Extended Reality, NFTs, and a Mayan King: Ernesto Pacheco’s AU Community Interview

This interview is part of a series featuring the members of our diverse AU community, from speakers and conference attendees to forum participants and online commenters. You are AU.

1. What’s your current job role?
I’m the director of visualization at CannonDesign, a senior design visualization specialist with over 20 years of experience. I’m the go-to person for visual communication on high profile projects. I’m primarily responsible for research and development of new technologies for our design practice. I’m well-versed in immersive technology development and integral to exciting, forward-thinking partnerships between technology companies and the AEC industry.

2. What are your main areas of expertise and interest?
Research and development of new digital technologies is my main area of interest. My research focuses on immersive and collaborative workflows for architectural design. I’m also passionate about animation, from abstract and conceptual to photorealistic projects.

3. What made you want to pursue this career?
Gaming and animation have influenced my career choices. I have always been fascinated with the massive worlds game artists create and the storytelling they build around these virtual spaces. However, I fell in love with architecture early on in life while walking ancient Mayan archaeological sites on the weekends with family in Mexico. I was fascinated with the monumental aspect of the buildings and how the architecture affected your psyche. I was also lucky to have been raised in a city with a good number of monolithic architectural pieces by the likes of Mexican architect Teodoro González de León. I walked through some of his most iconic buildings on my way to and from middle school every day.

4. Who in your industry has inspired you or had the most influence on you and your work?
I look for inspiration in more traditional artists. Illustrator Carlo Stanga offers a different way to express urban design and architecture through the use of line and color, for example. He is an Italian freelance illustrator that has one of the most unique styles in architectural illustration.

5. Describe a favorite project you’ve worked on using Autodesk software.
My favorite project to date is a construction sequence animation which covered 64 years in the life of a hospital campus. We used 3ds Max, InfraWorks, V-Ray, and other software for the project, which included a detailed site model of downtown Philadelphia with a lot of different 2D and 3D moving pieces. This project has been one of the most challenging jobs we have done in-house to date, and we only had a small team of four people working on it. The most demanding task was to incorporate constant feedback from the client all while advancing the overall progress of the animation. It required a lot of coordination and organization.

6. What project or aspect of your work makes you feel you’ve made a positive impact on your industry and the world?
At CannonDesign, we design solutions that take on the greatest world challenges. Our goal is to address the mutuality that exists across all life rather than focusing only on the human needs. We call this approach living-centered design. I find it very rewarding when collaborating on different projects across the firm knowing that our collective mindset is in the right place.

7. What’s your all-time favorite AU class and why?
One of my favorite AU classes has to be IKEA VR, AR, MR, and Meatballs from AU 2017. Martin Enthed’s presentation really sparked my imagination on how to utilize in our design practice some of the new technologies that they were implementing at IKEA. His session includes very detailed information on their pipeline for production work. Then in 2018 I was invited to be part of Autodesk’s Design Visualization Advisory Board where I had the opportunity to meet Martin, among other design visualization leaders, and participate in focused discussions regarding the exploration and future of new technologies in our different industries.

8. What has been one of your most impactful moments attending AU and why?
Presenting in front of more than 200 attendees was never easy, but now, after almost two years of not having the opportunity to present in person, I must confess that I truly miss that experience. Also, getting to meet and network with other like-minded professionals is priceless. Autodesk University has always made it possible for us to have a productive conference and to enjoy every night in camaraderie.

9. Where do you see your industry in 10 years?
In 10 years, our industry will have completely embraced extended reality for collaborative design work. We have learned from work-at-home mandates that we can continue to be productive and conduct business remotely without missing a beat. CannonDesign is fully invested in the implementation of immersive technologies for design collaboration. Virtual collaborative spaces are a real solution for the challenges we face when working with partners across the country or the world. I will be announcing this fall a new project I’m leading called Extended Reality Labs, or XR Labs, that will focus on deploying and supporting these new digital design tools to the firm. Interoperability is also a hot topic we are actively exploring with both Omniverse (USD) and Unreal Engine (Datasmith). Standardizing our workflows in a common file format will expedite a lot of our processes when working with multiple digital content creation apps. Our industry will be fully invested into a consistent pipeline for sharing data across software.

10. What has recently inspired or moved you—a book, film, article, website, app, podcast?
News articles on the trend of NFTs have opened new questions and inspired us to research how we will place value on our computer-generated deliverables via crypto avenues. We think that this will also affect how we collaborate with consultants soon. I have been a long-time follower of CGI artist Beeple before his NFT success. His rise among digital artists placed a huge spotlight on the value of digital content in the new era of the metaverse economy and ownership. Nowadays we see companies like Nike, Adidas, and boutique designers like Balenciaga investing heavily in digital fashion for games like Fortnite, for example. This is all fascinating to me and at CannonDesign we are ready to embrace what it means to us as an AEC company of the future.

11. If you could have dinner with one person, living or dead, who would it be and why?
That would be with King Pacal of the Mayan city of Palenque. I grew up close to the archaeological site in southeast Mexico and visited it several times during the summer with my family. Walking through the complex, one can only imagine what it would have been like to live there during the top of their civilization.

Check out Ernesto’s profile (and follow him) to learn more about his work and contributions to the AU community.