Episode 021 - Scott Crawford

Scott Crawford visits NYC to present at the AEC Technology Symposium and fights Pope related traffic to sit down with us for an enlightening interview. We talk parametric design, Frank DK Ching, having a CNC router in your garage, and Brian learns about Spoonman. (Also, we pushed this episode out early to prove it's possible to have a quick turn-around). Enjoy. :)

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Show Notes:

1. Scott Crawford leads the LMN Tech Studio (“LMNts”) based out of Seattle

2. Scott’s in town to speak at TT CORE’s AEC Technology Symposium 2015

3. Daniel Davis is bad at fantasy football

4. The Pope came to town and ruined everyone’s lives

5. Scott’s the first guest to bring Brian and Zach a 6-pack

6. The Pope likes to kiss babies

7. Catholics love babies

8. LMN is thinking of calling their (sh)op space LMNOP

9. Eventually they will have enough partners to be called ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

10. Not to be confused with this Alphabet

11. Scott founded LMNts with Dan Belcher, who now works for McNeel

12. Scott is changing his official title to the Artist Formerly Known as Design Technologist

13. Prince’s symbol actually had a name: “Love Symbol #2”

14. Brian doesn’t know how to use the word caveat. He probably means cachet

15. Scott teaches a class to practicing professionals at UDubs, which Brian often confuses with DubsU

16. Dynamo is available in a standalone version called Dynamo Studio

17. Scott used SketchUp

18. Scott was told to learn about parametric modeling from Francis DK “Frank” Ching, who is famous for his books on hand-drawing*

19. *Many of his drawings were actually done in Illustrator YOUR WHOLE LIFE IS A LIE

20. ParaCloud was a generative modeling platform that experienced brief popularity between 2006 and 2009 before most of its users made the transition to Grasshopper which was better-integrated with Rhino and much more extensible

21. ParaMod is a design computation education blog by Karl Daubmann

22. Karl Daubmann was recently made full professor at the University of Michigan’s Taubman College and was awarded the Rome Prize in Architecture

23. TopMod is a super fun topological mesh modeling app that experienced brief popularity around 2008 and then faded a bit

24. Put a toilet in it!

25. This podcast is really cutting into Brian’s sexting time

26. Zach missed the two shittiest QBs of all time play each other thanks to this podcast recording

27. Seattle is actually nice sometimes

    1. Just kidding it’s terrible. Especially Seahawks fans

    2. And Starbucks. What the hell, You almost single handedly ruined coffee in this great nation

    3. At least flannel is finally free

28. Stockholm Syndrome describes feelings of affection in a victim for their a captor

29. Scott studied psychology prior to going into architecture

30. Seattle has seasonal bipolar disorder, which is seasonal affective disorder followed by the extreme bliss of good weather, erasing all memories of how horrible the rest of the year is

31. Here’s some Seattle grunge:

    1. Lithium

    2. Spoonman

32. How to play the spoons in under 10 minutes (hint: keep that sucker firm)

33. LMN was the project architect for Gehry’s Experience Music Project and the Seattle Public Library

34. The Seattle Public Library was the OMA project during which Joshua Prince-Ramus left to start his own practice with REX

35. Brian actually said schwasted three times not twice for those of you playing along at home

36. Before working at LMN, Scott worked for the artist Lorna Jordan doing large scale installations across the country

37. Stephen Van Dyck is now a partner at LMN

38. Jack Chaffin is also on the LMNts team, focusing largely on environmental performance issues

39. Scott has a CNC router in his garage

    1. Scott put the router on a 18 month 0% APR credit card and was able to pay it off in 12 months as LMN was paying him an hourly rate for running it on work-related projects

    2. So basically Scott’s house is an extension of LMN

    3. If you are Scott’s neighbor you probably hate him for subjecting you to the constant high-pitched whir of the CNC router

40. There’s only so much you can get out of a model - sometimes it’s necessary to do full-scale prototypes to test material performance

41. LMNts, in an initiative led by Tim Logan, teamed up with McNeel to develop Lyrebird, a Revit/Rhino interoperability library for Grasshopper

42. Lyrebird was a fuller implementation of an in-house interop library called Cricket

43. Chameleon RIP

44. Bob McNeel likes to run

45. The Designalyze podcast does not condone drunk-CNCing

46. Where in the world is Tim Logan

47. Erick Katzenstein, now with Mode Lab, used to work for LMNts

48. Brian’s weird Lyrebird error in Revit 2014 on food4rhino

49. Did you try restarting your computer?

50. Brian’s embarrassing integer problem

51. How to write a great error message

52. Rhino can’t import SAT files, it can only export them

53. Brian doesn’t feel like Zach’s heart is in this podcast anymore

54. Dodge-A-Pope

55. Jessica, get on this podcast

56. The Martian’s release was weird coming right off of Interstellar’s heels

57. MATT DAMON

58. Zach bought a BB-8 Sphero droid which you can program

59. Also check out these oranges

60. Don’t peep with your drone

61. If it comes on my property I’m shooting it down

62. Selfie-drones are going to be even more terrible than selfie-sticks

63. Zach still calls cigarettes “smokes”

64. Coney Island Mermaid Parade

65. If it’s bigger than a Pop Tart it’s a tablet

66. What makes a muppet a muppet is being Jim Henson-esque

67. Jim Henson died 20 years ago this week

68. Labyrinth featured a young Jennifer Connelly

69. Brian has a thing for the troll lady at the end

    1. Her name is Seeress Aughra, and she is beautiful

70. BMG 12 CDs for the price of 1

71. Hillel Slovak

72. Freaky Styley

73. She's lump

74. PotUSA are now make children’s music under the name Caspar Babypants

75. Less is more: 3-string guitar and 2-string bass

76. MJ tried to get dat VJ

77. Mixed VHS tapes were the proto-YouTube playlist

78. Massive YouTube playlists

79. Chet Atkins

80. Chet Baker

81. Chet Faker

82. CKY

83. Bam Margera attacked by Icelandic rappers

84. There’s a Dymaxion house at the Ford Museum

85. The Tool art of Alex Gray

86. Tool’s Maynard James Keenan is now an Arizona wine maker

87. Tool concerts are basically Cirque du Soleil

88. Tool guitarist Adam Jones also makes visual art

89. Brian once sat next to Trey Anastasio

90. Brian is always one beer behind

Lightning round:

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

   • The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared, by Jonas Jonasson

2. What’s your favorite sci-fi film?

   • Prometheus (2012)

     • Drone scan scene like Project Tango

   • Prometheus 2 will be called “Alien: Paradise Lost”

3. Favorite Pop Tart:

   • Brian: Strawberry

   • Zach: S’More

   • Scott: S’More

4. What’s your favorite retro-game?

   • ColecoVision Q*Bert

   • A TV once fell on Scott’s brother’s head while playing Q*Bert and now he can only move isometrically

   • To dress as Q*Bert all you need to do is stick a bicycle horn on your face

     • Or this

5. What music are you listening to right now?

   • New Foals album

   • Beirut

   • Other Lives

   • Seattleites must listen to a minimum of one Nirvana song a year

   • Scott’s teenage daughter confused Radiohead with Nirvana and he had to disown her

6. Favorite Radiohead album:

   • Scott: Ok Computer

   • Zach: Ok Computer

   • Brian: Kid A

   • Brian didn’t know about Radiohead until he saw them play Idioteque on SNL

7. If you could have a tea party with any three people, dead or alive, who would they be?

   • Buckminster Fuller (the tea party would be in a dymaxion house)

   • Carl Sagan

   • Maynard Keenan

8. WHAT IS ARCHITECTURE???!!! In one sentence.

   • The reality that we build

   • Building things to change people's perceptions of reality