Joseph Henry Kennedy Jr. Digital + Spatial Experience spanning across multiple scales and mediums
INTRODUCTION
Joseph Henry Kennedy Jr. is a designer, researcher, and creative technologist from Santa Cruz, California. He has worked among multidisciplinary teams of scientists, engineers, architects, and artists in projects across various scales and media. His research is focused in developing novel fabrication methods and materials systems for consumer products, architectural structures, and natural environments.

Selected works below: additional projects organized
< left by scale and right by type >














BIO-POLYMER

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// Cambridge, MA + New York City, NY
// MIT Media Lab / Mediated Matter Group
// Robotic Fabrication, Material Science, Computational Design, Art Installation
// 2018 - 2019

A collection of natural artifacts digitally designed and robotically fabricated from the most abundant biopolymers on our planet. Derived from agricultural byproducts, 3D printed by a robot, shaped by water and augmented with natural pigments, this biocompatible architectural ‘skin’ structure points toward a future where the grown and the manufactured unite. Surface features, patterns and colors are computationally ‘grown’ and additively manufactured with varied mechanical, optical, olfactory and gustatory properties, utilizing organic waste streams while preserving niche-ecologies. Through life and programmed decomposition, shelter-becomes-organism as it sequesters carbon while enhancing pollination, promoting soil microorganisms and providing nutrients for growing buildings.

This work aims to subvert the industrial cycle of material extraction and obsolescence through the creation of biopolymer composites that exhibit tunable mechanical and optical properties, and respond to their environments in ways that are impossible to achieve with their synthetic counterparts.

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TOKYO-TOMORROW

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// Cambridge, MA + Tokyo, JP
// MIT Media Lab / Mediated Matter Group
// Robotic Fabrication, Art Installation
// 2019

Tokyo’s temperatures have increased five times as fast as global warming with almost fourteen million in population. As sea levels rise, the influx of water displaces buildings and urban infrastructure, and the artificial infill that allowed the City’s population to grow and expand into the bay is reclaimed by Nature. As Tokyo returns to its primordial state of Satoyama, where historic canals and rivers reemerge and the city embraces the forest once again, an all green water-filled Edo reemerges.

Our model is crafted from a single Hinoki cypress sourced from the Tono Region; the same forests that have served the making of Tokyo’s oldest shrines. Amongst them is the Ise shrine, which has been rebuilt every 20 years for the last 1300 years from the same wood and carpentry techniques, as well as the Meiji shrine, which has been integral in Tokyo’s landscape and ecology by creating old-growth forests since its founding. The model situates itself in this cultural tradition, bringing back the forests and accompanying ecology into the future Edo now in the form of self-contained natural environments designed to augment biodiversity and enable the perpetuation of life on Earth.

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TETRAPOD

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// Taipei, TW + Milan Rome Bologna Moderna Turin, IT
// Miniwiz
// Design Prototyping, Material Science, Installation
// 2015-2016

A modular system for store display made from post consumer waste in the form of compressed felt.

The overall structure is based on the tetrahedral geometry of a carbon atom that creates strong bonds between molecules. This geometry allows for several different structural configurations, adjusting for various spatial types and loading conditions. The system is designed for rapid assembly using friction joints without screws or glue. Each location was installed by a handful of workers within a week. Electrical wiring is included within the body of the modules that plug into custom lights, speakers and air purifiers.

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MOBILE-OUTPOST

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// Oslo, NO + Longyearbyen, SJ
// Fulbright Foundation / Oslo School of Architecture and Design / MIT Space Exploration Initiative
// Design Prototyping, Environmental Analysis, Fieldwork
// 2016 - 2017 + 2022 - 2023

Svalbard is one of the locations most dramatically impacted by climate change in the world, with the annual temperature rising 4 degrees Celsius in the last half century. Due to these rapid changes in already extreme environmental conditions, the settlement of Longyearbyen has had to adapt to shifting foundations and landslides that destroy homes and displace residents.

In response, we explore how dynamic architectural solutions for mobile shelter can accommodate these dramatic shifts in temperature, wind and topographical conditions. By combining advanced digital manufacturing with computational design and environmental simulation, we tested a prototype for a lightweight portable living capsule in harsh environments both for future space pioneers and climate refugees who will require new forms of housing and shelter that can adapt to impending environmental extremes on site.

Svalbard’s remoteness, barren geologic topography, and sunlight exposure roughly approximate some of the environmental conditions that would be present in the southern pole of the moon, an area that has been considered for a future space settlement.


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DIGITAL-ARCHIVE

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// Ithaca, NY
// Cornell University / Architecture Thesis Prize
// User Interface, Meta Narrative, Architecture
// 2015

A library for the internet age that investigates the role of the printed book within the proliferation of digital media. This project analyzes the traditional spatial layouts and forms of the library to hypothesize how the built and virtual environments may adapt to new methods of knowledge production and information sharing.

A series of 81 custom made books explore different spatial formats for presenting information. The books become the generators for a series of 64 reading rooms based on the spatial adjacencies present in each book.

The project is hosted as a series of interactive entries through wikipedia.

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URBAN-STAMP

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// Taipei, TW
// Independent Project
// Urban Analysis, Local Crafts
// 2016 - 2017

In Taiwan, the personal stamp is a widespread means of verifying legal identity in almost every official procedure. It’s a highly aestheticized object that retains practical application and daily use.

This project is a series of personal stamps for the neighborhoods of the city of Taipei. The personal stamp can be used as an analogy to understand the architectural relationship between the individual residential unit and the public scale of the city. While on their own the stamps provide a unique signature of neighborhood identity, together the stamps constitute a map of the entire city.

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BLOCKED

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// Cambridge, MA
// Independent Project
// Puzzle, Fabrication
// 2023

These toys are a series of poplar blocks that have been split into angled forms. These forms can be twisted, separated, offset into sheered, stacked forms and reassembled into blocks again. Part puzzle, part sculpture, part fidget toy.

Constructed from solid poplar and neodymium magnets, these tactile forms have satisfying swiveling, clicking connections that encourage players not just to solve the puzzles, but to stack, fidget and twist the blocks into sculptural shapes. These generative toys may help their users overcome creative blocks.

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COLD-CUTS

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// Cambridge, MA
// Independent Project
// Homeware, Installation
// 2023

Cold Cuts is a collection of charcuterie boards designed to – much like a well-curated conversation – join disparate elements into a cohesive whole. Each board is a small project for a single party guest, a small effort to curate and array cheese and olives and other charcuterie provisions for. A snack-sized effort with snack-sized portions as a result.

But once tiled together, these small boards assemble an entire meal. Through the collective artistic efforts of guests, the collaged charcuterie boards become a visual, and literal, feast.

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PRINT-SCREEN

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// New York City, NY
// Space Forward Ideas Competition 1st Place
// Concept
// 2014

A new method of spatial organization and information presentation for the workplace of the future, (Print Screen) can be installed in the structural grid of any open floor plan. The package includes a kit of large format industrial printers that attach vertically to columns and use a high-strength, lightweight and soundproof paper to partition and create spaces. Users can print on and arrange this paper to suit their needs.

(Print Screen) aims to bring the built environment up to speed with current technologies and create a full integration between architecture and information. (Print Screen) confronts the indeterminacy of the growing business with adaptable structure that is able to accommodate rapid growth and specific needs without sacrificing personalization.

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PLAY-CARPET

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// New York City, NY
// LA+ Imagination Competition Honorable Mention
// Concept
// 2022

The sidewalk is the site of a perpetual territorial dispute between building and street, both seeking to extend their domain into the thin space that separates them. This ambiguous territory plays host to numerous informal events that are manifestations of commercial interests and the personal needs of residents. As socioeconomic forces threaten to shrink the sidewalk into nonexistence, these narrow public realms are at risk of extinction.

The carpet is a plan blueprint on which all possible uses may occur. The actions and attitudes of the public fill the gaps between architecture and empty, neutral space in which possible social situations may unfold – a suggestion, rather than a physical imposition, it anticipates a response from the public with elements and furniture sourced locally. The carpet sets the stage for an event of arbitrary significance. Its presence is an excuse to congregate - the subject of a continental holiday.

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ENDEMIC

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// Galapagos Islands, Ecuador
// Fulbright Foundation / Oslo School of Architecture and Design
// Research
// 2016

Of the over 8,000 square kilometers of land that form the Galapagos Archipelago, less than 3 percent is zoned for human use. The remaining 97 percent is a designated national park protected under strict access and conservation regulations. With an official population of over 25,000 legal residents, the resources and infrastructure required to sustain a growing human presence present numerous challenges and conflicts with ecological preservation.

This project proposed the repurposing of oil rigs for volcanic terraforming to create enough new agricultural land to feed local populations in the Galapagos Islands in harmony with existing ecology.

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EARTHSHINE

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// Pasadena, CA
// Jet Propulsion Laboratory
// Installation
// 2021

Earthshine is a site specific display that illuminates the beauty of our ever changing surroundings by showcasing the full spectrum of colors visible in the sky between sunrise and sunset of each day.

NASA may be globally synonymous with aerospace research, but a more specific understanding of the innovations and work in engineering and science is not generally accessible to the public. Although the Earth Science Mission Program Office (ESMPO-J) has developed a full suite of missions that capture and empirically quantify a changing earth from space, the program office on the 4th floor of building 180 at the JPL campus provides an observation point for experiencing and appreciating the inherent beauty of the dynamic earth that’s right outside the window.

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ORBITING

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// Cambridge, MA
// MIT Media Lab / Tangible Media Group
// Installation
// 2020

Exhibition of a prototype for a rotational molding machine capable of producing complex collection of floating objects. Orbiting sparked various interdisciplinary research endeavors and intended to inspire dialogue about the issues at hand. Due to the task of inventing a new class of floating objects, so-called Floatables, research cooperations in materials science, architecture, and software design were established. The investigations comprised superlight materials and building principles, such as the construction objects made from Aerogel.

Further, the project inspired research in the field of intelligent machine design. As a result, the Orbiting rotational molder was produced describing a speculative machine. The process opened the scope towards thinking machines as a hybrid — partly made of physical materials, partly made of VR- and AR-environments. Thus, it augments the stage for the intuitive exploration of future machine concepts.

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