Philip Beesley receives the Acadia Design Excellence Award

Professor Philip Beesley is the recipient of the 2024 Acadia Design Excellence Award.

Given to exceptional architects, designers, and researchers who have made significant, innovative, and impactful contributions to the fields of architecture and computational design the ACADIA Design Excellence Award

The jury cited: “Philip Beesley’s interdisciplinary explorations integrate the environment, technology and craft of responsive systems into a radically inventive body of work. His pioneering work at the intersections of design, technology, and culture engages with several dimensions of thought and practice that we believe are relevant to the ethos of the ACADIA community.” 

Philip Beesley is one of the global pioneers in living architecture design and research, widely known for his immersive “sentient” physical environments. Since his first experimental presentations, he has worked within collaborative groups. His 2010 Hylozoic Ground project has become a fixture across contemporary international architecture curricula. 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 currently touring Europe and Oceania.  A multi-year collaboration with TU Delft reaches across multiple departments and research groups. His collaborations with haute couture designer Iris van Herpen have resulted in 15 collections. These far-reaching integrative probes include poetic expressions, elemental kits and pattern languages that are providing paradigms, tools and frameworks for the emerging discipline of living architecture. 

He has created an interdisciplinary organization in the Living Architecture Systems Group connecting sixty organizations and 150 member researchers. He has contributed multiple innovative curriculum frameworks across architectural education and professional practice. Recognizing the depth of his polymath research-creation contributions, the University of Waterloo awarded Beesley the singular title of University Professor in 2023.

Inaugurated in 1998, the ACADIA Awards of Excellence represent recognition of consistent contributions and impact on the field of architectural computing. Through 2005, awards were given in three categories: Teaching, Service, and Research. In 2006 an award was added in Emerging Digital Practice and the prior three were renamed as Teaching Excellence, Innovative Research, and Society. In 2014, a special Design Excellence Award was added for individuals who have made major contributions to the fields of architecture and computational design during a career. At most one award is presented each year in each category to a recipient who, in the eyes of the review committee, exhibits "evidence of exceptional and innovative achievement."