BWC Business

Obama's shout out

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An additional promotional article posted in the SF Chronicle over the weekend mentions us in the same sentence as President Obama. We'll take that.

"When President Obama gave a shout out to 3-D technology and its potential to revolutionize U.S. manufacturing in his State of the Union speech last month, he might as well have been talking about Jillian Northrup and Jeffrey McGrew of Oakland, (California). The principals of the architectural design-build studio Because We Can are harnessing the increasingly affordable power of robotics to create whimsical custom furniture and fixtures for Bay Area clients, including gaming company Three Rings, producers of the popular computer game Puzzle Pirates. They also created a buzz with this mad scientist's office, complete with cat transport tube, designed for Eric and Sue Johnston of San Francisco and built using Frank, a Shopbot CNCRouter.

For more on the couple and their quirky studio, click here."

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Friday, March 1st, BWC 2013 Winter Open House

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Winter is almost over (yay!) and it's not freezing in the shop anymore. So stop by and help us join in the fun!

We are opening our doors for Because We Can's Winter 2013 open house.

We'll be starting early at 5PM and going until 8PM-ish.

All are invited, so come on by! We'd love to see you.

We'll be celebrating and showing off recent projects completed and those underway.
It's a great time to drop by and talk shop with us.

We'll have some snacks, some drinks, many new projects to show, and more.

Kids welcome, but it is a shop and a party. Lots of sharp corners. And they might learn some interesting new words!

Friday, March 1st

5PM - 8PM

2500 Kirkham St
Oakland, CA 94607
(510) 922-8846

Click here for the Google Map.

Autodesk University chess tables

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Autodesk University was last week, where we had a great time taking cool classes, meeting new people and giving a presentation on Digital Fabrication. We also helped out this year by making a few tables for the Digital Fabrication Lounge area.

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There were Checkers tables:
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Chess tables:
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And a Go table:
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We carved different designs and text over each table...
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And made matching stools:
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Did you notice that the stool and table bases spell out "AU"?
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See Jeffrey talk a bit more about the tables on the Core 77 blog here

Meet us at Autodesk University Las Vegas 2012

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Meet us in Vegas! We'll be presenting at Autodesk University again this year. Keeping it low-key this time after last year's keynote, we're just giving a single talk on digital fabrication. Thus giving us time to go to lots of awesome classes, meet up with great people, and visit a wonderful tiki bar. We'll see you there!

BWC Business plan update

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One thing about our company you might not know: we're an Open Business. We release almost all of our work under a Creative Commons licence. Even our Business Plan.

Which just got majorly updated! We've learned a lot since we posted it last time and feel it really reflects that. If you're either into business or looking to be, check it out.

We'd love to hear what you think about it!

Friday, October 5th, it's the Oakland Art Murmur and our Fall open house!

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Fall is here and this Friday is First Fridays in Oakland (i.e. the 'Murmur'). So stop by and help us join in the fun!

We are opening our doors for Because We Can's fall open house.

We'll be starting early at 5PM and going until 8PM-ish.

All are invited, so come on by! We'd love to see you.

We'll be celebrating and showing off recent projects completed and underway. It's a great time to drop by and talk shop with us as well!

We'll have some snacks, some drinks, the now-almost-complete paint job on the '67 van to show off, and more. Lots check it out!

Kids welcome, but it is a shop and a party. Lots of sharp corners. And they might learn some interesting new words!

Friday, October 5th

5PM - 8PM

2500 Kirkham St
Oakland, CA 94607
(510) 922-8846

Click here for the Google Map.

BWC Intern Project, Robot Head

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Well, summer is ending and with that our summer interns are leaving us to go continue their educations. But while they were hear we all had a good time, and they may have even learned something!

We like to give out interns a project that they get to take all they way from design to fabrication using our in house process. They start out creating a design how ever they want to (paper or software), and then dive into our software flow. We use REVIT to make just about everything, so we make them do that too. Much of the time is spent learning the software, but what better way to do that than with a project!

After the design is done in REVIT, we show them how to take their designs into the CAM software (Aspire) and fabricate it on the CNC machine (Frank!).

Beatrice, one of our summer interns, was given the task to make a card holder for our front door. We have a few promotional pieces that we wanted easily accessible near the front. She had to take measurements, look at available materials and come up with a design that everyone agreed on.

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We asked Beatrice what she learned though the process, and here is what she said:
"My goal was to design a card holder that will draw interest and prompt people to take the cards. I also thought it would be nice to make an addition to the robot collection in the BWC office. I sketched on paper and modeled the card holder mixing Revit and Illustrator. Then Frank the CNC router cut out the wood, and I assembled the pieces by hand at the shop. Being in charge of the design and assembly steps was a great hands-on lesson on the digital fabrication process."

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Thanx Beatrice! We love your head!

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Summer open house at Because We Can!

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July is here and this holiday weekend is First Fridays in Oakland (i.e. the 'Murmur'). So stop by and help us join in the fun!

We are opening our doors for Because We Can's summer open house.

We'll be starting early at 5PM and going until 8PM-ish.

Come on by!

No roller disco this time.
Instead we will be enjoying our new enclosed fruit tree laden yard along with some BBQ and drinks (while supplies last).

Come meet and greet the designers of Because We Can, Jillian & Jeffrey, as we show off some of our recent projects, including the progress on the LongNow SF bar design, a Robinson Crusoe & HMS themed office space, lots of local residential work, and some big 3D carvings for Wikipedia.

We'll have some snacks, and some drinks, the paint job on the 67 van to show off, and we've reconfigured the Shop. Lots check it out!

Kids welcome, but it is a shop and a party. Lots of sharp corners. And they might learn some interesting new words.

Friday, July 6th

5PM - 8PM

2500 Kirkham St
Oakland, CA 94607
(510) 922-8846

Click here for the Google Map.

Lots of new projects up on the website

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We've been busy! Too busy to get some of the great projects we've gotten done on our website. So we took a moment, and posted up a few past projects for you to see. Enjoy!

We love coming up with concepts for what companies could do with their offices. It a service we offer, where we're brought in to help brainstorm some big ideas as inspiration.

A few recent examples are helping out Joyent, a cloud software service provider:

We also helped come up with some fun ideas for local hometown heros, Pandora:

And a little longer ago we helped YouTube out with some ideas too:

Now some more tangible office interior elements! We did some signage and branding elements for video game company Envie Interactive. Love that glowing 'V'!

Speaking of games, we also did some early conceptual art & 3D models for their video game:

One area we've really expanded upon is in our architectural services, undertaking some larger buildings. Two examples from last year are the ideas we came up with for a commercial building in SOMA:

And some value-engineering focused redesign of a small live/work loft complex for Oakland:

Now back to work! ;-)

Professor Kitty, the office kitty, working hard

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