Janet Echelman

Professor Caitlin Mueller and artist Janet Echelman collaborate with technologist David Feldman and graduate student Adam Burke to explore and test new opportunities for algorithmic design and engineering simulation to contribute to the creation and production of large-scale tensile sculpture, focusing on the fiber-based material systems and software tools that Echelman has pioneered with her studio.

With her Digital Structures research group, Mueller focuses on the creative integration of performance criteria in design, leveraging advances in optimization and machine learning to improve the fluidity and flexibility of computational design tools. Mueller, Echelman, and collaborators will collectively experiment with the application of such methods to artistic design processes, and test emerging design tools with physical prototypes.

Together, they will also embark on a broader collaborative project at MIT, aiming to establish new connections between technology, art, design, visualization, mathematics, and materials across departments and research groups. Through informal lectures, workshops, and public talks, they will create conversations highlighting the potential of interdisciplinary interests and linkages to spark new ideas and advance knowledge in diverse fields.

Adam Burke, SMArchS Building Technology ‘24, is a designer trained in architecture and interested in poetically interactive environments, non-traditional fabrication methods and materials, and the development of embodied knowledge through making.

Biography: MIT Architecture Department
Website: allopoiesis.com
Social:  LinkedIn | Twitter 

David Feldman, CAST Distinguished Visiting Technologist, was a software engineer and longtime collaborator and partner of Janet Echelman. He earned a BS in Computer Science from Dartmouth College and an MBA from Harvard Business School. In 2023, he received an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts from the Maine College of Art and Design for developing the technology for the monumental sculptures of Studio Janet Echelman. At Apple Computer, Feldman served as principal engineer for the file system on System 7 and invented the concept of an alias to a file or folder. After living with gusto for three years while undergoing treatment for glioblastoma, David Feldman passed away in October 2023. Read his obituary.

Caitlin Mueller is a researcher and educator who works at the creative interface of architecture, structural engineering, and computation. As Associate Professor for the MIT Department of Architecture and Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering in the Building Technology Program, she leads the Digital Structures research group. Mueller’s work focuses on new computational design and digital fabrication methods for innovative, high-performance buildings and structures that empower a more sustainable and equitable future.

Biography: MIT Digital Structures
Website: digitalstructures.mit.edu
Social: Instagram

Gloria Sutton is Associate Professor of Contemporary Art History at Northeastern University and is affiliated faculty with Information Design and Visualization. Sutton teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on contemporary art history and theory in a global context and her seminars address the rise of network culture and consider the ways visual art intersects with publishing, curation and design often directly engaging with current exhibitions and public projects.

Biography: Northeastern University College of Arts, Media and Design

Janet Echelman is an artist who creates experiential sculpture at the scale of buildings that transform with wind and light. The art shifts from being an object you look at, to something you can get lost in. 

Her work defies categorization as it intersects across disciplinary boundaries, from fine art, architecture, and urban design, to material science, computer science, and structural and aeronautical engineering. Using unlikely materials from fishnet to atomized water particles, Echelman combines ancient craft with original computational design software to create artworks that have become focal points for urban life on four continents.

Recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship, Harvard Loeb Fellowship, Aspen Institute Henry Crown Fellowship, and Fulbright Lectureship, Echelman was named an Architectural Digest Innovator for “changing the very essence of urban spaces.” Her TED talk “Taking Imagination Seriously” has been translated into 35 languages with more than two million views. Oprah ranked Echelman’s work #1 on her List of 50 Things That Make You Say Wow!, and she recently received the Smithsonian American Ingenuity Award in Visual Arts, honoring “the greatest innovators in America today.”

Her permanent commissions have transformed urban environments worldwide, and include Bending Arc at the newly renovated Pier in St. Petersburg, FL (2020), mist sculpture Pulse (2018) in front of Philadelphia City Hall, Dream Catcher (2017) on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood, CA, Impatient Optimist (2015) at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in Seattle, Every Beating Second (2011) at San Francisco International Airport, Her Secret Is Patience (2009) in downtown Phoenix, and She Changes (2005) in Porto, Portugal.

Website: echelman.com
Social: Facebook | Instagram | Twitter

“The Boston Society for Architecture announced Wednesday that Janet Echelman’s 2015 sculpture “As If It Were Already Here,”which hung above the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway that summer, is the 2022 recipient of its highest honor, the Harleston Parker Medal. It’s the first time the medal has been awarded to an artist and to an ephemeral work.”

– The Boston Globe, January 2023