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.pdf CV.pdf

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 (I spent a decade living in the Middle East.)
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.