Hasta La Ideas

I’m here in Vegas covering Autodesk University 2011, and this year Autodesk has made an interesting shift: There is a notable emphasis on DIY and individual creation, not just corporate ventures. Their choice of keynote speakers illuminated this exciting direction, and I’ve been stealing time out of the packed conference schedule to transcribe the talks given by a couple of them.

First off, I was thrilled to discover Jeffrey McGrew taking the stage. McGrew is the co-founder of Core77 fave Because We Can —we’ve posted on their projects here—and told the story of how he went from beleaguered CAD jockey to running a successful, fun, and profitable design-build firm with his wife Jillian Northrup. Here’s the tale, in his own words. (I was not able to adequately capture the slides accompanying his talk, but you’ll get the idea.)

Jeffrey McGrew:

In the ’80s, AutoCAD ushered in an era of powerful, affordable and disruptive CAD. By the mid-’90s it was pretty much the standard. Also by the mid-’90s, I was a broke college student. I was tired of framing houses in the Arizona desert [while enrolled in] architecture school. So I rashly dropped out of college and moved to San Francisco. Because I knew AutoCAD pretty well, I was able to ride that larger wave of disruption right into a decent job at a firm. Then in 2001, along came Revit and I fell in love. I got obsessed with it, I got really good at it, and I surfed that [wave] all the way to a great job at Gensler. I got my California architect’s license, got a real career and made many friends along the way.

Now during this time I was introduced to digital fabrication. Seeing the amazing things that people were making with CNC tools, laser cutters and 3D printers was very inspiring. I wanted to make amazing things this way too, but at the time the machines were very expensive and exclusive. Way out of reach for a rank and file architect and BIM guy like me.

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