BIM-ing Innovation: How Alfonso Monedero Bridges Tech and Creativity at Heatherwick Studio
BIM-ing Innovation: How Alfonso Monedero Bridges Tech and Creativity at Heatherwick Studio
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Stephen Drew: [00:00:00] Hello everyone. This is not a virtual podcast live stream like I'm used to be doing. As you can see, we're in a very beautiful office and I've got an amazing guest today. Someone that has an unconventional career, but is doing a lot of creative stuff. But dealing with a lot of logic as well. So my guest here, he can introduce himself in a bit.
He's gonna do a bit of a better job than me, however, Alfonso Manero, head of BIM at Heavy Works Studios. Alfonso, how are you today? You okay?
Alfonso Monedero: I am very good. I'm ready for these chat. I'm very excited when you contact me, but will you be willing to have a conversation with me? Absolutely.
Stephen Drew: You're more ready than me then, but I really appreciate it.
So like we were talking before, first of all, tell the audience who you are. So
Alfonso Monedero: I'm a Spanish architect. I was trained in architecture. I was working in Spain and then we had the architectural [00:01:00] crisis 2008. Just not doing much. Just begging for a job. Nobody was giving me a job. So I had to move out of Spain.
Going around the world. First I went to India. I went to South America for some years until I landed in the UK. 2015.
And
Stephen Drew: that's when I started with Heatherwick. Wow. Okay. So when you came here, first of all, 2015, I remember in the UK we were starting to adopt BIM around 2000 12, 13, 14 practices were thinking we have to start implementing bim.
So at the time, was there many of these roles of BIM managers and coordinators, and did you think at the time you were gonna go down this career route that you've. So when I came
Alfonso Monedero: to the UK, I didn't even know BIM existed. So I knew Revit, I knew MarketCat, but yeah, I was looking at a position as a head of design because that was my position in South America.
Yeah. I [00:02:00] was 29, so that was completely unrealistic. I realized, yeah, you're not going to get a job if you do. Directing the design for any firm because you would just a young lab. So it was a recruiter so that I had a Revit training. Everybody's looking for Revit, guys. , do you want to do some Revit thing?
Yeah, why not? They just need a job. Yeah. And that's where I landed here in Hedwig to support them with BEM deliverables. And I was the Revit expert and I just had a course of 50 hours of Revit. So that's how it started. They were implementing them in the office. They started in 2014. But everything was outsourced. So they were starting to implement it. And I was one of the few guys that
Stephen Drew: knowing Revit in the office. Wow. Okay. Having been there from the other side, I remember it too. I think if anyone had Revit on their CV and they knew it a bit, they would instantly become The office go [00:03:00] to but it's been so over the years as well.
So there's two sides, which I found really interesting. So I'm sure the technology's changed. However, when you were starting to use it at the start, when we imagine Heatherwick, everyone in the audience, they know the cool projects and stuff, but we're talking about things that stretch the imagination curves.
Things that you never even thought of. And when I was being taught of Revit in 2014 and I got my little certificate, I was practicing a little square house, and the families were all in the software. So how do you begin to do the super creative stuff within the limitations of the software? So at the time, was it a lot more difficult than now, perhaps?
Alfonso Monedero: It was more difficult in the sense that we didn't have the technology. There was just one method is export from Rhino into SAT file, import the SAT. And usually this SAT file was 200, [00:04:00] 300, 500 megabytes. Yeah. Just for a small piece of geometry. So the limitations was about the performance. Yeah. So you could do rectangular boxes, you can do skyscrapers, curvy walls, but when it comes into the curvy things.
We're just finding out how to do it. So I remember one conversation when we were doing the Google projects with Big in California.
Stephen Drew: Yeah.
Alfonso Monedero: So we're doing two projects at the same time, both of them look similar. Yeah. Basically they are the same with a different scale, but very similar. And in one project, Big was doing the envelope and we were doing the interiors.
And Google had the amazing idea of swapping the responsibilities for the other project. So the lessons learned was completely dumped. So we're doing this dragon skin riff.
Stephen Drew: And
Alfonso Monedero: we're thinking, how do we do it? We've never done this before. Do we start doing inputs, SATs, adaptive components? And we had no clue how to do it at that time.[00:05:00]
And we just learn by doing, by having mistakes, try, we do something, it looks terrible, do it in a different way until we find that that workflow that was working for that project.
Stephen Drew: It sounds in keeping where I imagine the experimentation of creative designers and architects, but it's also interesting that sort of a technological point of view, it sounds like there's a bit of innovation as well there.
Do you find that? That's part of the process with you, or do you find that a lot of the time you're trying to put the logic and get the foundations right for the project as you go? So one of the things,
Alfonso Monedero: The most important thing we do in BIM in Heatherwick is, we cannot put any limitations to designers.
Because then we will be fired. It's yeah, your Revit thing cannot do whatever we want, then we will not use Revit. And then we, so we need to push the boundaries of it. So back in the days when we started, there [00:06:00] was some really good people giving the plugins for free. You can think about Mantis Frame, one of the first ones we were.
Then we start using Flux was using Grasshopper and Dynamo and Flux was the middleman in between. Yeah. And we were finding out how to send information from Grasshopper to Dynamo. That was the only way back in those days. Yeah. But there were plenty of plugins. We were trying everything until we find the one that was fitting for our solution.
Yeah. Yeah. But. Back in those days, we're just behind the technological advancements to just look at what was available and just try to use whatever is in the market. Yeah. Back in those days, I was just a BIM technician, so it was just the Revit guy, not the BIM guy, this is the design, just
Stephen Drew: bring it into Revit and do the documentation.
Yeah Autodesk should pay you guys for a bit of the research. I'm sure that you've helped influence their product along the way, [00:07:00] right? On that theme though, do you think then, because as you roll, you mentioned you're the BIM technician, now you're ahead of BIM, you're doing all this cool stuff, right?
But do you think that sometimes the innovation pushes the product? Or so you have to look for different ways to do it. Do you not limit yourself to one software? How do you even go about that from a strategic point of view? So
Alfonso Monedero: we have the design tools and that has been a rhino since the studio started doing architecture, because that's the only software that gives the agility and the flexibility to just do as many options of, single idea as you want.
And then every single person that comes as a designer to the studio needs to know Rhino in a fluent way. And then we started using Revit because when we started engaging with clients like Google, they demanded it is if you want to work [00:08:00] with us, we need to do a Revit deliverable. So that was the other side of the spectrum.
And how we started mixing them is like water and oil. It was an art back in the days, now it's very simple, everybody can do it nowadays. There's tools that are available, but at the beginning, it was a bit difficult, I have to say. I remember it was Revit 16, when they put the import Rhino file as a native function.
Yeah. Everybody was super excited about that. And it didn't work. Yeah. Obviously, it's just
Stephen Drew: No, it's fair enough. The projects, they're super cool. And I could geek about the projects. However, it is also interesting, the journey you mentioned, because you said, listen, I was a competent Spanish architect, come in.
And then I knew 50 hours of Revit, and I was the BIM person. And that's what it was like back then. However you've progressed your career. You mentioned you were the architect. [00:09:00] And you're the BIM technician, and then you were BIM coordinator. I know we're put labels on these, but back then they weren't no labels.
But what I'm curious is there's been a bit of an evolution there as well. Do you think as you move through the stages of Revit technician, BIM coordinator, BIM manager, strategic, do have, you had to adjust and learn new things yourself along the way? I keep learning nowadays,
Alfonso Monedero: Yeah. Yeah. If I reflect back of who I was nine years ago when I first landed.
Yeah I was fast with Revit, but I didn't have the knowledge I have now. So I was in Heatherwick as a BIM Technician for a year and a half. I deliver with them three full projects. I moved to Woodsbacker and I was the design technology manager. So in that sense, I had to be viewing Rhino and Revit at the same time.
Yeah. So I was getting a broader view of the scope. So it was not just the Revit guy, but I had [00:10:00] also to define the workflows to send from Rhino to Revit. And that was opening my mind into defining the workflows.
Stephen Drew: Yeah.
Alfonso Monedero: So when I came back to Heatherwick in 2018,
Stephen Drew: Yeah.
Alfonso Monedero: I knew the problem.
Stephen Drew: Yeah, I
Alfonso Monedero: knew what the solution might look like and then I had to start learning coding.
'cause I, I was not a coding guy. I knew how to do basic dynamic scripts, basic grasshopper scripts, but I had to learn Python. Yeah. So we got just a guy here Thomas Mahon to. Teach us how to do Python. We learned Python and then we started doing our own internal tools about how to do Revit and Rhino and connect those.
Stephen Drew: Tom, I knew Tom, he's a friend outside. I often call him parametric Tom, but he would be really embarrassed that I say that, but that's cool as well. So it's a lot of, it seems like as well, especially in the BIM community and parametric design, a lot of it's about sharing. Do you think that.
It's [00:11:00] been, is there like a community of people like yourself in the AC group that try and help each other out? Or do you, did you find back in the day you were a lone wolf and no one knew what you were? And it was hard to get, share that information. So
Alfonso Monedero: I think nowadays it's way easier. Yeah. So back in the days we had a Dynamo user group.
Yeah. We were Gathering every two or three months, showing some workflows, you have the opportunity to chat with these people who are having the same kind of features as you were having. I started attending conferences and that was a game changer. So the first conference that I was attending, 2018, they built and I was going to the presentations by Radu or Don Mahon or.
Matt, Jacek from Autodesk and they were showing how easy it can be to start doing C Sharp and Python. And you're getting on it and it's not [00:12:00] that easy. Okay. But they were showing it was easy. So you get excited. At least you get excited. Yeah. We started being making our community inside that group of built.
I can mention that now we have I have a good relationship with the guys and BAG, Osaguna Meron, OMA, SOM, KPF. Because we have same problems. We have the same ideas, but if we start sharing, we both together faster.
Stephen Drew: Yeah, so fair enough. Aaron Perry was my BIM trainer back in the day now, and he's gone on to do great things.
And sorry, Aaron, I'm not a very good student because I haven't done Revit anymore. And that was difficult at the time, but I found it so cool that you all know each other. And it's quite this, small, but caring kind of community. The hashtag 2014 was hashtag BIM beers and all this stuff.
And it seemed that the scene was on [00:13:00] Twitter a lot. There was the Twitter scene of BIM. But has it changed much now? So you mentioned there's the meetups. people can go to today, like the Dynamo meetup group and stuff. So
Alfonso Monedero: the Dynamo user group, it has changed and evolved into the design technology user group, is still run by the same people, just because Dynamo is getting less and less attention nowadays.
Oh, really? Yeah. Because the Dynamo people, they're also learning other things and they want to expand this scope. So it's just the same environment, but now it's design technology. That's open to anybody. It's first come, first serve. So we're meeting in two weeks, I believe.
Stephen Drew: Okay.
Alfonso Monedero: And yeah, so that's one of the options you have.
You mentioned Aaron Perry. He made a group along with Ian Godwin, the UK digital design leaders. Okay. We're meeting every three months. Oh, cool. Aaron [00:14:00] has recently moved to Quantic yesterday. He mentioned that. I saw that. Yeah. Yeah. I wouldn't be seeing him that often, but that community remains.
So we still meet every quarter or so.
Stephen Drew: Yeah. While we were speaking, cause we've got this wealth of knowledge and I love it. But what's quite interesting, again, I keep going back to the fact that, You were an architect and then you fell into this and now you love it, but there's probably a lot of wisdom in there that maybe we can impart to the listeners or people who are thinking, because often I get messages like I'm thinking of a career in BIM, how do I do it really?
And I'm starting to see now as well, some dedicated courses and degrees in BIM. But whereas when I don't think they were, they existed when you were becoming an architect as well. Do you have any advice for up and coming BIM enthusiasts these days on how to go about a career and follow in your footsteps per se?
If you were given [00:15:00] advice to you 10 years ago, what would you say? 10 years ago?
Alfonso Monedero: I would say first, because one of my fears when I was starting to be labeled as the Revit guy is, we still do the site. When we're doing a project, it's not the creative people and then the BIM guys, we're all part of the same team.
So I remember a quote when John Kennedy was becoming president of the U S and he was doing the space race of against the USSR. So he visited NASA and he was going around and asking, what's your job? So he was asking a janitor, what's your job here? She said, my job is to put the man on the moon.
So my job here at Heatherwick is to make great projects happen. Yes, even though I'm the Revit guy, I'm not gonna start designing, but my job is to make those ideas become something real. So I still feel part that every project we do, it's, I have a little bit of influence in those. [00:16:00] Nice. So for somebody who starts into the BIM career.
Don't be afraid of getting out of the design part,
Stephen Drew: because
Alfonso Monedero: you will still be part of the design team. So it's in a different role. And without you, maybe that project is going to be more difficult to become real.
Stephen Drew: Yeah, that's it. That's inspiring. It sounds like as well, in that influence that you mentioned, You work in as part of a team, you're a team player and the communication piece, because sometimes when we think of, again, there's this terrible misconception of the Reddit guy, right?
When actually we're talking about technology, which is enabling projects, as you say, but then. It sounds like to me, then the communication piece is important. Is that something that you've had to learn over time? Like how to work with architects? Cause I'm sure you get some architects that are like, yes, bring on the tech.
Some people like, no way. And is it as a learning piece like [00:17:00] that, getting to know people and develop those skills in that area? I think. For me.
Alfonso Monedero: Yeah, that was easy because I was on that side. Yeah. Oh yeah, true. Yeah. Before moving to the uk I was the head of design. Yeah. So I was the guy just doing the renders and doing the rhino models and doing a little bit of drawings, but that was a little part of my task.
Yeah. So when I move here okay, these are me couple of months ago, so I know how to speak to that. So I. I know that what they do matters. It's not just about hitting the deadline. It's about how we can hit the deadline with the best design possible. So when I look for people in the market, for me, the key thing is that they value the design.
It's not just, I need to produce 50 drawings, they need to be clear and the parts have to be readable and the dimension needs to be out of the wall. And we need to [00:18:00] push for the design to become as good as it can be with the timeframe we have, because when we bring into the studio, somebody that has a different mentality and doesn't value that much the design part.
Stephen Drew: Yeah.
Alfonso Monedero: She's going to have a clash with the design team. Yeah. And it's difficult to win it when you are in a creative space. Yeah. Yeah. So when the motto that most is. Make spaces that bring joy and delight to people.
Stephen Drew: Yeah. Yeah. Makes sense is I can, the more you talk about it, the more I can see your background in architecture really lends itself.
So that's an interesting point as well, because maybe rather than just going straight into BIM, which you could do, but it sounds like actually having that base in architecture really helps with your job, do you think? Without that, it would be much more difficult to be, to lead and coordinate the BIM projects you do if you didn't have that background in architecture.
In a design firm,
Alfonso Monedero: definitely. [00:19:00] If you want just to be a BIM guy, you can do it in a project management, do it in the construction phase. You don't need any design appetite for that. You just need to get it built. Or you can be for a contractor, the BIM manager for a contractor. But if you're looking into how to.
Coordinate BIM or manage the BIM or even strategic thinking, I would say you need to try different positions. You need to be a part two and get into a project and understand the process of the project. You need to be a design person for at least a month so that you have been on that side. Until you decide, okay, BIM is what I want to do for whatever reason.
Stephen Drew: Yeah.
Alfonso Monedero: And then you can jump into this career. But if it's the first thing you do. Yeah. I think you're missing the other side of the spectrum. Yeah. That duality, I think it's key.
Stephen Drew: Yeah, no, that, that makes complete sense. And again, this could be really useful for anyone. So say now, let's pretend [00:20:00] you need someone to join your team.
As you do, because you can't do it alone. So you, yeah. You, how many people do you work with on your team at the moment? Do you have some BIM Coordinators that work with you typically?
Alfonso Monedero: Yeah, so my teaming, it's agile in the sense of that grows and decreases with the workflow. Yeah. But it's between three and six.
Oh, cool. That's the size. Yeah, a nice size. I have a small team on purpose so that we are not the Revit for everything guys. Yeah. So we can, we have to delegate due to time constraints. And it's not just the design team is doing the crazy part and then we have the production team. So by having a small team,
Stephen Drew: we
Alfonso Monedero: force them to engage into the production side.
Because sometimes when you are drawing on 2D in Revit, you still need to think about how to solve something. Yeah. If you need to have that back and forth about, I am just producing, you are designing, whenever you encounter that, you have to push back. Have the decision. Send it through with a [00:21:00] sketch, with a hand drawing, with a DWG, whatever, and model it.
And that's very efficient.
Stephen Drew: Yeah.
Alfonso Monedero: But going back to your question about when I look for somebody, I need that person that is fluent in Revit. Yeah. That I would appreciate that they understand Rhino or they have worked in Rhino. It doesn't need to be completely fluent or the most Agile person, but that understand why we do things in other software.
And that has an appetite for design.
Stephen Drew: Yeah. Oh, cool. And it, it's interesting how it's changed from when you were talking before about there was no one and you were by default, the best suited person and then you fall into love it. Whereas now it seems like there are a lot more people doing it, but.
It's also quite inspiring. So do you think equally then? So it sounds have you also seen the other scenario where maybe people weren't initially looking like yourself [00:22:00] to be the BIM expert, but maybe they're an architectural assistant, then they do more and more BIM on a project. And then you'll, you go Hey, have you thought about this?
Does that kind of thing happen where people become BIM coordinators from within, or is it tend to be that you get people from, External applying out of interest. So that happened
Alfonso Monedero: to me and that happens to all the people we have in house. That the transition didn't happen inside the studio, but that transitions have happened for people that they didn't have any BIM coordinator expertise.
Yeah. Yeah. They were just good in Revit have some minor knowledge and we get them in houses. The BIM guy, that was the first time they were labeled as that. So that has happened, but I haven't seen anybody in the studio saying, Oh, my passion is doing Revit models.
Stephen Drew: Yeah, fair enough. You can, you can fall in love with certain things over time.
So I was wondering one [00:23:00] thing that maybe you can help me with, because within BIM, the other question that I get, because with architecture, you've got to get that beautiful CV. Clean and crisp and then you focus a lot on the portfolio and especially imagining the architectural assistants coming in.
They're gonna bring their A game because it's cool projects. How do you do a portfolio in BIM? Do you even need one? How do you What's your advice for someone trying to construct a BIM career? Do they just need a good CV or do you recommend that? They do still work on a portfolio, but perhaps they show systems and logics and
Alfonso Monedero: So the portfolio, it's very needed.
You cannot distinguish like the right candidate for the less fit candidate just with a CV. With a portfolio, what we're looking for is complexity of the project. It could be a massive project and very simple, like you're doing Travelodge or Costco warehouses. It could be a massive project and very simple, like you're doing Travelodge or Costco warehouses.[00:24:00]
Or it can be a small project but very complicated, so I look at complexity of projects, the depth, so whether they have been doing RIBA stage 3 or 4, so that could be showing you how they can manage with drafting views, but also with model views, plan views, everything. And it doesn't need to be in the same project.
So you can have one project showing complexity and another project showing technical and modeling skills. That's key when, yeah, everybody can do curtain walls, but when you encounter something complicated,
Stephen Drew: how
Alfonso Monedero: you start pushing the boundaries of Revit to achieve whatever you want. You want. So those are the three things that I look into our portfolio.
Stephen Drew: Okay. That's cool. I feel like I've been given some wrong advice or even I'm learning here. Cause I think the portfolio is not needed so much, but actually it really is. Cause then you're seeing all this [00:25:00] stuff. And the other cool thing from what you said is actually. Cause I think some people could be intimidated by the super cool projects here, and they're like, Oh, but you're, that doesn't matter per se, you're looking for the person that's handled that complicated project.
So if it's not glamorous, but they're still good. You will, you can see through that, right? Yeah, complexity of the
Alfonso Monedero: geometry could be in a piece of furniture. It doesn't need to be like urban scale. It could be very small, but challenging. Yeah. So in that sense, we just don't look into the previous practices that somebody has been working on.
It's about, The individual. Yeah. Very difficult. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not the best at doing that, but I have some people in my team that are really good at looking at those spatial skills that we value. Fair
Stephen Drew: enough. Very cool. I was going to pick your brains and some stuff. Yeah, that's cool.
Cause time we're recording this 2024 [00:26:00] and. There's some cool stuff going on, and AI is a bit of a buzzword, we're gonna lose our jobs, all this stuff. I don't think about that, but from a tech point of view, right? Because, you know I'm wondering, are you starting to see artificial intelligence and all this stuff starting to creep into what you do here?
Or has it not really creeped in yet in terms of your department and your remit? So We cannot
Alfonso Monedero: neglect what is happening, so we need to open our minds of what is happening in the world. We try to be industry leaders in the sense that whatever kind of technology is coming, we need to test it and we need to implement if it's useful for us.
And AI, it's AI, it's so broad, it's like saying what does that mean? Yeah, of course. We are bringing AI in different spectrums. Yeah. So generative AI. Everybody knows about Mid Journey or DALI so we have [00:27:00] been implementing our own version of those with Stable Diffusion. So that's not directly to my department, it's more into the design part.
But the key with AI in this spectrum is not to be controlled by the technology. So you have to control the technology, otherwise you're losing the touch.
Stephen Drew: Yeah.
Alfonso Monedero: So in the beginning, when people start posting things on LinkedIn or Facebook or whatever, I was telling them, say, me journey, darling, me journey, darling.
So I could tell the tool they used to produce the image. And it was very obvious because they have very different fields. Yeah. So we thought this is not good enough for us. If we do these, we're just going to be another firm. So we cannot go this route. So we started training our own models. And we have our own models that they, when we ask for an image, it actually looks as a render that has been produced inside the studio.
Maybe it [00:28:00] doesn't have the quality for client presentations, but it's good to start a conversation. Yeah. So when we look into all the parts of AI that we can implement in the BIM site, we have done our own Revit co pilot. How cool. We have implemented. Oh wow. It's trained with our own standards, our own guidelines and workflows.
That's nice. So then you can go into Revit, you have these, you remember Clippy in Word back
Stephen Drew: in the days? Yeah. What's your version of Clippy? It's going to be something else. So
Alfonso Monedero: yeah, so we have our version of
Stephen Drew: Clippy inside Revit. It could be BIM y, there you go, you should take it before, all it does, you can't have it, it's out of the way.
Alfonso Monedero: Yeah, when I was presenting this is my idea, we're gonna do it, it was the Revit icon with the eyes for the clip, it
Stephen Drew: was so creepy. Oh, I love it, do you know what's really interesting, because, I'm guilty of initially doing the most generic mid journey things, you put an image out, go, Hey, so cool.
But [00:29:00] actually, initially I thought the creativity stuff would be I do AI, but in terms of my business, which is a bit different than an architectural practice, however, I use AI a lot for the mundane stuff, getting things going, trying to get rid of the repetitive tasks, so sometimes. I will ask my AI script to look at a bunch of data and bring me those values.
And every now and then it will hallucinate. I'm like, why are you doing this? But I can really bizarrely see the value in that. The mundane stuff. I would just like anecdotally how you feel about it as well. So the mid journey aside, do you think that you can use AI to do more of that stuff as well?
How do you feel about it? Like on a, do you feel positive about it? I think
Alfonso Monedero: I feel very positive. Yeah. You cannot. Something to AI and just take it as finished material. No, you have to treat it as your part one assistant. I would say, yeah, that
Stephen Drew: is such a good analogy on there. You need to still red pen the AI.
Yeah.
Alfonso Monedero: [00:30:00] You will not get the part one drawings and just sign it with your name. Say I've done this, man, because you will be in trouble.
Stephen Drew: Yeah.
Alfonso Monedero: So these three is the same thing. You can go to. We use it a lot, ask for, okay, make BMPython script that is getting all the doors and tell me they are mirrored or not.
And you get the script, you need to correct it because you paste it in Dynamo in the Python and it's not going to work, but you have 80 percent of the work done. These just need to go uncorrected, for
Stephen Drew: example. Fair enough. I've made the mistake of trusting it. I think a few times it works and you go, great.
And then you look and you're like, Oh gosh, why did I publish that without looking at it? So I used to like it because personally I struggle with writing. It's because an architect needs to do lots of different things. And when it came to the dissertation, I think and you will laugh because I actually did my dissertation on interactive virtual models.[00:31:00]
Around Revit, BIM, how, the 3D game engines coming in. I went off on a tangent and I think that in that way, AI helps focus these things. And, it can help, but it can go off as well. Do you think then, so people get caught up in it, losing jobs. I don't think that will happen. I think it's a tool, but do you think people need to be worried that AI is going to.
Replace the BIM Technician. I
Alfonso Monedero: think they should be worried if they're not embracing it. So AI is not gonna replace you, but a person using AI will replace you. Yes. You're not using it. Yeah. It's people who neglect AutoCAD back in the days. Yeah, because I just keep doing things by hand.
You will be replaced by somebody using AutoCAD. Yeah, if they have the same skills, like creative skills, then we replace it because he will be faster.
Stephen Drew: Yeah.
Alfonso Monedero: Still there is a niche for those people. They will not just go job [00:32:00] less, but the amount of decisions that would be open for them would be reduced.
Yeah. So it is the same. Don't fear it, just adopt it and use it on your benefit. Yeah. Very cool. 'cause if not, you'll gonna be behind the crowd. So when you need to stand. Ahead of the crowd, somehow. Some people specialize in that. Some people specialize in scripting and doing grasshopper. Or other people do visualizing.
Be different by doing something. And it could be AI, and I think that's the right way of doing it. Doing it right now because once it's
Stephen Drew: surrounding us,
Alfonso Monedero: you cannot escape it.
Stephen Drew: Yeah. I was actually impressed without going too much off on the tangent with Claude AI at the moment, because I run a website and unfortunately, you remember earlier, you talked about sometimes in your role, you'll get pulled into coding and you're like, Oh gosh, I wish you didn't have to, but.
It's actually a really good skill to do, but I found that I'm not [00:33:00] an expert coder, but using AI as an assistant while coding is really helpful to learn. Do you think that AI could be used for more of that coding stuff, especially in architecture and design? So I think
Alfonso Monedero: it's used and it can be used more.
But going back, you need to correct it. So it's the same if you have a text in English and you want to translate it into French or Chinese. You're not going to send it saying, this is my French. You need to know French or ask somebody who speaks French to correct it if it has made some mistakes. So let's say you're doing a code in Python or C Sharp or Java, whatever it is.
And then you put it, it's not working. It's not working. How do I fix it? Either you have some basic knowledge of that language. Yeah. Or it's going to be very tricky. It's assisting you. It's doing 80 percent of the code, but 20 percent of [00:34:00] polishing.
Stephen Drew: Yeah,
Alfonso Monedero: you need to know it. I learned Python. I'm super rusty with that, so if I have to do something, it will take me for ages.
But I can read. Okay, so you give me a Python script, I go through this. Okay, I understand what it's doing. Okay. And I can see some mistakes if it's not that complicated. So that's the kind of understanding that you need. And then you can use AI too, that saves you in like creating complicated things.
Stephen Drew: Yeah, it's really interesting.
So I do that with web design. I can read CSS, PHP. If you asked me to do it from scratch, I couldn't. But I find that really valuable. So on that basis, would you still encourage people, especially in, in, in this sector, in your profession, people look up to you, would you say, Hey, It is still a good skill to do to learn a bit of this code, even if you're rustic and it's still useful.
It's very useful. Yeah.
Alfonso Monedero: So if you're either into. Parametric design, [00:35:00] or you don't like to do repetitive tasks, so you need to automate things. And we can do from the design part, just doing crazy geometry. Or from the BIM side, just putting tags on doors in 2, 000 views. Yeah. You don't want to go one by one.
If you start learning even Python, which is way easier than C Sharp. Yeah. It can make a big difference. So you can go into Python and make a simple script and save you hours of mundane tasks that nobody enjoys. And then you can spend your time learning more Python, which is enriching, and teaching others so that you make this community.
Because I remember when I came back to Heatherwick in 2018, I didn't know any coding. So I was staying, after I finished, one hour, every single day, learning. It was after my job was finished, but it was worth it because it's just one hour every day. But the time you just go through a year, [00:36:00] it's a lot of hours that you have been learning
Stephen Drew: and you're putting into practice.
Yeah. And that's a personal skill that you can use professionally wherever you are. That stays with you, isn't it? It stays forever. Yeah. Think that's really important and the, one of the questions rounding off this to the end. Do you think then, do you have any feelings of where this industry's going, especially in terms of tech, because I've seen the right, I mentioned my poor dissertation, of cool 3D game engines.
At the time, Twinmotion was just starting up, and now we're seeing a lot of real time renders connecting with BIM and all this stuff. You've got Enscape, you've got all these cool tools which didn't exist before. But where do you see it going in the next five to 10 years? Hey, if we look at this in five to 10 and we're not there, it's cool.
But have you got any excited thoughts about which way it's going?
Alfonso Monedero: So I like to[00:37:00]
think that in a positive way. Yeah. Yeah. So I start feeling that we will need less of specialist teams as one software. Yeah. That people know in workflows. So how to get from A to B from example in these offers from Rhino to Revit and from any software into Twinmotion or Enscape or Unreal, you don't need to be the full expert in Unreal or in V Ray or Any software, but managing the workflows and being able to do more than just one thing.
So when BIM started, you just needed the Revit guys, you needed the Rhino guys and put them into the same room until they start talking to each other. Yeah. I see the value is about somebody that can rub this up. Define workflows, implement them, make them more efficient, and save hours. Because with AI, we see a lot of automation happening, and we don't need to go through the models and solving quick things, hopefully in the next 3 4 [00:38:00] years, that will be automatically done.
Yeah. But we still need to produce. The deliverables, so you need to start expanding the scope so it's not just specialists in doing schedules. Okay, just going to a very silly example, but somebody that can get a project through the whole life cycle and it's valuable in an early stage, stage one, and also in a stage four and doing the whole project.
Stephen Drew: I think that's great advice. Any overcrease is building up to that. It doesn't happen overnight as well, doesn't it? I think everyone can get that. The last question I was going to say for me is, me and you, we were knocking around in, I mentioned I was getting trained up in Revit in 2014.
Sorry, Aaron Barry again. My BIM career's gone like this, yours has gone like this, right? Imagine how people are coming into it now, in 2024. [00:39:00] Do you have any bits of advice for them? Imagine you were here, with all you know, what would you do differently? Or what would you do the same? So
Alfonso Monedero: first, if I had my crystal ball, when I was in university, Crystal ball allowance, yeah.
I would have learned Rhino and Revit when I was in university and ditched AutoCAD. So whenever I start saying, Oh yeah, we can do things in 3D, we can cut a section and the section is there. And now, Yeah. Yes. We got introduced to all planned. 2005. It was in German. I didn't speak German, so I was like, what the hell this icon means?
But early embracement don't think that the technology can diminish your creativity. Yeah. So you start embracing technology as early as possible and don't stick to just one software, learn two, learn three. One tool cannot do everything because if you have one tool [00:40:00] to do everything.
It's not the best for anything. So you need the right tool for the right task. So do your design, wherever you feel more confident. If it's a sketch up. Good for you. I don't recommend it, but good for you. Oof.
Stephen Drew: You've, I, yeah, no, no sketch, even though I'm saying, sorry, SketchUp. Listen, if you want to sponsor this in the future, I'll remove it.
But until then, no SketchUp models. So you can go
Alfonso Monedero: Maya, you can go Rhino, whatever you want. Oh, yeah. And documenting, the best documenting tool, whether you feel it's ArchiCAD We don't have a sponsor for ArchiCAD or Revit, so we can't mention all of them. Yeah we're, it's a free zone, we're cool.
It's agnostic, software agnostic. Documenting tool. Design tool, Visualizing tool, and with the three of them, you can learn. So don't stick yeah, I know Revit, it's done, I will have my career in Revit. Just don't stick to that.
Stephen Drew: The last thing I'll say on that, I hear the talk before, I forget who the person was, but it really stuck with me.
He said, always on the project. To get the outcome that they wanted, [00:41:00] they would learn as much as the tools and the tech they needed. Then they got the outcome, they would leave it and go on to the next thing, not feeling, as you say, wed into the software. It's I'm going to have to do coding for this.
I'll do it. Okay. Now I need to do Revit for this. I'll do it. Would you agree that's a good attitude to have in terms of the push your career forward? So the
Alfonso Monedero: good thing about learning new tools is that you can see into learning another one. So when you do languages,
it's good that you learn the tool, but don't think that's the end of it because we don't know what will happen in five years time. Maybe Autodesk is teaching Revit and now we have everything in four months. Oh yeah, my career is over because my software is no longer used. Many people transition from AutoCAD to Vectorworks and then to Revit and then to ArchiCAD and then to Revit again.
So it's that agility and that mentality that it's not the end of [00:42:00] the process until you retire. Got it. So nowadays it's Revit. For most of the practices in UK it can be something else in three, four years time. And I really think that the landscape of tools should be broader and have the opportunity to choose whatever you prefer and not have the monopoly we have right now.
Stephen Drew: Yeah. No offense. It's quite exciting in that front, isn't it? Maybe if we could have the crystal ball, we'll see what happens when you look back at this in 10 years, if lots changed, or maybe you're, maybe the coding won't be rusty and you'll be keeping coding again. Who knows, right? Or maybe half of the role will be.
With your AI assistant, Bimmy, who knows, right? They will be doing it, but no at this point, I normally like to say to the guests, cause I always feel it's unfair. I get to ask the questions and I like to geek off about BIM. You have to keep reining me in and all this stuff. However, do you have any questions for me?
It could be about my [00:43:00] previous career in BIM. Sorry, again, Aaron Perry. It could be about today, because I do a lot of speaking to students and, they ask me questions about BIM, it could be about that. Do you have any questions about me or the Architecture Social, anything you'd like to ask at all?
How did you start Architectural Social? Oh, it was a pandemic project. Okay. Yeah. Oh, and there's quite one or two cool tech stuff in it. Because there was nothing to do. And I was furloughed from my job and I'm a functioning workaholic and I needed something to do. And so we set up the Architecture Social.
And initially it was my idea of helping part ones and part twos get a job in a pandemic because there was nothing around. And it was initially a forum and it was cool people come in and I was flattered, like BIM Manager would come and I was like, Oh my God, that's cool. Didn't think they'd come. That's amazing.
Get a director, and all these cool people came. And then in there, you'll laugh we were, the podcast from this came because there were cool people in the forum. And I was like, I really want to keep it informal and [00:44:00] just learn, like when you have in the chat, bit like us now, hopefully you felt, we just talk a bit of wisdom, people can enjoy it, whatever, it's easy.
But then during it, this is the bit you'll laugh at. We actually did a BIM course. Yeah, I didn't, I got guests to come in and it was all like, it wasn't like, hey, we polished and tried, it was for free, so it was totally open source, but with that it was a bit, it was, we, we were rough around the edges, but it was really cool.
And you'd have some people that would learn, and I learned some harsh lessons in that. You do an event and we did one competition and I was convinced it was like, and there was this chap called Simon Murphy, I think. And he's a really nice guy and he was really enthusiastic and he made this competition and, and basically would teach people to do Revit and there was all this cool stuff and people had to build.
An extension to this house and the best one would win the competition and no one entered. And that I learned [00:45:00] from that, yeah, I learned from that. I was like, even the greatest idea in the world. Sometimes the person's got to want to do it. Whereas then what I would do is if I did a a podcast episode and I said, these are the top 10 softwares you need to learn, or you will get left behind.
Everyone watches that. But the really valuable piece. It was not there. And then that, and that's where I'm always constantly learning as well. And it's probably one thing you could, cause you've got to get people to be buy into it. Some people are always attacked more, adverse initially you can get them there in the end, but, and that's a few things I learned in the social.
And so we still do stuff like that. But I definitely don't take sponsors. I, one time when I was very early on. I did have a company ask for me to promote them, and it didn't sit right with me, and it didn't turn out well, and in the end I would never do it again. And so I learned with that, you [00:46:00] always, my mantra now is keep it for free, keep all this stuff out there, we all learn, we all work it out together but you have to be careful in that space, because with all the innovations, Some companies disappear, you'll see like this amazing ad on it and then it's gone.
But yeah, the social started out like that. And I think I'm curious where, me and you being honest, where it will be in two, three, four years, because we're all changing in the industry and how also we're digesting content is different. Like this will get more engagement. Then that beautiful competition, but this has been a good conversation as well.
But who knows, and maybe as you mentioned in your BIM software, where you've got your BIM assistant, that's probably the way people will engage with all your knowledge, you just don't know. So I think like the social will be there, but I think the method in which it changes is very different. And I see it as a series of logic.
With creativity and I think the logic's there, [00:47:00] but keeping it creative is quite challenging. Sorry I went on a roundabout. Yeah. Was that useful? That was useful, yeah. It keeps changing. It keeps changing, but I think AI will change it a lot. And the, oh, the last thing. I'll say, so on our website, the architecture social.com, I have a free a chat bot.
Okay. And the chat bot I've embedded And you'll find this tech, 'cause you've mentioned you've got your AI system. Yeah. It's embedded in all the architecture social stuff. So I've trained it as well on them. However, even it's all focused every now and then, because I can see the conversations about the person's details and what they're looking for.
And I will constantly, once a week, get someone go, draw me a house. And it doesn't work like that. It's Hey I could. So I think it's quite interesting to see what people want out of it, but you can't just make miracles. They want shortcuts
Alfonso Monedero: and you cannot have shortcuts.
Yeah, and
Stephen Drew: have somebody pushing you in your back, but there's no shortcuts. Design me a floor plan for my next house. It don't work like [00:48:00] that. And I think that's quite a nice sentiment. Actually you'll always need the architect and the BIM manager and the Shaktipati, how
Alfonso Monedero: can I make a YouTube channel that makes a million dollars per year?
Yeah, I'd love to
Stephen Drew: know that one. But yeah we'll, I don't have the solution. Don't worry. Me and you both. But listen, thank you so much El, for being here. I really appreciate it. Before you go, the last thing to the audience, if they want to get in touch with you, maybe they want to work, we'd be able, maybe they're an inspiring BIM Enthusi technology, enthusiastic you.
Where do they find you?
Alfonso Monedero: I think the easiest way it's through LinkedIn. I'm open to everybody messaging me. So if you want to get in contact, just find me on LinkedIn. I'll find someone out there. There isn't many that work in Heatherwick, so it would be fairly easy
Stephen Drew: and drop me a message.
Alfonso Monedero: Excellent.
Stephen Drew: Thank you so much.
I really appreciate it. And thank you to the audience. And if you're a listener as well, I really appreciate it. I'm going to end the podcast here. Thank you everyone. Take care.