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James
McBennett

Background music: Lucky Chops playing Funky Town (1980) in the NYC subway with brass instruments.

I currently live in Denton, TX 🐎🤠🎓. I’ve called various places home, including Baltimore🔵🦀, New York City🥯🍕, Nashville🔥🍗, Santiago🥑🥟, London🎡💂, Copenhagen🇩🇰🚴, Rotterdam🇳🇱🚴🏻‍♀️, Dublin☘️🍺 and Riyadh🔆🐫.

I studied architecture🛖🏠🏩🏯🏰🏫🏠🛖 with a focus on complex form, data and computation. My interests span multi-modal cities🏢🚶🚴🚉🚌🚕🚗, automation, optimization and performance🖥️⏬🔋, digital fabrication and CNC🪓🤖🪑, extreme environments🥶🥵, and iterative prototyping🔁🥼. Following my undergraduate studies, I gained experience at the design firms KPF, JDS and OMA.

Currently, I serve as a faculty member in the Master’s on Advanced Computation for Architecture and Design (MaCAD) 🧮💻🔢 at the Institute of Advanced Architecture Catalonia in Barcelona (IAAC)🎓. I’ve also taught short courses for UCD, NYC Resistor, HackadayU, University of Calgary, IAAC, and Digital Futures on a variety of topics related to computational design🖥️🧠📐.

My master’s thesis explored graph machine learning, rhino.compute, and three.js.

Mine(Us) Plus (2023) with Ren Rainville and Raghad Hammour on our process of spider-like hexapod robots that arrive on Mars years before human settlement carving out material below the Martian ground surface immediately followed by 3D printing that material above ground.

Multi-Frame Swarms (2022) – Creating roof geometry using swarm trails from Houdini3D

Work (recent) 💽

Work (old) 📼


I love to learn new things through short online courses that range from “the influence of superheroes 🦸🏻‍♀️🥷🦸🏽‍♂️🦸‍♂🦹‍♀️ on pop culture” to “cooking using physics 🍳🔥”. Here is a final-project video that I submitted for CS50, a popular Introduction to Computer Science course. My favorite audiobooks 🎧📘 to listen to are about behavioral economics 🤪📈. My latest sourdough starter 🍞 is called Scrappy.



I am married to Carey 👸🏼. We record youtube 📽️ videos when we travel 🛵. I try to run 🎽 or swim 🏊🏻‍♂️ daily several times a week.


📸🐈 Instagram @jamesmcbennett
📄📊 LinkedIn @mcbennett
👉🧠  Creative Mornings @mcbennett


Books I ❤️

2023 – A City on Mars by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith
2022 – The Architecture of Disability by David Gissen
2022 – Formulations: Architecture, Mathematics, Culture by Andrew Witt
2019 – Range by David Epstein
2019 – Arabs by Tim Mackintosh-Smith
2017 – Weapons of Math Destruction by Cathy O’Neil
2017 – The Second Digital Turn by Mario Carpo
2016 – Shoe Dog by Phil Knight
2014 – Creativity Inc. by Ed Catmull
2014 – Factory Man by Beth Macy
2013 – Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
2011 – Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari
2009 – Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky
2008 – The Craftsman by Richard Sennett
2005 – The Prefabricated Home by Colin Davies
2004 – Me++ by William J. Mitchell

My favorite TED Talks 💡💬

There was once a time when I had watched every TED talk on the internet. The first TED talk that I listened to was Joshua Prince-Ramus presenting the work of OMA. TED massively expanded their library with TEDx in 2009. I launched TEDxGoodenoughCollege’s first ever event in 2011 and later helped TEDxDublin and TEDxLondon run some large events for 1000+ attendees. I was one of the first ever finalists for TED’s open call to speak on their main stage alongside Reggie Watts (who won), Joe Sabia, Cesar Kuriyama, and Joshua Walters who all shared their unique and deeply fascinating stories that night.

Favorites From TED

Cities, Architecture, and Infrastructure

Technology

Craig Venter
Craig Venter
See talks
Kevin Kelly
Kevin Kelly
See talks (3)
Nicholas Negroponte
Nicholas Negroponte
One Laptop Per Child
Ray Kurzweil
Ray Kurzweil
See talks (2)
Jeff Han
Jeff Han
Demos his breakthrough touchscreen
Saul Griffith
Saul Griffith
See talks (2)
Juan Enriquez
Juan Enriquez
See talks (3)
Neil Gershenfeld
Neil Gershenfeld
On Fab Labs
Christopher
Christopher “moot” Poole
The case for anonymity online
Blaise Aguera y Arcas
Blaise Aguera y Arcas
See talks (2)
Anand Agarawala
Anand Agarawala
Demos Bump Top
William Kamkwamba
William Kamkwamba
See talks (2)
Hod Lipson
Hod Lipson
Builds “self-aware” robots
Tim Berners-Lee
Tim Berners-Lee
See talks (2)
Ed Ulbrich
Ed Ulbrich
How Benjamin Button got his face
Shai Agassi
Shai Agassi
Bold plan for electric cars
Sergey Brin and Larry Page
Sergey Brin and Larry Page
On Google
Pattie Maes
Pattie Maes
Demo SixthSense
Deb Roy
Deb Roy
The birth of a word
Dean Kamen
Dean Kamen
See talks (3)
Johnny Lee
Johnny Lee
Demos Wii Remote hacks
Zach Kaplan
Zach Kaplan
Demo toys from the future
Philip Rosedale
Philip Rosedale
On Second Life
David Merrill
David Merrill
Demos Siftables
Pranav Mistry
Pranav Mistry
See talks (2)

Art & Design

Education

Food

Ideas

Business, Social Business & Marketing

Media and Entertainment

Explorers

Wade Davis
Wade Davis
See talks (2)
Lewis Pugh
Lewis Pugh
See talks (2)

School of Life 🧬 videos on philosophy

Greek & Roman Philosophers

History

Modern Philosophy

Asian Philosophy

Political Thought

Writers

Artists

Design files 💾 for my 2013 Kickstarter: This Stool Rocks

Imperial .3dm .dxf .ai .pdf

Metric .3dm .dxf .ai .pdf