Our friends Scott Doorley and Scott Witthoft over at the D-School of Stanford have released a new book, and we are in it! The book is called Make Space: How to Set the Stage for Creative Collaboration and is available for purchase on Amazon.

It is a book all on making interesting spaces, and each project in the book is very thoroughly outlined from original inspiration and need, to design to fabrication.

For the book we used an in house project of our downstairs library space, as seen here in the finished phase. Pick up a copy and check out the whole project!

It's so nice and pretty to work with aluminum.
Here, a wood backed aluminum sign with acrylic spacer for the floating bits.

This sign is for our ongoing clients over at Clifbar.
Here is some of the other work we have done for them, and some more recent stuff.

We just love how nice and clean this came out, and the font is super cool too!

Soon to come: photos of this whole completed project!

We've just put up our tree in the office!

Decorated the library....

And put lights on our robots!

Happy Holidays from all of us at BWC!

Jeffrey McGrew, our principal and co-founder, gave a keynote speech at Autodesk University this year! The whole keynote is embedded above, and Jeffrey's on around 24 minutes in.

Core 77 also transcribed his speech, and posted it on there blog, with a nice little forward.

We are renovating a historic building in Southern California to be an office building and machine shop. It is a big fun project! And we are finalizing the design concepts now.

Here is the facade of the building, a cleaned up and renovated version of the current existing historical building. To the right is the building's parking lot and on the left is the enclosed patio and then machine shop.

The machine shop facade echos the office building in shape, but then plays with different materials. We are making the designs here very solar conscious, which is why we have the slats in front of the windows. Due to the intense sun down there, we feel it is necessary to optimize shade with the exterior treatments so the interior cooling of the buildings can be at a minimum.

Here the conference room looks out onto the patio, which is shaded with greenery and stretched fabric shades. We are designing the whole interior, patio and much of the furniture for this project... so stay tuned for more updates on that!

Come to East Bay Mini Maker Faire this Sunday!

Use this code and get a discount on tickets: BECAUSEWECAN
You can buy tickets here

Use that code and get 15% off tickets for the event on Sunday, October 16th
at the Park Day School campus + Studio One Art Center in the Temescal district of Oakland

We'll be there!
& hope to see you there!!!

This Friday - Oct. 14th - 6PM to 10PM
2500 Kirkham St, Oakland

We are having a Halloween Open House, and all are invited!

WATCH! As a giant robot moves using the powers of E-Lec-TricitY.... and CUTS! everything in it's path!

MARVEL! As EVIL Professor Kitty SHREDS! another office chair!

COME! To West Oakland! and see some ART in progress!!!

It will be horrifying in the best way.
Hope to see you here!

Because We Can
2500 Kirkham St.
Oakland
510-922-8846

Costumes and extra drink welcome!

Our good friends over at Envie Interactive have created an amazing interactive environment that you can (and should!) go play in online. It's called VIE, and it is free to play!

But they came to us to for help creating an environment for themselves in this world.

Distressed Patina Aluminum letters with a nice back shadow display their company name when you first walk through the doors.

And to accompany the signage, a glowing 'V' in the shape of their logo. The 'V' encases an LED flexible tube light that mimics neon, but never gets hot and uses hardly any power. We love that!

It is a dramatic symbol that is seen from the font door in its glowing majesty.

Cryptic slabs of stone with 'ancient' secret messages were created to be found in the game.... and in reality!

It's now as cool a place to work as it is online!

Because We Can showed up on the East Bay Mini Maker Faire site the other day in a cool article about what we will be presenting at the Faire on October 16th.

What's that? You've never heard of East Bay Mini Maker Faire? (or... EBMMF??)
Well this is its second year and it is super fun!
One day only, October 16th, in the Temescal neighborhood of Oakland.
You can find all the deets on it here.

We hope to see you there!
It's a great collection of local Makers. And though it's not as big as the big official MakerFaire, is's certainly big enough to keep your interest for one day. See you there!

A couple months ago we signed on to help with Form & Reform's project for the Burning Man festival: The Serpent Twins project. After a very busy few months (and one very dusty adventure!) they came together wonderfully.

The final two fully-drivable serpent sculptures not only look amazing, they are filled with color-changing LEDs. Color and video routines can play down their entire length, creating stunning effects. With a full sound system and accelerometer built into each head, the lights can also change and react depending on the movement and sound as they drive along.

One of the main parts we helped out with were the tails.

While the heads were largely handmade, the tails were fully digitally fabricated. It took a combination of software tools to make this happen. The graceful original form was modeled in Revit, bulkheads and bolts then rationalized in Inventor, and the skin unfolded in Rhino. The digital files for the entire thing were sent out for high-definition CNC plasma cutting. The internal frame slotted together, welded, and then the skins were bolted on. The 'carvel' style skinning lends the tails a very viking ship look and construction, while the fasteners and finishing fit into the overall aviation-theme.

The sheet metal skins of the tails are bolted around a bulkhead frame...

And then attached to their own trailer, where we hide the batteries and generator.

We also designed and milled the thick acrylic decorative glowing medallions to adorn the sides of the serpents.

The white Serpent's body is made up of white plastic barrels that glow from within with LEDs. And the black Serpent has black metal barrels with scale designs plasma-cut cut into them, allowing the same LED light-show to glow ominously. We made many templates, jigs, and fixtures via our CNC machine to help support the largely hand-made processes Form & Reform's traditional blacksmithing demands.

Each head is built on small electric car that is super fun and easy to drive, and all the barrels track so perfectly that you can weave in and around people and things in a most snake-like way. But of course, you must be wearing a winged aviator cap to operate these vehicles! As Kyrsten Mate so fashionably displays...

Check out more photos on Flickr!

UPDATE: Now with video! Here's a nice movie showing how wonderfully they move.

Just posted to our projects page, the rolling, fold up kiosks we made for Anno Domini Art Gallery in San Jose.

They have debuted at the San Jose first Fridays, and will be a regular there, so go check em out sometime!

Here they are all folded up during the day:

This is the cool wall on the back of Anno Domini, also worth checking out!

And here they are getting shipped!

check out our project page of these for more photos & info!

This Friday, join us in downtown San Jose for another ArtCar Fest!

We will be hanging out around the awesome gallery AnnoDomini, and the cool cars will be in the parking lot right next door.

We recently made these giant rolling art kiosks for the gallery, come check em out!

Cool cars like this one from Jon Sarriugarte, Form & Re-Form will be there (yup, that's a car seat in the front).

And definitely this totally awesome one from the artist Philo, co-founder of Envie Interactive.

Here is a good article to read if you need to get inspired to go.

Hopefully we will see you there!
6PM-11PM
Anno Domini Gallery
366 South First Street San Jose, CA 9511

Our recent trip down to southern California and Arizona was inspiring and fun!

There is so much great architecture out that way. From SoCal's beach front Googie
buildings, to LA's modern landscape to Arizona's old west, we took it all in, and came back inspired.

We traveled to Huntington Beach for the RTC conference, where we gave a presentation on digital fabrication and the processes we have created in-house to realize a workflow from design to fabrication. The conference was great. Lots of very knowledgeable people, great classes and a small enough venu that we were able to talk and meet many great new people.

Huntington beach is literally 'Surf City USA'… where all those cool guys were surfing in the 60's. Now it's a cute resort town with beautiful views, so the conference location was great!

Here is Jillian, enjoying those said views…

From there we traveled down to San Diego, going along the shore past Laguna Beach. This area of CA is filled with old Googie buildings. We love it!
This enormous Googie structure is an upscale clothing store.

Just look at that awesome light!

Continuing South through Laguna Beach we heard tale of an amazingly decorated Tiki Bar. Turns out it's once famed interior has been renovated, so it is not as impressive as it was years ago. They do, however, have a great Tiki mug you can get. Which of course, we did. Love the menu graphics too!

Onto San Diego where the SoCal Googie architecture does not stop.
From decorative shade walls...

To liquor stores. The Googie is everywhere!

And then further south even more to the Salton Sea, past Palm Springs and into the dessert where this forgotten town lends its self to amazing photo ops.

Parts of the Salton Sea are slowly sinking into the ground. Abandoned trailers from another time.

Investigating that area further you will find outsider art environments that blow your mind, and expand your imagination. You suddenly realize how many ways there are to live in this world.

From Salvation Mountain

to Slab City

And then into The Center of the World

A place that holds the worlds history.... from one man's point of view...

Into Arizona the architecture changes from whimsy art enviroments and space age futurism to Old West ghost towns and abandoned mines.

A different kind of beautiful given to us from this barren desert landscape.

Cruzing back home, we make a stop in LA, to soak in more SoCal art and culture.
Culver City gives us huge awesome murrals where ever we seem to turn...

And fun ideas with modern arcitecture.
Check out the cool green acrylic over glass windows on the front of this school!

And onto newly renovated LACMA

And of course, the Bruce Goff-designed Pavilion for Japanese Art, which is such an amazing building, designed to hold japanese calligraphy paintings.

We return to the Bay Area, happy to be home in our temperate weather, and fully inspired from the architecture all around us.

The Serpent Twins are coming along, but still have lots to go.
The heads of each critter is framed out, and now come all the details and finishing bits.

One Serpent will be all black, and one all white. Here the white one awaits it's head...

The fins for the "backs" of the serpents were cut out of sheet metal, then welded together.

in the end, they will look like this:

More to come soon!

Behind the scenes at Because We Can...

Jillian and Jeffrey look at reference material in the Design Library:

Professor Kitty, our studio cat and Director of Public Relations, takes a quick rest on the floor:

Jeffrey and Frank (our CNC) spend a little quality time together:

Fun with textures!

Working away in the shop!

And finally.... it's the BWC robot! Say "Hi!"

A new-ish interior design magazine called Anthology has run an article on one of our favorite clients Hello!Lucky and the interior design in the homes of the two owners.

There are some great photos in the issue of work that we did for the Hello!Lucky office:

And some cool shots of some work that we did for the interior home of one of the owners:

Pick up an issue! It's a cool new magazine!

We were recently called out by Core 77 for our recent residential Library Loft project.

The post talks about all the space saving efficiencies we created within the structure.
From display storage in the curved stairs, to extra storage in the bench seating

Check out the Core 77 post here.

We did our first in-house metal bending, the other day, to create these 'Blast Screens'!
Carving out a positive form that the corners needed to bend to, then forming them in a press.

The metal has a subtel design etched into them -- using a diamond point etcher in the CNC!!

The screens attach onto these swiveling desks we made.

They can be placed into three different height positions with hardware that is built into the edge of the desk.

It is not clear yet if the blast screens are to protect from blasts coming from or aimed at the desks.... we shall see as things continue to progress...

A custom coffee table creation in a modern interpretation of a Hobnail Chest.

Here it is, in it's conceptual design phase (complete with awesome espresso machine):

We took this old style that was originally used to make safes, with wide metal strapping and big headed nails called "hobnails". They looked like this:

and re-invented it for a coffee table design, with some more modern aesthetic details added.
The doors and pulls for the doors are hidden among the bumps.

The aluminum corners and chrome wheels add a touch of modern hardware to this awesome old style.

We milled out a grid of holes to attach the "hobnails" in a perfect straight grid pattern.

A first coat of finish, then the hobnails were applied.

The waterbased dye and waterborne laquer were then applied to give it's final finish sheen.

A thick slab of polished glass is added to the top, giving a flat surface without having to cover any of the "hobnails". And the modern touches of aluminum corners, chrome wheels and dome headed bolts compliment the rest of the Project.

We have joined up with our friends John and Kyrsten over at Form & Reform to design and build a fun project for Burning Man!

The project has just launched its kickstater page. So please donate to the cause!

John and Kyrsten over at Form and Reform, have created magical pieces out of metal like the Golden Mean Snail Car, and the Zeppelini. Now we are working with them to turn these metal barrels into a Deco Nordic God creature called.... The Serpent Twins.

The front will be powered by these little electric cars...

And the barrels will be filled inside with programable LEDs. One of the serpents will be all dark metal with a "fire" light show on the inside. The other will be white barrels with a more etherial colorful light show.

You can read more about the evolution of the project on the Form and Reform site.
And dont forget to donate!

We recently had the opportunity to go to the Di Rosa, an amazing art preserve and gallery in Napa.

If you have never been there, it is definitely worth the trip. And there is wine! So it's hard to complain.

Two of our favorite pieces while we were there:

This awesome moose!
Made of tiny squares and rectangles of plywood as if pixilated.
Fantastic! (artist unknown)

And this amazing David Best car.
so cool!
Get the to Di Rosa!

Stage 1 of the 'Hot Sharp Toxic' room. This swiveling desk is the first stage of a larger project to turn a room in a private residence into a splendid mad science lair. More pictures here and on Flickr.

Check out our build video, where we show off the process we used to make these fantastically inlayed desks!

Come visit us in Sunny West Oakland this Thursday for a relaxed evening of talk about architecture, 60's vans and secret doors. Pretty much like every other night around here..... only this time YOU'RE invited!

It's staying light later and later, and getting warmer and warmer! We've completed that project from the last time you were here, and we're now working on more new crazy stuff! Our Maker Faire talk on the secrets of secret doors is slowly coming together and we just got hired to chop bike parts in half and bolt them to a wall. Come see how a bike wheel stays (or does not stay) together after you saw it in half!

What are you working on? We'd like to see and hear about it!

So please drop on by, we'd love to see you. Jeffrey still has not made beer, so while we'll have some it would be awesome if you could bring some too. We'll hang out. Eat some tasty snacks, and talk about the finer points of what we're all working on. Come join our community of designers, artists, big thinkers, and fabricators!

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

Thursday, May 12th 2011

6:30PM - 9:30PMish

2500 Kirkham St

Oakland, CA 94607

(510) 922-8846

Hope to see you here!

Lost? Lonely? Want to talk about how great sunny weather is? BWC help and social line: 510-922-8846

The latest piece on our loft project is the upstairs railing.
We made the stanchions in-house; cutting the aluminum and wood pieces on frank.

These are the aluminum side pieces. Just off the CNC and ready to be sanded, finished and assembled:

The wood centers. Glued up and ready to be dyed dark brown with our water based dying system:

And the aluminum top piece that will hold the rail itself:

All together, the final railing looks great.

Jeffrey and Sissily discuss their handy work.

A close up of the railing top.

A view from across the room.

The final addition will be a railing on the curved staircase.
More progress shots on that coming soon!

For a family with small children, we designed these window guards to go along the windows of their 8th floor flat.
Similar to the wooden window guards we made at another residence, except these are made of clear acrylic.

Made of clear acrylic, so we did not disrupt their amazing view of the city below. The acrylic is thick and sturdy and creates a wonderful subtle design.

The Window screens in the bedrooms are frosted acrylic, that catch the light beautifully and give more privacy.

The holes on either side of the window allow pegs to slot though to keep the windows up.

See our other window guard designs. And our Child and pet door designs too help round-out a baby-safe but good looking home.