Arriscraft Canada Brick Speaker Series: Philip Beesley
Reflections on Open Space: Metastable, precarious, resilient
This talk will outline a conceptual approach to current architecture offering precarious instruments that can indicate possible emerging realities. A tough and resilient optimism can be expressed within new kinds of form-language that are delicate, and open. What is coming in our future? How can we speak of the future when the world seems almost unspeakably insecure?
It is tempting to respond by building closed walls around our homes and closed shells around each of our individual worlds. Yet new science tells me that life is always open, not closed. It tells us that life is continually arising and continually being created. My work is based on this new science. The hovering, oscillating membranes that are gathering within this work speak of worlds arising in fertility. They invite us to be open, instead of closed. With these architectures, the boundaries of our own homes and cities and even our own bodies might resemble crystalline snowflakes and petaled flowers. We can be unapologetically fragile.
Hosted by O'Donovan Director / Associate Professor Maya Przybylski
Philip Beesley is widely known for his immersive sentient physical environments. His current research focuses on the architectural implications of dissipative adaptation and biogenesis at the boundary between mineral and organic realms, revealing fertile qualities. His installations were presented twice at the Venice Biennale for Architecture and are now touring Europe and Oceania. His collaborations with haute couture designer Iris van Herpen appear within 15 collections.
Integrative probes offer paradigms, tools and frameworks for the emerging discipline of living architecture. Beesley has created an interdisciplinary organization in the Living Architecture Systems Group located at the University of Waterloo and connecting some sixty organizations and 150 member researchers. He has contributed innovative curriculum frameworks across education and practice. A multi-year collaboration with TU Delft reaches across multiple departments and research groups. Awards distinguishing his collaborative work include two Governor General's awards for Architecture, the Canadian Prix de Rome, ACADIA Design Excellence, ACADIA Innovation in Research, VIDA, and FEIDAD. The University of Waterloo awarded Beesley the singular title of University Professor in 2023.