Philip Beesley Architect Inc.

Philip Beesley Architect Inc. is an interdisciplinary design firm located in Toronto, Canada. Work within the practice includes public buildings, development planning, commercial facilities and offices, and residences. Working with community groups is a particular strength of the office, drawing on Beesley's experience as a housing activist and community organizer.

Recent projects include a new bank building for the Niagara Credit Union, the Harbour Inn development at Niagara-On-The Lake, the new Gallery of Korean Art for the Royal Ontario Museum, planning for historic building projects for the Toronto congregations of the British Episcopalian Methodist/Christ St. James Church (1924) and St. George-the-Martyr (1844), a trade gallery for the General Consulate for Indonesia in Toronto, playground designs for the Toronto District School Board, and a public art installation with Kai Chan at the Living Arts Centre, Mississauga.

The studio’s design methods incorporate advanced digital visualization, industrial design, digital prototyping, and mechatronics engineering. Interdisciplinary art projects, graphic design, exhibit design, stage and lighting projects are also frequently undertaken. Sculptural work in the past decade has focused on lightweight 'textile' environments, and landscape installations. Experimental projects have increasingly focussed on immersive digitally fabricated lightweight “textile” structures, while the most recent generations of these works feature interactive kinetic systems that use dense arrays of microprocessors, sensors and actuator systems. These environments combine synthetic and near-living systems in pursuit of a distributed emotional consciousness.

PBAI is led by experimental sculptor/architect Philip Beesley. Core team members include Rob Gorbet (mechatronics engineer and visual artist), Rachel Armstrong (artificial life researcher), Eric Bury (graphic designer and visual artist) and Jonathan Tyrrell (interactive system coordinator and sound artist). Currently there are 15 artists, designers, architects, and engineers within the collective.