Simon James Gallagher has been working in the Built Environment, in various roles for nearly 20 years. After completing a foundation course in Art & Design at Chelsea College of Art, London, he went on to study Interior Design at Bournemouth University. Around this time he was introduced to Autodesk’s Architectural Desktop 2, as well as Graphisoft’s ArchiCAD. He intuitively saw that this was the future and vowed to avoid it at all costs, because it was tricky.
He accepted his first job after graduating as a designer of roof trusses for a timber engineering company based in England’s North-West. Much to his dismay, he was forced back into the world of CAD/BIM because the software used allowed real-time engineering and analysis, plus CAD-CAM straight to manufacture functionality.
Escaping from that inferno of efficiency and productivity at the first possible chance, in 2003 he moved to what he perceived as the more relaxed, and creative, role of Architectural Assistant for a local architectural studio, only to discover that his old ArchiCAD and 3D modelling skills were back in demand for creating rendered photomontages, and other distinctly BIM-like tasks. It was whilst working in architectural practice that he studied a part-time HNC in Building Studies and joined CIAT.
Since that time, Simon has worked as an Architectural Technologist, grown in seniority and experience, all whilst avoiding the use of BIM or anything more 3D than AutoCAD. This all changed after being given the opportunity, in 2012, to move halfway around the world to Hong Kong, just to be with his future wife. Despite being Chartered, the role of an Architectural Technologist is not well understood in Asia, so it was once again down to the fallback option of BIM. He has gone on to forge an actual career out of spinning 3D models around whilst getting people to believe that he is an expert.