PHILIP BEESLEY
INTRO Philip Beesley is a unique designer to the world of architecture. He draws his inspiration for design from natural phenomenon and both organic and inorganic forms of nature. His creative work is focused on field oriented sculpture and landscape installations. These unique and ela borate instilations resemble something from a fary tale like dream which contain hovering fields with endless intricate connections which branch and frame components. He pushes the fields of digital media art and experimental architecture by utilizing the very latest leading-edge technology to aid in his process. He is now known as a worldwide pioneer in the ever changing and fast-growing field of responsive architecture. “His works test the ability of an environment to be near-living, to stimulate intimate evocations of compassion with viewers through artificial intelligence and mechanical empathy�. 1 The conceptual roots of this work lie in hylozoism which is the ancient belief that all matter has life. Beesley and his team of collaborators pose a question, which one day in the near future might be answered, can architecture come alive?
RESPONSIVE ARCHITECTURE
Responsive architecture is architecture that can record real time environmental conditions with special sensors that allow the structure to adapt its form, shape, color and character through the use of tiny motors that respond to the sensors. Responsive architecture has a goal to redefine and extend the current understanding of architecture by increasing the energy performance of a building through responsive technology while also producing buildings that reflect the technological and cultural conditions of the twenty-first century. 2
1
Philip Beesley. Philip Beesley Architet Inc. Last modified 2013. Accessed September 25, 2013.
http://www.philipbeesleyarchitect.com/ 2
Sylvie Parent. "Philip Beesley." Daniel Langlois Foundation. Accessed September 25, 2013.
http://www.fondation-langlois.org/html/e/page.php?NumPage=378.
Responsive architects see themselves differently from other forms of conventional design. They incorporate highly intelligent and responsive technologies into the basic core elements of a building's fabric from the construction phase. 3 By incorporating responsive tech in the early planning of the building, architects then have the ability to form the buildings shape and skin based on recordings from sensors directly taking information from environment. This should make architects reconsider the way they design and construct. Philip Beesley uses the term Empathy to draw upon his theory that examines relationships that combine projection and exchange. He aims to create an intertwined world that moves beyond closed systems and develops a sensitive vocabulary of relationships. 4
Endothelium
Hylozic Soil_Espacio
In his book, “Kenetic Architectures and Geotextile Instillations,� Beesley reveals where his inspiration comes from and how he began exploring the possibilities of Responsive architecture. He states that his motivation came to him when he was with an archeological team reconstructing a flank of the palatine. He said that he encountered physical traces of mythic history. The underground then transformed in Beesley mind as the underworld contained a vast and rich history littered with information from the past. The deposits he found included building materials animals and humans. Through this experience he has been able to concentrate his attention on vital qualities built up from the repetition of miniature parts. He believes his work is highly dominated by new technology while also having a bodily immersion and new sense of perception. 5
3
Ibid
4
Philip Beesley. Kenetic Architectures and Geotextile Instillations. Edited by Philip Beesley. Toronto,
Ontario: Riverside Architectural Press, 2010, 20. 5
Ibid., 19.
LIFE Philip Beesley is quite a busy individual. He was born in 1956 and he currently resides in Toronto Canada. As practitioner of architecture and digital media art, he studied fine art at Queen’s University in Kingston Canada and then went on to complete a degree in architecture at the University of Toronto in Canada. 6 Today he runs his own firm located in Toronto. There he designs public and residential buildings and oversees design projects for the performing arts and exhibitions. His Toronto-based practice, Philip Beesley Architect Inc (PBAI), is an interdisciplinary design firm that combines public buildings with exhibition design, stage and lighting projects. The studio’s methods incorporate industrial design, digital prototyping, and mechatronics engineering.
Philip Beesley
Throughout his career Beesley has earned several pres tigious awards for his architectural work, including the Ontario Lieutenant Governor’s Medal for Architecture and the Prix de Rome for Architecture in 1995.
7
He
has authored and edited eight books and appeared on the cover of Artificial Life, LEONARDO and AD journals. 8
6
Sylvie Parent. "Philip Beesley." Daniel Langlois Foundation. Accessed September 25, 2013.
http://www.fondation-langlois.org/html/e/page.php?NumPage=378. 7
Ibid
8
Philip Beesley. Philip Beesley Architet Inc. Last modified 2013. Accessed September 25, 2013.
http://www.philipbeesleyarchitect.com/
He has been on features that include the national CBC news, Casa Vogue, WIRED, and a series of TED talks. 9 His work was selected to represent Canada at the 2010 Venice Biennale for Architecture, and he has been recognized by the Prix de Rome in Architecture, VIDA 11.0, FEIDAD, and two Governor General’s Awards and as a Katerva finalist. 10 Philip Beesley is also a professor in the School of Architecture at the University of Waterloo. There he serves as co- director for the Integrated Group for Visualization, Design and Manufacturing (ICVDM). The research conducted by Beesley at the ICVDM concerns textile lattices in architecture and focuses particularly on interlinked mesh structures, lightweight materials, and offset and assembly systems ensuring the sturdiness of such structures. His works are inspired by the organic world and traditional weaving techniques. 11 None could have been created without giving thanks to sophisticated visualization tools, digital technologies for graphic design, and devices allowing rapid prototyping .
9
Ibid
10
Ibid
11
Sylvie Parent. "Philip Beesley." Daniel Langlois Foundation. Accessed September 25, 2013.
http://www.fondation-langlois.org/html/e/page.php?NumPage=378.
WORK Beesley constructs quite exquisite thresholds that bring together craft and manufacture, meaning and behaviour, physicality and psychology. 12 He maintains a practice that combines sculpture with public buildings, exhibitory and stage design. Beesley also creates spaces that dissolve into forest-like hovering fields, this gives the mind/user the experience of being primitive life-forms contained within dense jungles and ocean reefs. His responsive environments offer bodily immersion and wide-flung perception. 13 The most recent generations of these works feature interactive lighting systems and kinetic mechanisms that use arrays of microprocessors and sensors. 14 These works contemplate the ability of an environment to be near-living. Th ey stimulate intimate creations of compassion with the real world through artificial intelligence and mechanical beauty.
PennDesign_Fiber Workshop
12
Philip Beesley. Kenetic Architectures and Geotextile Instillations. Edited by Philip Beesley. Toronto,
Ontario: Riverside Architectural Press, 2010, 21. 13
AERM. "The Curators Research Philip Beesley." St udio cup. Art, Events & Rich Media. Accessed
September 27, 2013. http://cup.servus.at/research/beesley.
14
Philip Beesley. Kenetic Architectures and Geotextile Instillations. Edited by Philip Beesley. Toronto,
Ontario: Riverside Architectural Press, 2010, 21.
In his work with architectural textiles, Beesley has produced several sculptures and installations, often in collaboration with other sculptors and artisans. The prolif eration of patterns evokes the growth process in the organic world. Several of his works are incorporated directly into nature. ‘ One such work is Haystack Veil created in 1997. It is made up of 30,000 twigs arranged as a mesh neting thrown over a moss and lichen covered cliff on the Atlantic coast in Maine. It creates a epidermis like form over the earth and questions the relationship with
Haystack Veil
architecture and nature.
In Erratics Net completed in 1998, Beesley created a process of interlinked wire fabric that formed a giant net on a Nova Scotia coast and helped local vegetation to grow. 15 This simple adaptation of the environment should be recognized by designers and put into use
Eratics Net
in order to help our stressed envornment.
15
AERM. "The Curators Research Philip Beesley." Studio cup. Art, Events & Rich Media. Accessed
September 27, 2013. http://cup.servus.at/research/beesley.
Some of Philip Beesley more recent and more intricate work is titled Hylozoic Soil completed 2007. The Projecct implements a distributed sensor network driven by dozens of microprocessors, generating waves of reflexive responses to those drawn into its vast array of acrylic fern stalagmites. The forest thus manifests a haunting, breathing organicity, as it stirs to envelop and charm its human explorers. In keeping with the tradition of biologist artist Ernst Haeckel's Riddle of the Universe (1899), which traced actions of organic and inorganic nature alike back to natural causes and laws, Beesley's Hylozoic Soil stands as a magically moving contemporary symbol of our ` for empathy and the creative projection of living systems. 16
Hylozic Soil
16
Philip Beesley. Kenetic Architectures and Geotextile Instillations. Edited by Philip Beesley. Toronto, Ontario: Riverside
Architectural Press, 2010, 24.
Lastly the ever complex and ever intriguing Protocell Field was installed by Beesley in 2012. The sculpture was arranged to form a chapel-like canopy within the vaulted main space of the exhibit. This instillation includes new systems of responsive meshwork columns, Vibrating clouds of fronds, and lengths of pulsing LED lights that are all arranged in helical chains that spiral up around each column. The responsive and interactive part about this instillation was the thought-controlled electro-encephalograph headsets that were employed as controllers for these column systems. 17 At the performance event that this installation was shown at employed these new interfaces and explored the gently shifting pulsing patterns of light and sound.
Protocell Field
17
Philip Beesley. Philip Beesley Architet Inc. Last modified 2013. Accessed September 25, 2013.
http://www.philipbeesleyarchitect.com/
CONCLUSION
Philip Beesley has and continues to produce projects that highlight the harmonious relationship between nature and human creation and also rely heavily on the emotional response in individuals who encounter the works. By playing on the analogies between fabrics, technology, and architectural textiles the works explore individual boundaries, both in the mind and physical world. Beesley will continue to lead in the field of responsive architecture for some time to come.
Bibliography AERM. "The Curators Research Philip Beesley." Studio cup. Art, Events & Rich Media. Accessed September 27, 2013. http://cup.servus.at/research/beesley. Beesley, Philip. Kenetic Architectures and Geotextile Instillations. Edited by Philip Beesley. Toronto, Ontario: Riverside Architectural Press, 2010.
Beesley, Philip. Philip Beesley Architet Inc. Last modified 2013. Accessed September 25, 2013. http://www.philipbeesleyarchitect.com/ Parent, Sylvie. "Philip Beesley." Daniel Langlois Foundation. Accessed September 25, 2013. http://www.fondationlanglois.org/html/e/page.php?NumPage=378.