Philip Beesley from Waterloo Architecture/Philip Beesley Architect Inc. visited Ball State along with Brad Rothenberg of Pratt Institute to conduct a physical computing workshop for An Inconvenient Studio. The resulting installation from this four-day workshop is a kinetic mesh system entitled Arcus Animus.
The hanging, layered meshwork composed of impact-resistant acrylic, bamboo, and mylar components reacts to human occupation interpreted by arrayed proximity sensors. These physical reactions consist of “shaking” and “waving” movements actuated pneumatically using solenoid valves and custom air muscles, and controlled by Arduino microcontollers with processing-based code development.
Arcus Animus is a recent incarnation from a long lineage of mesh and actuator installations at Waterloo Architecture and Philip Beesley Architect Inc. from 2006-09, and we kindly thank Philip and Brad for their tremendous energies throughout the workshop, as Arcus Animus was fabricated and constructed.
Additionally, Philip Beesley delivered a lecture at Ball State entitled: “Partial Objects.” In his lecture, Beesley presented a series of his recent field-oriented installations and offered a post-humanist cultural context for this work. Illustrated projects included the Hylozoic Soil series, an immersive interactive reef construction  composed of overlapping flexible meshworks populated with kinetic ‘pores’, recently installed in Montreal, Linz and Madrid, and the 2008 UCLA installation Endothelium, a delicate skeletal tripod-field powered by densely massed organic power units and organized as unit-clusters forming a continuous lattice outfitted with faint signal-lure lights, microprocessor-controlled burrowing agents and space-filling filter packs.
Philip Beesley is an associate professor in the School of Architecture, University of Waterloo who practices digital media art and experimental architecture in Toronto. His work in the last two decades has focused on field-oriented sculpture and landscape installations, with extensions in stage design and buildings. His projects in the past several years have increasingly worked with immersive digitally fabricated lightweight ‘textile’ structures, and the most recent generations of his work feature interactive kinetic systems that use dense arrays of microprocessor, sensors and actuator systems.   He is co-director of the Integrated Centre for Visualization, Design and Manufacturing at Waterloo. He was educated in visual art at Queen’s University, in technology at Humber College, and in architecture at the University of Toronto. He was a member of art and performance collaboratives Open Series and Studio Six/Kataraque in Kingston and the George Meteskey Ensemble in New York. Periods of study were undertaken in Rome at the Vatican and the American Academy and in New York with the Wooster Group. Prior to beginning his practice he apprenticed in instrument making and in lighting design.  Distinctions for his work include the Prix de Rome in Architecture (Canada), Governor-General’s  and  Dora Mavor Moore Awards. He is the 2009 recipient of Fundacion Telefonica’s VIDA Award. 

Ball State Installlation/Development Workshop:
Philip Beesley, University of Waterloo/PBAi
Brad Rothenberg, Pratt Institute

An Inconvenient Studio:
Deepak Baniya
Elizabeth Boone
Eric Brockmeyer
Adam Buente
Luke Christen
Brad Horn
Brandon Hoopingarner
Paul Konwinski
Yevgen Monakhov
Brianna Newton
Daisy Winkler

Faculty:
Mahesh Senagala
Joshua Vermillion 

Stephen Deters from UCLA visited i.M.A.D.E as a research fellow to conduct a 3-day studio workshop to examine the performative capacities of materials–specifically, $20,000 worth of donated hardwood veneer. The resulting Bodhi Tree is comprised of laser-cut veneer components created specifically for curving, twisting, and layering in order to negotiate structural capacity with aesthetic sensibilities of lightness, patterning, and light/shadow.

A lecturer at UCLA, Stephen Deters has practiced architecture in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles.  His experience covers a broad scope of building typologies through all stages of design and construction, from furniture to skyscrapers to urban design.  He has worked in the offices of Eric Owen Moss (LA), Kohn Pedersen Fox (NY), Pei Cobb Fried (NY), Beyer Blinder Belle (NY) and Fujikawa Johnson Gobel (CHI).  He holds a Bachelor of Science in Architectural Studies from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and a Master of Architecture from the University of California Los Angeles, where he now teaches. He has also studied at the Ecole d’Architecture de Versailles (FR) and the Universitat fur Angewandte Kunst, Vienna (AU) under Zaha Hadid.  He has been a licensed architect since 2003, and is founding principal of Deterfabrik.

i.M.A.D.E wishes to thank CASE Design founders David Fano, Federico Negro, and Steve Sanderson for each personally visiting Ball State to lead workshops and roundtable discussions, critique student work, and advise us on future projects and curriculum offerings. Dave, Fed, and Steve have smart ideas and run a smart business, and we look forward to the possibility of working with CASE in the future as partners.

Kevin Klinger and Joshua Vermillion led an invited workshop at the Universidad Anahuac Norte in Mexico City. Along with higher level presentations and discussions about the shifts in practice due to the integration of digital technologies, this short course dealt with Rhino modeling skill-building and digital fabrication (laser cutting).

i.M.A.D.E conducted a workshop entitled “The Design to Production Feedback Loop” at  the Design Communication Association 2007 Conference. Click here for the event website.

Workshop participants met in the dFAB facility (i.M.A.D.E’s production laboratory) to engage with paramteric models in GenerativeComponents software and digital fabrication equipment–specifically laser cutters and a 3d printer.  The workshop was framed around complexity of information generated in process-based digital practices and the need to effectively manage and exchange information.

Innovative representational devices and fabrication techniques were introduced such as matricing, sectioning, layering, bracketing, nesting, scanning, printing, and other new forms of organizing, visualizing, analyzing, and simulating complex design data. Applying these techniques, workshop participants (including conference registratns and design students) designed, optimized, and fabricated prototypes which were seen as process-based products resulting from a design to production feedback loop.

i.M.A.D.E conducted a workshop for the Super Shell immersive design studio with 15 architecture students. Topics included concrete casting, form work fabrication, and 3d printing, along with a brief introduction to CNC milling, computation fluid dynamics, and finite element analysis.