Hello :)

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No I am not an expert, or any some sort of Revit Guru. I am just a guy who strives to do his best, learn all that I can from everyone, make improvements where I see them, and help share the knowledge that I have gained. 

My name is Alex Gore. I am a 28 year old  who lives in Colorado, and I make my living designing homes, providing CAD services, and creating BIM products. I have a wonderful beautiful fiance, we are getting married June 7th 2014, at a gorgeous retreat by Lyons Colorado. To the left is Annie (aka honey). As you can see she is a tomato thief :). If you click onto image you can see a video showing how we like to keep life fun. 


The Younger Years

I was born in 1985 in Rochester, Minnesota.  Though my childhood I was surrounded by paper and legos. My parents feet didn't appreciate the fact that the legos were always scattered on the floor, but they put up with the pain in order to let my imagination run wild.  My parents and grandparents provided me with the backsides of large calendar sheets to draw epic battles of ants vs. bees, and pirates vs. well... other pirates.  I soon took to drawing whole cities and eventually buildings. I made up my mind early that I would be an architect. Aiding my curiosity in buildings was my Grandma who took my brothers and myself on trips to see local architecture. Our adventures included Taliesin West by Frank Lloyd Wright, House on the Rock, and local historical self guided tours of downtowns. 

In highschool I took drafting to an extreme. By my senior year I somehow managed to take two drafting classes and go into the lab during my break period in order to work on my projects. I continued to improve on my drawing and design skills. By my junior year books opened my eyes to the larger world of thinking. My curiosity for knowledge and new ideas would aid in my later designs in college and later professionally.  

Proving Grounds


Getting older I realized that I needed a way to help pay for college. My uncle and cousins were in the National Guard and so was my older brother, but I decided against joining because I did not want to put myself through basic training. I then saw a special on PBS highlighted the dangers of unexploded mines in Afghanistan. They were showing the effects that left over mines had on unexpected children playing in fields. I thought “someone has to do something about this”. Not a moment later I knew I would join the National Guard as a combat engineer, whose job it is to also dispose of land mines. To train, I woke up an hour before school every day, loaded up my backpack with heavy books and went walking up my and down my hilly neighborhood. 


The Army


Basic training was not easy. I remember on the first day watching someone convulse, shake, fall to the ground, and foam at the mouth while 3 Drill Sergeants continued to yell and scream at her. I remember rolling around in vomit, watching “Sweats” (that what we called him) run straight into a metal building and bang his head against the wall. I remember our whole platoon screaming at our oldest private until he broke down and cried. I remember the platoon being put on 50/50 fireguard, which mean that during the night half of the platoon was up while the other half slept for the last two weeks of training, effectively cutting our sleeping time in half.  But most of all I remember sitting across a private on our last night. Everyone else had fallen asleep. The 50/50 fireguard had taken its toll on the rest of the platoon. His eyes close on the last night in Fort Leonard Wood as he told me that he was just resting. A hour later out of 70 or so young men who started out basic training with me, I was the only one left awake, and on the last morning at 4am I had the privilege of waking up the whole platoon, as the last man to stay awake. 


College


I entered North Dakota State University with the intent of making it into their architecture program. The competitive program only let in the top 50 students based on your first years GPA. Myself and 49 other classmates made it in. From day one I was a bookworm absorbing all the material that I could. By third year I grew into my own architecture skin and started winning competitions in my class. In fourth year I teamed up with my now business partner and designed “Grow” the skyscraper that asked the question, “If a building was a plant, how would it grow?” Lance and I won that competition and our friendship took off. Lance went on to win the Peter F. McKenzie prize for best Graduate Thesis, while I won the Alpha Rho Chi Medal, bestowed by the faculty to the one student who best exemplifies leadership, service, and the promise of professional merit. 


Career


After my first year of college, I went back to Fort Leonard Wood to finish advanced training. After my second year of college I started to get my own work during the summer. Ranging from large master plans for the cities of Pierre South Dakota, Sabin Minnesota, and Underwood North Dakota, to working on the future design of Universities with Ed Campus, I was starting my future in college.


My real break came during my graduate year. I wanted to move to New York, my dream city, and be employed by a time big firm. The problem was it was 2008 and while the crash had not happen yet, the job market in the Architecture industry was not what it use to be. I sent out over 50 applications, landed 3 interviews, and received an offer for an internship at Studio Daniel Libeskind immediately. Two out of the three firms were interested and one firm made me a formal $50,000 offer plus benefits, which was a lot of money to me just coming out of college.  I now had a choice between an internship paying less than minimum wage with a rock star firm or work for a ok for a good chunk of money. I chose to work for Daniel Libeskind (designer of the Denver Art Museum, The Jewish Museum – Berlin, and The New World Trade  Center Master Plan). Later I received a full time job offer from them after the 2008 crash. Here I furthered my professional design skills by working on winning international design competitions for Seoul Korea, and Abu Dhabi.  The fun didn't last long and the firm had to lay off a large portion of their staff in 2009 due to the recession.


Getting laid off was weird to say the least. I worked hard in school, worked hard at my job, and did what I was asked. I can still remember vividly taking taxis home at midnight rolling up the east side of Manhattan on Roosevelt and seeing the sleek silhouette of Corbusier’s United Nations Building out of my window. And with all of the work and devotion circumstance can take from you what you can not control. One can devote years to a path, dedicate yourself, and do “all the right things”, only ending up feeling thrown to the side.


Now it was back to the drawing boards, I decided to broaden my skill base and pursue a Master’s degree in Construction Management. Lance, my current business partner, was also laid off. We joined forces and created F9 Productions. While I am not the most wildly successful 28 year old.  With the help of Lance, we have made the dream of owning our own firm, creating interesting designs, and coming to a fun workplace everyday, and all 10 years earlier than we have thought. This site is dedicated to making your life more enjoyable and fruitful. 


This website is devoted to diluting the feeling of helplessness and a lack of control. If you ever feel scared about what your future holds, and wonder can you take care of yourself? This site is about more than Revit furniture, it’s about gaining valuable skills, giving out helpful tips, tricks, processes, and files, in order to help you take control. Creating your own firm, working for yourself, and growing your business is hard. It takes time, patience, a lot of effort and even a little bit of luck.  I hope to blog and write about these lessons, and bases of creating a good business along with how tools like Revit can put you on the cutting edge. Feel free to download the models on the “What is Revit” page, and coming soon will be a “Pro” tab that will offer more advanced tools to jump start your success.

Enjoy.

Alex

    How is it going, let me know your thoughts on the site?