Friday, March 19, 2010

Off Topic - Revit Founder Donates Sculpture - 2007

Stumbled across this while searching for something related to the history of Revit. This from a Technion press release dated June 24, 2007

"Sculpture “Books and The Written Word” Dedicated at Technion
The 4-ton sculpture by Boris Zaborov was donated by the entrepreneur Leonid Raiz"

A giant sculpture, weighing 4 tons, which depicts a book out of which emerge letters in various languages, was dedicated at the Technion last week, in the presence of the donor, Leonid Raiz, his wife Alexandra, the sculptor Boris Zaborov, architects Shaul Kenner and Michael Seltzer, and the heads of the Technion.


The bronze sculpture is 3.80 meters high, 2.60 meters long and half a meter wide. Platinum has been delicately mixed with the bronze, giving it additional color nuances. The architects created a concrete base that connects the sculpture with the ground. The base is made up of two elements – an elliptic element and one that look like a narrow, long shelf. The concrete shelf is 15 meters long. The elliptic base is 10 meters long. The shelf is solid concrete with white pigment while the ellipse has a gray pigment.

Leonid Raiz immigrated to the US from the former Soviet Union in 1980. He developed highly successful computerized software for architectural design that is now used in most architectural offices around the world. In 1997, Leonid Raiz established another company – Revit Technologies – that also develops software for architectural offices.

2 comments:

iyyy69 said...

So what's the software company Leonid founded before co-founding Revit that is alluded to in the text? I thought they were just programmers for PTC.

I tried wikipedia and Leonid Raiz doesn't have an entry... someone needs to fix that!

Also, anyone want to hazard a try at pronouncing his name?

Steve said...

I suspect that the bio is a bit out of whack. The other software is probably meant to be Pro/Engineer and architecture is mentioned instead of manufacturing.

I've always heard his last name pronounced as "rise" (long i) as in the sun rise(s).