Prove It – Episode 2 – Big Ship Computation with Matt Goldsberry

Matt Goldsberry from HDR joins Nate Miller and Dave Stasiuk from Proving Ground in to discuss his career path and how computational design is being adopted as part of HDR’s global architecture practice.

Follow Matt on Twitter: @mattgoldsberry
and connect on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-goldsberry-038a6a18/

Discussion Outline:
00:25 Discussion on the podcast format
01:06 Why panel discussion formats don’t work well at events
02:21 Introducing Matt Goldsberry, Digital Design Principal from HDR
03:27 Matt calls out Nate for having a really bad computer while in school
04:31 Matt and Nate discuss conventional academic studies
05:15 Matt discusses moving to Los Angeles and his semester at SCI-Arc
08:21 Matt goes to work in China
09:45 Digital trends in undergraduate school
10:29 Nate and Matt comment on the era’s of SCI-Arc in the early 2000s
11:04 Acadmics and the interest in digital fabrication
12:39 Why isn’t digital fabrication as big in practice?
15:30 Matt discusses trying a career path in the entertainment industry
19:21 How did Matt end up in Omaha, Nebraska?
20:41 Student loans – Architecture is expensive!
22:08 Hard to start a business when saddle with student loan debt
23:21 Matt joins HDR Architecture in Omaha
25:45 Leveraging corporate resources of a “BIG SHIP”
27:08 A long process to establish a computational design agenda
29:33 Collaborating with the firm’s data scientists
33:40 Conventional design services and digital transformation
35:36 Using data to benchmark design
37:47 How sophisticated are Building Information Models?
40:15 When did the lightbulb go off at HDR that the needed to invest in computation?
43:30 When did Matt make the shift from designer to computational designer?
46:10 Using computational design in workshops with clients
48:11 SketchUp as the “prototype” for presenting design models
49:52 Does Matt ever use “sketchy lines” in software?
54:11 Architects have the opportunity to be great storytellers with data
56:40 Building credibility for computational design at HDR
59:59 What is Matt’s one piece of advice for starting a successful computational design initiative?

Links:
HDR http://hdrinc.com
SCI-Arc https://www.sciarc.edu/
UCLA Architecture and Urban Design: https://www.aud.ucla.edu/
University of Nebraska – Lincoln https://architecture.unl.edu/

Learn more about Proving Ground at http://ProvingGround.io

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