223: 'They Better Find Something Else to Do', with Pablo Zamorano Mosniam
A conversation with Pablo Zamorano about building a technology practice centered on design values, the significance of human scale, and the implications of AI tools on creativity and the quality of architectural outcomes.
Pablo Zamorano Mosniam joins the podcast to talk about what it looks like to build a technology practice around design values rather than the other way around. We explore the “door scale,” the intimate layer of texture and touchable detail that most firms skip and Heatherwick obsesses over, why tools leave recognizable fingerprints on the buildings they produce, and how the studio's most-used internal AI tool turned out to be the one that required the least training to adopt.
This episode is especially relevant for computational designers, design technologists, and firm leaders watching the industry accelerate toward faster, cheaper, and blander — and wondering whether the right response is better tools, clearer values, or both. Pablo doesn't soften his view: the people waiting on the sidelines won't find a comfortable place to land.
Original episode page: https://trxl.co/223
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Connect with Pablo
- Pablo Zamorano Mosnaim
- Senior Associate and Head of Geometry and Computational Design at Heatherwick Studio; also a lecturer at the AA School of Architecture in London
Heatherwick Studio
- Heatherwick Studio
- heatherwick.com
- Founded by Thomas Heatherwick, the London-based studio of ~260 people designs buildings, objects, and public spaces with a philosophy centered on human experience and material richness at every scale — from city down to door handle.
- Little Island — New York City
- Project page on heatherwick.com
- The park on the Hudson River that opens the episode — Pablo and Evan discuss how its ambiguous pathways, changing materials, and layered views encourage people to keep exploring rather than stop and look from a distance.
- Coal Drops Yard — King's Cross, London
- Project page on heatherwick.com
- A retail and public space built within two Victorian coal sheds in King's Cross. Pablo joined Heatherwick in 2015 working on projects in this same King's Cross area, and the project exemplifies the studio's approach to working with complex existing geometry.
- Thomas Heatherwick — Wikipedia
- Wikipedia
- Background on the founder of Heatherwick Studio and the design philosophy that drives the firm's work across buildings, objects, and urban spaces.
Design Software & Tools
- Rhinoceros 3D (Rhino)
- rhino3d.com
- Heatherwick's primary design tool. Pablo explains why Rhino's NURBS geometry and material handling keep their models more detailed than any Revit counterpart — and why the studio intentionally maintains Rhino models well past the handover stage.
- Grasshopper
- rhino3d.com
- The visual programming environment built into Rhino. Pablo discusses why Grasshopper-based tools largely failed to gain broad adoption at Heatherwick — and what that taught them about tool design for non-specialist users. (Grasshopper is now bundled with Rhino and requires no separate download.)
- Autodesk Revit
- autodesk.com/products/revit
- Used for documentation and project delivery at Heatherwick. Pablo makes the case for running Revit and Rhino in parallel rather than forcing everything into a single-tool workflow — "you don't eat soup with a fork."
- Stability AI (Stable Diffusion)
- stability.ai
- The open-source image generation model Heatherwick used to train custom AI models on their own project imagery and visual style. Pablo describes how this became the foundation of the studio's most widely adopted internal tool — generating thousands of images per month across the whole firm.
Events & Community
- AECtech NYC — Annual Symposium & Hackathon
- aectech.us/nyc-symposium
- The annual conference where Evan and Pablo first connected in person. AECtech has grown from a two-day event into a week-long gathering for architects, engineers, and computational designers from around the world.
- Thornton Tomasetti CORE Studio
- thorntontomasetti.com/core-studio
- The computational R&D group at Thornton Tomasetti that hosts AECtech. CORE Studio builds custom software, automation tools, and AI applications for the AEC industry — and keeps getting name-dropped on this podcast because they keep putting on great events.
Events
- AEC Tech Conference
- aectech.us
- Annual AEC technology conference organized by Thornton Tomasetti CORE Studio, held in New York City. Evan references a session from the conference involving Turner Construction's AI rollout.
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About Pablo Zamorano Mosniam:
Pablo is an architect, technologist and academic.
He currently leads the strategic vision and implementation of A.I. at Heatherwick Studio.
Since joining the studio in 2015, Pablo has been instrumental on projects such as Coal Drops Yard in London UK, Xian’s Tree of Life in Xian, China as well as leading applied research.
As Head of Geometry and Computational Design at the studio, Pablo leads all Applied Research projects and a team of specialists that work across all studio projects. He also provides strategic vision, expertise, and guidance on the integration of A.I., emergent technologies, computational techniques, and the execution of challenging geometries.
He is also a tutor at the Architectural Association where he runs a seminar focused on Circularity, AI, and Fabrication.
Prior to this, Pablo was based at SOM London where he was key on a number of projects and competitions of multiple scales in Europe and the Middle East.
Before relocating to London in 2010, His career was split between New York and Santiago, Chile where he won international competitions and completed several projects.
His personal work has been exhibited, published, and awarded internationally.
Pablo lectures regularly at different universities and conferences nationally and internationally.
