inspirations at the start of projects, design graphical templates for project documentation, and create a repository of evolved ideas.
The platform also incorporates AI in the experimentation and development of 2D assets used in Design. This was born out of participatory design, where designers identified 3D modeling as a time-consuming process to achieve good texture, lighting, and rendering for their furniture. Through an AI feature called Stable Stuff, the platform easily converts 2D line work into rendered assets and CAD blocks are transformed into realistic pieces of furniture to explore their fit within spaces. It can also generate multiple versions of a single product or furniture, providing users with a wide range of choices for exploration.
The open and interactive nature of the workspace also allows users to explore the possibilities of existing furniture pieces in their designs. This is particularly useful in the sustainable practice of reusing furniture from flea markets, thrift shops, and antique boutiques. Rayon enables users to import images of furniture, meticulously take note of their parameters and properties, and seamlessly integrate them into their design explorations, providing a seamless and intuitive user experience. By offering these capabilities, Rayon empowers designers to unleash their imagination and create unique and personalized spaces that truly reflect their vision and style.
Rayon is currently being deployed across diverse use cases, including commercial real estate, housing, interior space planning, furniture manufacturing, and asset management. This demonstrates that its user-friendly, collaborative, and fast space design tools are in high demand within the architecture and construction industry. The software company recently announced that it has raised €4 million in seed funding. The funding was co-led by Northzone, existing investor Foundamental, Seedcamp, and angel investors, including legendary architect Norman Foster (Foster + Partners). The funds will be used to expand the team as the software officially launches out of beta and accelerates its go-to-market strategy. As collaborative workspaces continue to transition online, Rayon offers new forms of online collaborative design. The software company strongly believes that browser-first tools are well-suited to meet the needs of everyday architects.
