SUMMARY

This interview with Jason Payne traces his path from architecture to his influential role in the digital turn. After beginning in landscape architecture at Cal Poly, Payne transferred to SCI-Arc, where he immersed himself in theorists such as Deleuze, Derrida, and especially complexity theory. Payne explains how the 1992 LA riots and classes with Mike Davis deepened his sense of architecture’s social and urban context. Pursuing further education, he entered Columbia’s inaugural “paperless studio,” a radical moment as the school transitioned from hand drafting to full digital production. He studied under figures like Jesse Reiser, Stan Allen, and Greg Lynn. During this time, he was drawn to animation tools and particle simulators, using them to model dynamic systems and speculate on how diagrams themselves might move and generate form. Professionally, Payne worked at Reiser + Umemoto on Yokohama Port Terminal and briefly with Daniel Libeskind. His teaching at RPI and Pratt emphasized material behaviors and translating between analog and digital models. In the 2000s, he joined the UCLA faculty shaped by Sylvia Lavin, Greg Lynn, and Robert Somol. Payne explains how at that time faculty and students were divided between differing approaches in creation.