Café Zai: Intelligence for Informed Environments
Kimon
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S1E29 29 Are We Owners or Renters of Our Intelligence?
You are currently renting your own intelligence. And Big Tech is making you pay for the privilege.Every time you use a centralized AI, your data is vacuumed up by a few giants, accelerating a…
S1E28 28-The $20 Million Legal Dispute That Changed Construction's Daily Report
A lack of documentation almost cost Peter Lasensky, founder of Command Post, $20 million. His response? He invented a simple, contemporaneous documentation tool using a Nextel walkie-talkie in 2001.…
S1E27 27 Got sensors? Got IoT? Got “smart buildings”?
Then why can’t you keep ice cream at the right temperature?Everyone imagines ice cream melting , but the real operational killer is often the opposite: the freezer goes too cold, product gets freezer…
S1E26 26 Cross-Pollinating AutomatedBuildings
Cross-Pollinating AutomatedBuildings: Mentorship & BumblebeesAfter more than five decades in the building automation industry, Ken Sinclair has seen it all, from brass pneumatic thermostats and…
S1E25 25 Stop Protecting the Hill
Data Sharing, IP, and the Future of BuildingsJohn Turner brings decades of hard-earned experience across major global organizations, working from the owner side, leading digital transformation, and…
24 Are we living in a simulation? In building AI: yes!
Because the real world hasn’t fully come to the table yet.At NeurIPS Urban AI, I spoke with Fabian Raisch (TU Rosenheim/TU Munich), whose research targets scalable AI-based building control with…
S1E23 23 NVIDIA Urban AI
In this Café ZAi conversation, Kimon Onuma speaks with Zheng (Thomas) Tang from NVIDIA about how synthetic data, computer vision, and digital twins are teaching AI to understand buildings,…
S1E22 22 Teaching an AI How to Learn About HVAC
Donna Vakalis, a postdoc researcher at Mila, Quebec AI Institute, focuses on reducing climate emissions from buildings using AI. Her work involves optimizing HVAC systems without extensive data,…
S1E21 21 Buildings are Giant Robots
A Columbia robotics researcher and a Google AI engineer join Café Zai to ask why our buildings, giant robots in disguise, are still asleep.About the Guest:Judah Goldfeder is a researcher at Columbia…
S1E20 20 Seven Deadly BIMs
Kimon Onuma and Cyril Verley trade confessions from decades inside the BIM and digital twin world. From hoarding data and chasing flashy visuals to selling LOD 500 models that nobody could use, they…
19 Greenbuild LA 2025 Day 2 : Kimon Onuma
Join Kimon Onuma as he takes you behind the scenes of the US Green Building Council's 2025 LA Conference, where sustainability meets cutting-edge technology. In this episode, Kimon shares his…
S1E18 18 Greenbuild LA 2025 Day 1 : Kimon Onuma
AI and Standards. Real-time Café Zai reflections from Day 1 at Greenbuild 2025. Kimon Onuma pushes back on the corporate sustainability script and narrative, and calls out architects for hiding…
S1E17 17 It’s Alive! No More Dead Data
Reanimating buildings with living, owner-run data.Kimon Onuma and Cyril Verley crack open why “living” planning beats glossy shelfware master plans. Fresh from Tradeline, they map how to turn a…
S1E16 16 Capital, Energy, & Intelligence: Data-Center Reality with Amy Polvado
Data is changing real estate. Amy Polvado breaks down the density story—capital, energy, and intelligence—inside today’s data centers. We unpack why “dollars not square feet” matters, how higher rack…
S1E15 15 The Soul, the Silence, and the Twin with Chikara Inamura
When a building is completed, it often stops talking to us. All the knowledge, intelligence, and memory that shaped it disappear into the walls.In this Café Zai conversation, Kimon Onuma and Chikara…
14 BIM Data Saves the Most Important Asset: Lives
Café Zai with Fire Chief Victor Esch:Other Café Zai podcasts have focused on how we design, construct, and operate facilities and assets. My conversation with Victor Esch is about what happens when…
S1E13 13 When AI Meets openBIM
AI is reshaping the built environment, and it demands structured, open data. In this Café Zai episode, Kimon Onuma meets with BuildingSmart USA industry leaders to explore how decades of…
S1E12 12 Before CAD (BC) to BIM Clash & Burn
Kimon Onuma and Cyril Verley trace the evolution of architecture’s digital journey, from hand drafting, to early CAD experiments, to the rise of BIM and Revit. Cyril shares firsthand stories from…
11 Calling Uber with a PDF: The Absurdity of Facility and Asset Data Today
Most owners are still trying to manage their facilities and assets with static PDFs and mutating Excel files, like calling an Uber by downloading a spreadsheet of cars. From projects to existing…
S1E10 10 Jack Dangermond on the Nervous System of the Planet : A Café ZAi Conversation
I asked Jack Dangermond for 5 minutes… he gave me 52.In this uncut extended Café Zai conversation, recorded live at ESRI HQ during the buildingSMART USA 2025 event, Jack shares his candid thoughts…
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Café Zai: Intelligence for Informed Environments has published 31 episodes since July 2025, covering topics in Technology.
Café Zai: Intelligence for Informed Environments is currently active with new episodes weekly. Average episode length is 20m.
