Episode 016 - Stephanie Lin

Stephanie Lin drops in to talk about architecture school, our middle names, her time at Iwamoto Scott and Aranda\Lasch, Biosphere 2, and Zach sings a bit of Guns and Rose's Mr. Brownstone. Enjoy.

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Show Notes:

1. Check out Stephanie’s website SL˩SSL˩S

2. How to type a backward L

3. Reverse text generator (somewhat ironically, this doesn’t seem to work for “L”)

4. Guns N Roses’ Mr. Brownstone (Zach sings it better)

5. DIS (Danish Institute for Study Abroad) is a study-abroad program in Copenhagen and is where Brian and Stephanie met in the summer of 2006 when they were undergrads at UC* and UC Berkeley, respectively.

   • *University of Cincinnati, the real “UC” because they got the web domain first

   • Everyone got a bad grade on their sketchbooks no matter how many huts they sketched at the Frilandsmuseet

   • Brian did a homestay on Bjørnsonsvej off the Sjaelør Street (A/E) DSB stop

   • There was unusually beautiful weather that summer and they has just opened the new artificial beach at Amager Strandpark

     • The bathrooms looked like bunkers

6. Using Rhino to make beautiful vector drawings from Maya models

7. Seeing a Maya model is like being flashed with a Men in Black memory eraser - the seduction of freeform modeling makes you forget all constraining design factors you may have known before

8. “Aqueous Aggregations” is actually the name of a 2007 elective graduate studio at DAAP attended by Brian and instructed by Karl Daubmann and Craig Borum (partners at the time at PLY), who were visiting that semester from Taubman College.

9. Zach went to Virginia Tech and did his study abroad at Riva San Vitale in Switzerland near the Mendrisio Academy

10. How to pronounce Copenhagen in Danish

11. Stephanie took an advanced studio with Anthony Burke her senior year at Berkeley

12. Around the same time she started working for Lisa Iwamoto who also teaches at Berkeley

    • Their PS1 entry REEF lost to Ball Nogues’ Liquid Sky in 2007

    • Gehry Technologies consulted on the CATIA model

13. As far as the PS1 pavilions go, Brian really liked MOS’ afterparty and SHoP’s Dunescape

14. The first PS1 pavilion was Gelatin’s Percutaneous Delights (1998) back when it was actually cool to party at a weird pavilion in LIC

15. Brian is pretty sure that Lisa Iwamoto brought her dog to LA’s Now Next Future in 2014 and that photographic evidence exists somewhere

    • Found it

16. Iwamoto Scott’s Hydro-Net project won the grand prize in the History Channel’s “City of the Future” competition. It had it all:

    • Hovercraft

    • Carbon nanotubes

    • Algae power

17. They won a giant novelty check

    • Can you cash those?

    • You would need a drive-through bank tube the size of a Super Mario pipe

18. Brian’s favorite song

    • Just kidding this is his favorite song

19. David Leatherbarrow’s On Weathering examines how weathering plays into the design, construction, and experience of architecture

20. While at Iwamoto Scott, Stephanie worked on the Voussoir Cloud installation for the SCIArc gallery (2008)

    • The project (and Stephanie) are featured on the cover of Contemporary Digital Architecture: Design and Techniques (2010)

21. Good luck finding a first edition of Peter Zumthor’s Thinking Architecture for a reasonable price

22. French architect Didier Faustino is really good at finding valuable architecture books for cheap - he absolutely ransacked Cincinnati’s Duttenhofer’s Books

23. Brian's 2 pieces of terrible advice of design computation:

    • Always say you can do it. Even if you can’t, you'll figure it out along the way. I mean, you’re kind of obligated know that you’ve gone and lied about it.

    • When you figure out how to do something faster don't tell anyone - they’ll still expect it to take the normal amount of time and you’ll get more “me time.” Automate your task and go drink some beers surreptitiously.

24. Brian’s 1 piece of great advice on having a pickup truck

    • Don't tell people you gave a pickup truck

25. Brian had a Chevy S10 in Cincinnati

26. Brian likes to haul

27. How to get rid of a vehicle

    • Shoot it directly in the gas tank like in GTA

    • Slowly walk away and don’t look back at the explosion

28. One Fresh Mind (1FM) is the name of Brian's Third Eye Blind (3EB) cover band

29. Stephanie went to the GSD for grad school (2009-2012)

    • The best part of going to the GSD is the anticipation of going to the GSD - once you get there things are very, very tough

30. Harvard and MIT allow for cross-registration, meaning that students at one may also register for courses at the other, so Stephanie took courses at the Media Lab such as Tangible Interfaces (responsible for the ideas and technology behind Minority Report-esque gesture control) and also a class where she made electronic music with Max/MSP

31. The original Jurassic Park was cast with real dinosaurs

32. Zach needs to send valuable dossier on Jurassic park http://imgur.com/a/neESv

33. At the GSD Stephanie took studios with Preston Scott Cohen and George Legendre, the latter of which taught how to use Mathcad to generate form

34. Recognizing its value, Stephanie taught herself Grasshopper the summer before starting at the GSD

35. Brian also taught himself Grasshopper, the result of many frustrating but well-caffeinated evenings in Cincinnati's Iris BookCafe

36. How hydroplaning works

37. Telekinesis for beginners

38. Maya’s nucleus engine powers the physics behind nParticles and other procedural animation tools in Maya

39. Middle names:

    • Brian’s is Timothy

    • Zach’s is Randolph

    • Stephanie’s is Lei Ching (meaning “clear dawn”)

40. Last names:

    • Lin means “forest or woods”

    • Ringley means “circular clearing” as in a clearing in the forest or woods. Coincidence? Yes

    • Downey means "fabric softener manufacturer"

41. It’s Aranda back slash \ Lasch not Aranda front slash / Lasch or Aranda vertical bar* | Lasch

    • *Also known as the sheffer stroke, verti-bar, vbar, stick, vertical line, vertical slash, bar, obelisk, glidus, vunderbar, or pipe

42. While at Aranda\Lasch, Stephanie worked on the Yeasayer project with Casey Reas

43. Tooling is the greatest Pamphlet Architecture of all time

44. Aranda\Lasch may have jumped the shark with their use of the Voronoi

45. Relationship between the Voronoi and Deluanay Triangulation

46. Ferris Euler's Day Off is a movie where a mathematician plays hooky from work and goes on a series of wacky adventures

47. Project Euler is a set of challenging mathematical and computer programming challenges

48. Stephanie went on a desert bus tour as part of a GSAPP advanced architecture studio and saw:

    • Biosphere 2*

      • It’s called 2 because Biosphere 1 is the earth. Get it?

    • Arcosanti

    • Taliesin West

    • Grand Canyon

    • Hoover Dam

    • Ivanpah Solar Array

    • Aircraft boneyard

    • Area 51

49. The return of the X-Files

50. The Smoking Man

Lightning round:

1. What book(s) are you reading right now?

   1. Rocker Kim Gordon’s memoir Girl in a Band (2014)

   2. Bleeding Edge by Thomas Pynchon

2. What music are you listening to right now?

   1. Kim Gordon

   2. LowerDens

3. What’s your favorite sci-fi film?

   1. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

   2. Solaris (1972)

      1. The new one’s okay

4. What’s your favorite retro-game?

   1. Super Mario Brothers

5. What’s your favorite childhood cartoon?

   1. Old Road Runner cartoons

6. What’s your latest phone app?

   1. Harvest

   2. Logic Puzzles

7. What’s something that you think is a critical issue in technology that’s currently being overlooked?

   1. Not use the language of technology exclusively to describe a project - also describe user experience and other aspects

8. What’s something that recently blew your mind?

   1. Road trip through the desert, particularly the Grand Canyon

   2. Witnessing Lake Mead’s record low water level at the Hoover Dam

9. WHAT IS ARCHITECTURE?

   1. Creative interpretation of the environment

   2. A kind of creative destruction and self-destruction

10. What is one piece of advice you would give to someone currently studying architecture?

    1. Thinking in as many ways as possible - being open minded and not subscribing to one use - not being evangelistic

On Designalyze, we analyze what makes thought leaders in design technology tick through informative, insightful, and often humorous interviews. Designalyze is hosted by Zach Downey and Brian Ringley and recorded in DUMBO, Brooklyn. For design technology tutorials and content visit us at http://designalyze.com